Some supporters of the video gaming industry say every business has to make good decisions to avert risk.

Tuesday night, Rockingham Police Chief Robert Voorhees said there was a 250 percent rise in the number of armed robberies in 2009 due to the increase in the number of gaming businesses.

Friday, he said these crimes ranged from “meeting the bare elements of armed robbery” to “having a shot fired in the air to get the attention of the clerk.” Some have been staged to look like a robbery to cover for employee theft.

“We looked at our crime numbers, and saw an uptick in armed robbery,” Voorhees said. “We noticed most of them came from these businesses. It is simply a matter of fact.”

William Thevaos of Charlotte is an advocate of video gaming in North Carolina, and is the president of the Entertainment Group of North Carolina, an organization working to bring regulation and taxation to the gaming industry. He sees video gaming as a money-maker for the state budget.

He said he believes business owners can protect themselves from becoming the victims of violent crimes by making good management decisions.

“I, personally, would tell those business owners to close your stores at a decent hour, especially since the perception is that there’s money there,” Thevaos said. “That’s like a bank being open at 2 o’clock in the morning. For what reason?”

He said the chances of a business owner being the victim of a robbery “go up 100 percent when you’re open all hours of the night.”

Some local governments aren’t depending on individual business owners to implement solutions.

“These places are becoming a burden on law enforcement services, and are quickly becoming a public nuisance,” the Voorhees’ report reads. “Cities across North Carolina are struggling with the issue of controlling them.”

Rockingham’s sister city, Hamlet, passed strict restrictions on video gaming businesses in November, and now only allows new ones to have two machines and stay open from 8 a.m. to midnight.

In January, the City of Laurinburg placed a 30-day moratorium on issuing licenses for the sweepstakes businesses after 21 opened up in the city. Similar measures have been passed in the eastern part of the state in Elizabethtown, Wendell, Kinston and Rocky Mount.

For his part, Voorhees said there are any number of ways to alleviate the risk of being robbed.

“You can do a lot of things to prevent being robbed,” he said. “You can add better security measures or put better lighting in the parking lot. Any time you open up a little hole in the wall that deals strictly in cash, you make yourself a target.”

He said this is the reason banks have the security measures they do.

“It’s an issue for the courts to decide, which is why I said in my report that law enforcement has adopted wait and see approach,” Voorhees said. “If they say they’re completely legal, then we’ll treat them as legitimate businesses like we’ve been doing.”

Thevaos also compared video gaming venues to another types of businesses.

“Just because there is a risk there doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be able to entertain themselves in any way they choose, including playing a sweepstakes computer game,” Thevaos said. “I would compare it to a bar owner who serves alcohol. You have to make good decisions to cut that guy off when he’s had too much to drink (and) close down when you should and don’t have people in your business after hours.”

Staff Writer Philip D. Brown can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 32, or by e-mail at pbrown@yourdailyjournal.com.