Internet cafe law may have unintended targets

House Bill 155 was designed to sweep the state of illegal gambling cafes, and it worked. Internet cafes from Jacksonville to Key West have closed.

But the law's wide net appears to have caught some unintended prey: Restaurants, bowling alleys and skating rinks. Chuck E. Cheese's and Dave & Buster's. Even Disney World may be a violator.

Experts say the language of the new law throws nearly all arcade games in the state of Florida into a gray area, leaving many business owners worried their games might not be legal. And to make matters worse, there appears to be no state agency where they can get a definitive answer to these questions.

"It's a very confusing thing," said Anthony Perrone, owner of Pin Chasers. Each of his three bowling centers in the Tampa Bay area has an arcade.

"Our guard is up and we are watching the situation," he said. "We will do what's asked of us."

Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, a co-sponsor of the bill to outlaw Internet cafes, told the Tampa Bay Times he believes either the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation or the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is in charge of enforcement. But officials at each of those agencies say that's wrong.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the law is the responsibility of the State Attorney's Office. The State Attorney told the Times to talk to local law enforcement.

One possible reason for the confusion: The ban on Internet cafes came into being quickly in the wake of an investigation that led to the resignation of former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, who had ties to an Internet gaming organization authorities said was masquerading as a veterans' charity. Lawmakers reacted with lightning speed.

"This bill was railroaded through the Legislature so fast — I mean warp speed — that there was no time taken to understand how this was being done," said Michael Wolf, an attorney for the Florida Arcade and Bingo Association. His group has filed a lawsuit challenging the law.

The McQueen booking photos—which have an enduring life on the Internet—and newspaper reports that were wired across the country in late June of 1972, seem to be all that remain of the actor’s supposed arrest in Anchorage. The courthouse trail is cold. I spent nearly an hour flipping through tiny blue index cards in a vintage steel cabinet at Anchorage’s Nesbitt Courthouse. Plenty of men with surnames beginning with “Mc” and “M” have court cases with corresponding cards in that steel catalogue. Just to be sure, I checked under “N” and under years other than 1972, and among civil cases—anyplace I thought the card could be misfiled. I found no court case for “Steve T. McQueen” or “Terence S. McQueen” or any other version of the actor’s name. His case seems to have disappeared from the Alaska Court System. Maybe someone took the blue card as a memento, not unlikely given his fame, or maybe McQueen’s case never made it to court, also not unlikely given his fame.

McQueen’s mug shots are part of a disappearing past in another way. Alaska police authorities aren’t in the habit of releasing the pictures simply because the public is interested in a specific person’s arrest. The state Department of Corrections, the keeper of booking photos in Alaska, adopted a policy in 2012 that prohibits doling out mug shots to the media. The public relations people at Anchorage Police Department, the Alaska State Troopers and Corrections all say they don’t routinely release mug shots unless a police agency has a need to circulate a specific photo.

The mug shots you see in Alaska news media are released because police circulate them for their own reasons—celebrity voyeurism, political muckraking and journalistic storytelling are not among those reasons. The PR people at APD and the State Troopers call their reasons “legitimate law enforcement purposes” and, like most police work, it’s pretty heavy stuff. Cops release a mug shot—taken either from Corrections booking photos or Division of Motor Vehicle files—in missing persons cases. Police also use ID photos if they hope to find witnesses or victims who may recognize the person in the photo. Often that person is being accused or investigated for a crime.

The photos accompanying this story were issued by police agencies in Alaska over the last two years. Some of the men in the photos were accused of sex crimes and investigators wanted to know if unknown victims might come forward if the photo circulated. I collected the photos as they came to the Press in emailed press releases. We’ve obscured the faces of the accused, because some of the men pictured still have cases pending in court. They’re not convicted, only accused—one dilemma of publishing mug shots. It’s a dilemma police and media share, sometimes uncomfortably, but most often with the media dutifully following the cop’s plans, circulating photos in the name of public safety.

We’ve printed three mug shots inside the paper for your inspection: Steve McQueen, the police trophy subject who apparently never made it to court; an ID photo of accused serial-killer Israel Keyes, whose photo is still available on the FBI’s website and who committed suicide in jail; and one of my own. (I’m the guy with a beard and a blank expression. McQueen is the man who looks damn cool.)

My mug shot was taken in 2004 at the Anchorage jail, following an embarrassing arrest that I later reported in this newspaper. (I was obliged by an in-house rule.) I am pretty sure this is what happened: I was accused of pissing in an alley, I mouthed-off to a cop and I spent a night behind bars. No charges appear in the court system database so I can’t confirm any of that. The photo, however, is dated October 14, 2004, about the time Alaskans received a Permanent Fund Dividend that year.