Police Prepare for Season of Football and Illegal Betting

Detective Mike Wixted is not looking forward to football season.

It’s not that he doesn’t like the game, but as a vice detective working in the Los Angeles Police Department’s gaming section he knows football means betting just as autumn means falling leaves.

Bookies are limbering up for the new season, Wixted said. “We can hear the talk on the streets now.�

Although football season is the peak season for illegal gambling, Wixted and his 15 colleagues in the gaming section do not exactly have a lot of time on their hands the rest of the year.

Age-Old Passion

The drug trade, street gangs and their attendant violence may dominate today’s crime headlines, but the age-old passion to gamble continues as it has for generations, leaving authorities fighting uphill.

And, in Los Angeles at least, illegal gambling--whether it is on football, basketball or horses--is a growth industry.

“It’s definitely on the increase,� Wixted said.

Tens of millions of dollars in bets are processed by bookies in the city during the year, he said, with individual operators netting about 5% of the total wagers they take in.

Last June, for example, gaming officers raided 16 residences to break up three bookmaking rings that took in about $700,000 a week. Shortly before those raids, Wixted’s colleagues in the Sheriff’s Department Vice Division raided a sophisticated bookmaking ring in East Los Angeles that officials said took in $40 million to $100 million a year.

Dozens of bookmaking rings operate within the city, ranging from one-man or two-men operations based at a neighborhood bar to sophisticated rings that keep computerized records and use toll-free telephone numbers, he said.

The money is good, and the occupational hazards--from physical violence at the hands of customers to fines and jail if caught--are generally not as serious as in the drug trade.

‘Spank the Hand’

“The courts are going to throw the book at the doper and spank the hand of the bookmaker,� he said.

Although some bookie operations have changed with the times by adopting computer technology, most still do things the old-fashioned way, relying on an operator who jots down bets over the phone, Wixted said.

“The majority of it is done with pencil and pen,� he said. “We haven’t run into too many computers.�

In the rush of telephone calls from bettors during a big sports weekend, it is just easier and faster to scribble the information on paper than to punch the data into a computer, he said.

As old-fashioned as they may be, some rings follow the standard modern business procedure of running credit checks on some high-rolling new bettors, Wixted said.

A typical bookie who heads up a mid-size ring may employ one or two clerks who handle the phones, plus several agents who work through the organization to bring in business, he said.

Clerks, sometimes teen-agers but mostly older people up to senior citizens, can make $500 tax free for working barely 20 hours a week during the busy football season. Some bookmaking rings even provide their employees with paid two-week vacations to places like Hawaii during the slow summer season, Wixted said.

One of Wixted’s biggest frustrations is what he called society’s “so-what� attitude toward illegal gambling, manifested by professionals like doctors and lawyers who bet and family newspapers that print betting odds and point spreads.

Illegal gambling, Wixted said, tears apart the moral fiber of a community. Although he does not believe organized crime is playing a major role in the Los Angeles bookmaking scene, some of his colleagues disagree.

But Wixted said he knows gambling, like prostitution, will continue to flourish despite the Police Department’s best efforts to fight it.

“Basically, we’re talking about a society that likes to bet,� he said.