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Tudela wants arcades relocated from villages
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Posted on Jan 05 2009
The Office of the Mayor of Saipan is batting for the phasing out of poker arcades from the villages and urging legislators to enact a law that would forcibly “eradicate the machines away from the general population.”
Mayor Juan B. Tudela said a centralized system—keeping all poker arcades within a designated area—would minimize so-called poker-related crimes.
Tudela said he is optimistic that all the poker arcades would be relocated in June this year.
He said the numbers of poker arcades have increased so much that you can see them anywhere, which he said is contrary to the initial purpose of limiting it to several outlets.
“From my own personal and official position, I am in full support to relocate all poker machines and other forms of gambling machines from the villages on Saipan to a more remote and safer location and environmentally-safe to our residents and visiting tourists who want to spend some time during the day to play their luck,” Tudela said in a statement.
Tudela said these machines have negative effects on the villages since the very beginning.
“We have seen and witnessed so many criminal acts [that] have been committed due to the presence of these machines in the villages,” the mayor stressed.
Tudela lamented the rise in crimes, where poker employees and patrons have been held up at gunpoint and instances where the perpetrators remain free in the community.
He said statistics have indicated an increasing number of burglary, theft and armed robbery over the past five years.
Tudela believes that all these could be attributed to the prevalence of poker machines, in addition to drug addiction.
“We cannot continue to have these poker machines and any other gambling machines in such a small community. It has been always my strong position to get these machines away from the community,” the mayor said.
Former governor Juan Babauta first initiated a proposal in 2004 to relocate poker arcades from the villages and other residential sites to curb the rising number of crimes, following a double shooting incident at a poker establishment at the base of Capital Hill, which happened the day he delivered his State of the Commonwealth address.
