If journalism suffers from a tendency to take a little bit of information and then spin it into a general tale of sensation or woe, then so it seems does the anti-casino lobby in Singapore.
The media in the Lion City have been exercised by the story of an unemployed Indonesian man who reportedly lost all his Singapore dollars (it wouldn’t have taken him long–he only had a thousand of them) at Singapore’s brand new Resorts World Sentosa then allegedly tried his luck stealing at the city’s airport.
The accused, identified as Paulus Djohar, had previously passed the casino dress code hurdle (no singlets, no shorts, no flip flops) that proved a step too far for some Malaysian visitors.
Having passed that test, and only a few hours after arrival in famously anti-crime Singapore, Mr Djohar reportedly let his nation down by allegedly trying to ‘dip’ a passenger’s portable phone at Changi Airport.
By AGI’s calculations, based on the 60,000 people reportedly visiting the casino in the three days to Tuesday, Mr Djohar’s claimed offence has single handedly created a casino-related crime rate of 0.0015 percent. That’s if you exclude the two Mongolian nationals arrested for allegedly using false identity documents to try to get into RWS.
Give casino crime a chance Singapore. It’s early days yet.
