Atlantic City mayor orders police not to patrol casino parking garages

The Mayor of Atlantic City has ordered the police to stop patrolling casino parking garages. That isn’t sitting well with the union representing police officers in light of a high-profile recent car-jacking.  

Mayor Lorenzo Langford gave the order this week to stop patrolling the multi-level parking garages of the Atlantic City Casinos. Dave Davidson is president of the union representing police officers. He says it’s not good to offend a major taxpayer.

“The casinos, as everybody knows, pay 70 percent of the taxes in the city. They should have some services to cover the money that they pay in taxes,” said Davidson.

Davidson says the police have been patrolling the garages for years and he believes the decision to stop is politically motivated.

“All this political grandstanding is hurting the taxpayers and hurting the residents, so I think there’s multi-level games being played here,” he said.

Calls to the mayor, the head of the Casino Association were not returned.

The head of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority called the action “unfortunate.” CRDA chairman James Kehoe released a statement saying “it is time the Mayor understood that we are all in this together.”