The soon-to-be-illegal games have become a way of life and a source of reliable revenue in places like Ambridge By Sean D. HamillNewsWorks Lab contributor As a vendor handed Darla Talerico a 4-inch wad of $1 and $5 bills from the till box in a crane machine game at her namesake restaurant in Ambridge on Tuesday, …
Continue reading “Skill games removal will cost bars, clubs and small towns”
Proposed skill games laws could bar people convicted of running illegal video gambling machines By Sean D. HamillNewsWorks Lab contributor John “Duffy” Conley was just 22 in 1985 and not yet known as the kingpin of video gambling in western Pennsylvania with over 4,000 illegal video poker machines. Over the next 40 years his rap …
Continue reading “Pa. lawmakers debate opening skill games to former criminals”
Banned for nearly 70 years, automatic knives quietly return with bipartisan support By David S. Rotenstein NewsWorks Lab contributor Donald Wright, 22, died early on Easter morning in 1953 when a teenager stabbed him with a switchblade knife in Pittsburgh’s World War II-era Glen Hazel public housing project. Within days, Pittsburgh City Council outlawed switchblades, …
Continue reading “You can now buy switchblades in Pa. How dangerous is that?”
State Police will offer path for removing machines if October deadline passes By Sean D. Hamill NewsWorks Lab contributor The skill games that have spread to taverns, social clubs and corner stores all over Pennsylvania in recent years started with one arranged seizure in a small Beaver County social club. On Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013, Pennsylvania State Police troopers entered Aliquippa’s American …
Continue reading “70,000 Pa. skill games trace roots to this one ‘controlled buy’”
