Police in Southern California are targeted combined gambling and drug houses called “slaphouses,” that are proliferating in areas such as Little Saigon.
Often the “slaphouses” are created by gangs who take ordinary looking homes in Orange County neighborhoods, mainly in Vietnamese enclaves, and convert them into dens of iniquity where the patrons are other criminals who often bet using stolen cash and stolen credit cards. Typically the operations spring up in rental homes.
The unusual amount of traffic and noise often prompt unsuspecting neighbors to complain to the police. In another instance a gang fight that occurred sent one participant to the hospital, where police learned of the location of the gambling house.
They are called “slaphouses,” because frequently they house a gaming table with a video game where the players slap their hands on the video controls so loudly that it can be heard at outside.
Often the players “binge” on the machines and other activities.
So far the police haven’t been able to figure out who is financing the slaphouses. Gambling is very popular in the Vietnamese community, which is mainly made up of refugees from the Vietnam war who immigrated to the U.S. after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.
In the past the authorities have closed coffeehouses that offered slot machines and drug dealing. Others continue to spring up.
Gangsters find gambling to be lucrative because the penalties associated with it are less strict than what they face for dealing drugs.
