No stone is left unturned to protect the casino

Sep 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By KATE HENRY

Doug Ostrander has used his ability to deal effectively with people in each of his various career roles — as teacher in the South Bronx, as a major in the New York State Police Department and director of traffic services for New York, and most recently, as a security director.

Ostrander has applied his people skills to build the security operation at Verona, N.Y's Turning Stone Casino Resort since he was hired on as a security director in 1993.

“I taught in the south Bronx for about five years,” Ostrander explains, “and even back then, the kids were great, but the school system was tough — and 30 years later schools are still tough. So I took an exam for the state police — and I was married with a small son and a daughter was on the way. I was offered a position, which my wife decided I could take, and I discovered my avocation was police work. Twenty-one years later, I retired as a major,” he recounts.

Just as Ostrander was seeking a new challenge, the Oneida Indian Nation was planning to open New York's first casino using the proceeds from its successful bingo operations.

Today, Turning Stone includes a hotel, a gaming floor, a large bingo hall, seven restaurants, an 18-hole PGA championship golf course and a nine-hole executive course, a showroom and a convention center. Profits are used for education and other advancement opportunities for the Oneida people.

TAKING A GAMBLE

Ostrander notes that, in some ways, security and policework go hand-in-hand. His biggest challenge in the new position was he knew virtually nothing about gaming. The comfort was that he was not alone.

“We put our heads together and hired a management team out of Reno, Nev., to help us get started, train and put staff together — and we only had about a month and a half to get it together. I started in late May and we opened in July,” he recalls.

Ostrander spent a couple of weeks in Nevada doing everything a security director does, came back, and taught the staff. “It was a big transition from police work,” he says. “There, the state gives you authority to go out and make an arrest and you're not worried about consequences or feelings — you're polite, but you're simply following the letter of the law,” he says. “But in a casino, it's a business, so the customer is always right.”

He says a challenge was teaching his officers to achieve that balance between preventing things from going wrong and treating the guests helpfully and respectfully.

“I see the officers as ambassadors to the public: They're the first ones you meet coming in and the last ones you see going out,” he says.

Ostrander put his management skills to work, modeling the department into a truly professional one.

“I look back at my own beginnings here when I knew nothing about gaming, so I know what kind of struggle it can be. Most of the people we hire now are from the local area and don't know much about gaming either, so I teach them the way I learned — by doing it themselves on the floor, getting your hands dirty and doing the job,” he says.

His attitude is accommodating, but he also has a no-nonsense approach. “Everyone has problems in their personal lives, and people make mistakes, but I say learn from that mistake, and let's move on. If you want to get a job or want to get promoted, go ahead and shoot for it. There's room for growth and to advance,” he says.

Ostrander tells his supervisors the most important thing is to make a decision. “I make mistakes all the time, and that's how we learn,” he points out, sounding very like an effective teacher. “If you can smile and make a decision, then I can teach you how to observe and what to look for, and we will have a winning team. We're all team members — there is no hard-nosed ‘you're speeding on my highway’ type of thing.”

He adds that another of the initial learning curves was understanding and reconciling the various levels of oversight at the casino. “People watch Al Pacino movies and think, ‘Is it organized crime? What's involved really?’” he says.

But at Turning Stone, oversight abounds. A separate surveillance department oversees the CCTV for the gaming floor. Two regulatory agencies — the Oneida Indian Gaming Commission and the N.Y. State Racing and Wagering Board — protect the interests of the Indian Nation and of the state, respectively. And two police agencies — N.Y. and the Indian Nation's — do background checks and handle various protection functions. “I wasn't dealing only with my department but with everyone else too, and no one really knew what the rules were yet. We had to grow up together and define responsibilities. It took a few years and a lot of persistence, but now everyone works cooperatively,” Ostrander explains.

KEEPING THE WHEELS TURNING

Ostrander supervises a staff of 90, whose common goal is to protect the assets of the casino through observation, reporting and all the security measures at its disposal. Monitoring all security functions is handled on-site with the help of a few contract vendors from the outside. “We have a security command office, which is the hub of the technical end of it — fire, intrusion and panic alarms, the CCTV network and all the telephone and radio communications,” he explains. “A second location, called the security base, services the gaming exclusively. We do have some responsibility for the floor itself. We do dispatching for the floor, man stationary posts, manage 12 licensed EMTs and currently, I have control over all the transportation.”

He explains that a separate, dedicated team handles surveillance of the gaming floor because the work is highly technical. “They have to know the games, the rules, how the dealer plays, and they have to watch the players. They look for everything from breaks in the patterns to card cheats to stealing of purses and chips. They also look for liability issues such as people tripping and falling or getting ill,” Ostrander says.

“This place never shuts down despite the winters up here. We probably have 3.5 million people a year come through this building, and on a weekend, it's nothing to have some 20,000 people here, so liability is a big concern.”

Once plans to double the existing gaming space and move administration to a new building go forward, one of Ostrander's next moves will be standardizing access into the main building. “The growth of the facility has been fast, but now that we're settled, I want to bring the access system up to the next level. That's how I use trade magazines and the trade shows — to get ideas and to talk to vendors,” he says.

Ostrander says ASIS's promotion of the CPP designation is key to helping to bring up the professional level of the security field. “I have a bachelors from Iona College and a masters in English from New York University and I've been studying to take the CPP — it's one of my goals,” he says.

Ostrander is a member of the N.Y.C. Contingency Planning Exchange, a member of ASIS and a former chapter chairman. “It helps you realize how multifaceted security is,” he observes. “I was a member of the ASIS Gaming and Wagering Protection Committee, which put together resolutions to standardize gaming operations. And we have retail shops here at the casino, too, so I can call the ASIS Retail Committee and they can put me in touch with people who can help me with certain retail security issues.”

Ostrander says that when not at work, he values time spent with his family, sometimes biking, hiking or camping.

“We all enjoy each other's company, and my wife is a great lady who has put up with my career choices in life. My kids have been just as wonderful, so I am very blessed.”

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