Editorial: Raids of bingo operations in Alabama seem pointless

For several years, the State of Alabama has played hardball with those who would dare to operate electronic bingo games within our borders. The exception is tribal casinos, and that’s an entirely different matter, but if the state had jurisdiction, the attorney general would send his people in to raid those facilities, too.

“From my first day in office, I have worked to ensure that illegal gambling laws are enforced consistently across the state,” Attorney General Luther Strange said this week after raiding four electronic bingo facilities in west Alabama Monday. “These casinos were operating in open defiance of the rule of law and we have been left with no alternative but to treat this as we would any other law enforcement matter.”

The only problem is that’s not entirely true. Years after the state eviscerated the bingo casino at Country Crossing in Houston County (now operating with traditional paper bingo as Center Stage Alabama) and a bingo casino at Victoryland in Macon County, the legality of the machines remains murky. But more to the point, if the attorney general’s office treated these cases as it would any other law enforcement matter, there’d be a raft of arrests with every raid and seizure. And there hasn’t been.