Riley Admits One Regret On Gambling Raids
By: Stephen Crews
Updated: November 24, 2010
Governor Bob Riley usually does not second guess himself. Once he was convinced electronic bingo was illegal under state law, he set out to shut down the games.
In an exclusive interview with abc 3340 news anchor Pam Huff, the governor said he would do it all again. Riley, however, has one regret. He now thinks the law enforcement officers sent in en mass served to sensationalize the raids on the electronic bingo halls and the casinos.
Riley also looks at the other side of the coin. He said, "If we had gone in with a smaller force and someone had gotten hurt, I am not too sure I could have lived with that."
The Governor hopes that with the recent indictments of eleven people, including four state legislators, Alabamians will see what he has been fighting. "Every year I talked about it in the state of the state address. There has never been this level of corruption and we were down here fighting it every day." The governor said he is not sure the people of the state fully understood how corrupt the process (of attempting to pass gambling legislation) had become.
