Just imagine being witness to this moment of sheer horror.
Me and a colleague were just doing our job when we noticed a guy skulking around looking
like he was up to something.
We kept an eye on him, but I regret to this day that I didn’t approach the man.
We saw him leave what looked like a Styrofoam cup on top of what we presumed was his car.
We were right about it being his car, but what we didn’t know was that this cup was
not full of coffee or another drink.
He’d actually turned it into an improvised explosive device, or IED to those of you in
the know.
The cup was intended to do some serious damage to a lover, but instead a stranger decided
to take the trash from on top of the car.
The thing blew up in his hands, and we had to help clean up the mess.
What’s perhaps strange to you guys listening is that this wasn’t a scene from a war torn
nation and that guy wasn’t from a terrorist cell.
This was run of the mill jealousy in the USA; that bomb and the needless death had all been
over a dispute about a woman.
Something I have learned in my life is that Las Vegas seems to be a city where ordinary
life can quickly turn to chaos.
That guy by the way, the one who picked up the cup, ended up with one of his finger bones
penetrating his skull.
He became one of many victims of what I still call the Wild West.
I can’t say I’ve been all over the world, but after spending a life on the road I will
say Vegas could be the best and the worst city in the world in terms of entertainment.
When it’s good it’s great, and when it’s bad it’s hell.
When I worked in Vegas I was often reminded of that biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah,
except I’m yet to see fire and brimstone rain down on Vegas.
I’ll tell you some of the worst things I saw and some of the worst things other security
told me, but let me first explain to you how a guy like me ended up working in the city
of sin.
I’m actually British, hailing from a fairly grim industrial town in the north of England.
I guess you could call it a Detroit-type of a city.
You know, a rough and tumble sort of blue-collar place where booze and fighting go hand in
hand.
I joined the armed forces when I was young, did two tours of Afghanistan, and later in
life made quite a bit of money working as security in Iraq.
The main part of my job there was pretty much making sure people got from point A to point
B and got there alive.
In Iraq the absence of things, the eerie quiet, is what scares you, but in Vegas it’s the
presence of things, the total mayhem.
When my Iraq contracts were over I was kind of lost, but one day I got a call from a former
U.S. marine who’d I’d met in Iraq and he told me I’d be the right fit for a security
job in Vegas.
He said the money was good and…well…it was Vegas.
I also got along with the guy well and I knew he had my back.
It would be fun if nothing else, and let me tell you, Las Vegas looks a lot more appealing
to the eye than a rundown former textile town in northern England.
Both have plenty of violence and drug abuse, but at least Vegas isn’t dark and grey and
depressing.
He was right, too, Vegas was fun.
Sure, we were professional all the time, but there was a buzz in Vegas and at times you
couldn’t not be transfixed by those bright lights and that electric atmosphere.
That’s the thing, though, the bright lights mask something malign underneath.
Vegas puts a spell on people, and as you guys know, spells can turn out bad.
The Vegas hex leads a man into temptation, and that can be ruinous.
I’ve seen it many times.
If you think you can take on Vegas, think again.
Here’s part of a famous song about another den of degeneracy, Bangkok, but I’ve changed
the word “Bangkok” to “Vegas.”
It fits both cities perfectly, and I know that, ‘cos I’ve spent a long time in both
places.
“One night in Vegas makes a hard man humble Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Vegas and the tough guys tumble Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me.”
The hedonism can’t last forever.
What goes up, must come down, and let me tell you, people fly really high in Vegas and sometimes
they just drop from that great height…figuratively, and literally.
The IED thing was bad enough, but every single night we ended up breaking up fights.
Alcohol flows like water in Vegas, which is good for the casinos because drunk guys don’t
make the best gamblers, but out in the streets it’s the security that has to clean up the
mess.
One time we got there too late.
Some ladies of the night had been arguing in the street, which doesn’t look good for
business so me and my American colleague went over to try and initiate some peace talks.
We were only a few feet away when one of the women just stabbed another right in the neck.
We tried to staunch the blood loss but that woman died right in front of us.
She couldn’t have been older than 21.
It turned out that they’d been arguing about some money owed, to the amount of 20 bucks.
One person dead and another with no doubt a long prison sentence and all because of
a few bucks.
Inside the casinos people get loud and sometimes violent, and throwing them out is pretty much
an everyday thing.
And no, it’s not like in the movie “Casino” …we don’t put guy’s heads in vices or
beat them within an inch of their life, but you have to get rough with some dudes only
because if you don’t they might hurt you or someone else.
One of the worst things was the number of heart attacks.
Yep, when gambling is mixed with booze and sometimes the devil’s dandruff, and you’ve
got a whole load of unhealthy people in those casinos, you get a lot of people just falling
to the ground.
But get this, the policy is you have to give them CPR until the paramedics get there.
Even if the person has actually died, and I mean gone, not coming back, finito…you
have to keep up appearances and keep plugging away on them.
The reason is it looks better for hotels and casinos when bodies are not just lying on
the floor.
It’s up to us security guys to make it look like there is hope.
Strange eh, it sounds more like Hollywood.
And let me tell you, it’s also really exhausting.
You just wouldn’t believe how many people collapse in Vegas.
You could make a movie about it and call it Collapse, although I think that’s the name
of a dark documentary film.
Maybe it should be called, “Heart Attack City.”
The reason of course for all the collapsing, or at least one major reason, is a big win
or a big loss can have an effect on the heart.
I never witnessed this myself, but I heard stories of people winning really big on the
slot machines, jumping for joy, and then collapsing and dying.
That’s the downside to an adrenaline rush.
The irony of that is of course kinda funny, but it’s not funny for that person’s family.
Can you imagine the coroner filling in the details on the form.
“Cause of Death: Jackpot.”
It happens more often than you would think.
One of the darker aspects of this is while security might be doing CPR, some patrons
might be watching in shock, but other avid gamblers remain engrossed in their game.
Such is the power of money.
As for some really strange things, well, listen to this.
One time that magician Chris Angel was in town and we were working as part of a security
team where he was performing.
We’d been informed that a young woman had been stalking Angel, and while that can be
harmless, it can be pretty scary for the celebrity.
Rarely do stalkers kill or attack their obsession, but it’s happened.
Anyway, we were aware this young stalker was staying in one of the high-rise hotels and
so we were just keeping an eye on things.
This hotel had a lobby area and you could see right up to the high floors from there.
I will never know why she did it, but that stalker jumped from her floor and landed right
in the lobby area.
It was not a pretty sight of course, but it wasn’t the first ‘jumper’ my colleague
and I had seen in Vegas.
But the thing was, she’d jumped right in the middle of the afternoon.
The lobby was packed.
She didn’t hit anyone, but let me tell you, some of those families that had traveled halfway
across the world to see the that famous city had a bit of shock.
On another occasion some suspicious looking guys had booked into a room and it turned
out that the authorities had been watching those men.
We were tasked with entering their room when the guys were away, and what we saw surprised
even us.
That was a bunch of weapons and explosives.
The most disturbing part was they had videos of US, well, us and other security.
The surveillance team had been surveilled.
Those guys were planning some kind of attack and we were part of the people that prevented
that from happening, so you could say that I got more job satisfaction from that than
manhandling a drunk guy out of a casino because he’d thrown a chip at a dealer’s face.
The drunks and the crazies weren’t always all that bad.
Sometimes they’d win big and if it was Christmas or New Year those guys might try and give
you a huge tip.
On one accession, I kid you not, a guy tried to give me $10,000.
I didn’t take it, only because I saw that this guy was not in his right mind and it
wouldn’t have been ethical of me to take that cash.
Another thing that isn’t so bad is the fact quite a lot of women seem to be attracted
to security guys.
Both me and my partner you could say are fairly good-looking, but I think it was more the
fact we were security that attracted a lot of women.
Vegas is full of sharks and hustlers, and we are the good guys.
My buddy at the time was a fairly good MMA fighter and a former college wrestling star.
I’m a purple belt in jujitsu and got to a certain standard in Thai boxing that I fought
at Bangkok’s famous Lumpinee (lum-pee-nee) stadium.
We were always professional and we never bullied or unnecessarily hurt anyone, but let me tell
you, if tough guys did try and take us on, they didn’t get very far.
One consequence of this was sometimes it would catch the eye of women who’d seen us save
the day.
Security guys these days don’t exactly look like Joe Pesci.
As for those women of the night, well, every night we saw them strut around the hotels
and casinos.
There’s nothing wrong with that and we often chatted with the girls.
Most of them were cool and we got along fine, but when it came to their customers there
were a few rules they had to follow.
One rule of course is don’t cause trouble with a guy in the casino, and if the girl
wants to take her 68-year old poker champion out of the casino then do whatever you have
to do in a room... not an elevator, or a car, or a corridor.
Unfortunately, that rule is not always followed.
Oh, some of the things I have seen in Vegas would make Charlie Sheen blush.
Some of those girls you could say don’t always tow the line and I can tell you that
many guys get done over in Vegas.
You have to remember that Vegas is a place where some guys might be carrying really fat
wallets.
If a person has won big there just might be a girl who had been watching his good fortune.
He is now the prey and he is going to be hunted.
Those girls don’t just want to sell him a service; they want ALL his winnings.
The oldest trick in the book is to give them a spiked drink that will knock them out.
This happens all over the world where there are red light districts, and in Vegas I had
to go through CCTV footage a few times after some married man had embarrassingly fallen
for this scam.
It never happened on my watch, but guys have actually died when the woman went overboard
with the sleeping drugs she slipped into the drink.
Then of course there are times when the women of the night are the victims and I can’t
tell you how many times I’ve had to remove a drunk guy from a room after he’d become
not such a nice guy.
That kind of thing happens all the time, but without any doubt the strangest thing that
ever happened to me was when I was called to a room because a man was causing a disturbance.
I was informed that he was in the room with a woman and they were screaming and fighting.
When I got there the guy was wearing a chicken costume.
If that wasn’t weird enough, when I asked what the problem was both the man and woman
became aggressive towards me.
The chicken actually lunged at me and started throwing punches while the woman was trying
to hit me with a bedside lamp.
I said, OK, I’m out of here.
I’m guessing the guy was part of a bachelor party and I’m guessing both he and the woman
had been taking illegal substances.
That kind of thing is all in the night’s work, but being attacked by a prostitute and
a giant chicken was pretty far out.
I could go on and on, ‘cos you basically see weird things nightly in Vegas.
Unfortunately, a lot of the stories are depressing because Las Vegas sees quite a lot of suicides
and violence, but for the most part, people just act stupid in that city.
That’s why everyone says what happens there stays there.
Another saying is, people who go to Las Vegas leave their brain on the plane....
I can vouch for that.
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