Leave a kid in a car at a casino? You roll unlucky 7

A few hours after state and local officials announced a plan to combat a troubling trend at Parx Casino, a seventh guardian left a child alone in a car while the guardian gambled inside.

A grandfather left his 12-year-old son in a locked car with no keys and no air conditioning on about 3:05 yesterday afternoon, Bensalem police said.

The boy was seen about a half-hour later by security and was unharmed. The grandfather, Alexander Salter Jr., 60, of Trenton, was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child. He was released on $25,000 unsecured bail, police said in a news release

Authorities already knew that they had a potentially deadly problem on their hands.

That's why earlier yesterday they announced a plan that they hope will persuade parents to leave their tots at home: Making it a felony, punishable by up to seven years in jail, to leave a child younger than 13 in a car.

"This is a point of personal responsibility," said state Sen. Robert "Tommy" Tomlinson, R-Bucks, who plans to introduce legislation stiffening penalties this month, along with state Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, R-Bucks, in the House. "This is a point of parenting. But also to get this message home, we need to increase the penalty . . . We need a big hammer, and a big hammer is seven years in jail."

The new legislation would enact a penalty only slightly stiffer than what offenders now face. Under current law, leaving a child unattended in a car is a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to five years in prison.

The increased penalties would apply anywhere in the state.

"It's a tragedy waiting to happen," said DiGirolamo, a father of four and grandfather of two. "It's just unconscionable to me that a parent or another caregiver could possibly think of leaving a child in the car to go gamble."

Between June 15 and Aug. 25, six parents left a combined 12 children and a puppy unattended in cars in Parx's sprawling parking lots. The children ranged from 15 months to 15 years old, and were left unsupervised from a half-hour to six hours.

The state Gaming Control Board last month told the casino to fix the problem. Parx officials said that they have permanently banned the offending parents and increased parking lot patrols.

The casino also has doubled the number of security cameras in the lots to 31, Parx vice president Tom Bonner said yesterday. Signs were also hung inside warning gamblers that they would be arrested if they leave children in the car, and exhorting others to report unattended children to security, Bonner added.

The board further charged that the Bensalem Police Department, which gets money from casino revenues to patrol outside, also should do a better job.

"People have to wake up and be good parents; it's not up to government to make people be good parents," said Bensalem Public Safety Director Fred Harran, adding that he has beefed up patrols of Parx lots, and has personally cruised the lot, peering into cars to ensure that they're empty, on his way home from work.

Officials from Parx and Bensalem dismissed other more proactive solutions as unworkable. For example, Bonner rejected checkpoints to turn away cars containing kids because the site has five entries and kids are permitted on Parx's adjacent Philadelphia Park horse racetrack. He also ruled out providing child care, saying that casinos are no place for children.

The problems with parents at Parx has caught the attention of SugarHouse Casino, set to open Sept. 23, pending state approval, on Delaware Avenue in Fishtown.

Police Capt. Mike Cram, commander of the 26th District, headquartered at Girard and Montgomery avenues, said that city police and casino officials drafted a security plan 16 months ago that included frequent patrols of SugarHouse's lot and surrounding streets.

"We had in our plan, even before that became an issue, to make checks through the parking lot, not because of knuckleheads leaving kids in the car, but because of people breaking into cars," Cram said.

Now, officers will keep their eyes peeled for unattended kids in cars too, he said.

The casino's private security force also will patrol the 2,000-space lot, spokeswoman Leigh N. Whitaker said.