Steve Wynn emphasized on Thursday that casinos are making a top priority of bringing reconciliation and helping victims of the October 1 mass shooting at Mandalay Bay in whatever way possible.
“The gaming industry is taking complete inventory of the damage done to humanity,” Wynn, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts, said during his company’s third quarter earnings call.
He stressed that Wynn Resorts has been coordinating with Las Vegas Sands and MGM Resorts regarding how they can best aid the people who incurred life-changing injuries and disabilities during the event, which killed 58 people and injured more than 500.
“The industry is getting together. We’re taking complete inventory of all of the damage that was done to the people there,” Wynn continued. “We want to separate minor injuries that were done as people ran from people who took fire or got seriously trampled.”
Two Wynn Resorts employees who were injured during the incident after being shot in the back are on track to make a full recovery, he noted.
The billionaire casino mogul also re-emphasized previous statements he has made since the shooting regarding the security measures he has implemented at his properties over the last two years.
“We beat the bushes to find out everything that we could throw at this problem to harden [his hotels] as a target, with the idea that if someone was looking at the hotel, they would see that we had met the threat level in a number of ways and they’d move on someplace else,” he explained. “This would be a tough place to survive for more than three minutes if you had a gun on you.”
Wynn added that the company is spending an extra $6 million to $7 million each year on security equipment, payroll and other protective measures.
“Without going into details, we did an awful lot of stuff that we never ever thought we would have to do, because I personally felt that we were exposed and that we should send a clear message that there was very little chance of [a shooter] being unnoticed in this building,” he said.
Wynn reiterated also previous statements insinuating that such a mass shooting would not have happened on a Wynn property.
“We profile everybody. We sniff the baggage in the baggage room,” he said. “We don’t interfere with people that have pull-along luggage when they come in, we just watch them and look at them and think about them and if there’s anything about them that meets our various criteria they’re immediately pegged and followed and observed.”
The company has already begun exploring experimental new technologies to be deployed for additional on-site security, such as a device that can identify metal objects on a patron or underneath a patron’s clothing through a television screen.
“My guess is this sort of thing and vendors that sell this sort of equipment are going to be a good investment if you’re a stock picker,” Wynn said.
While the Vegas casino giants are working closely together to help remedy the situation, they don’t have any new leads as to what motivated Stephen Paddock commit the mass shooting.
“We have nothing to add to the explanation of why this maniac did what he did, other than he just had a screw loose and snapped or something,” Wynn explained.
