 And I think, okay, good morning everyone. It is Monday, December 4th, 2023. I am Eileen O'Brien. I am a commissioner at the MDC. I'm also chair of the Public Safety Subcommittee. We are conducting this remote collaboration technology this morning and obviously have come into some hiccups. The streaming option is not functioning. We are recording this and it will be posted just after we conclude the meeting. We have a couple of different faces today and I know some people still trying to get in that we do have a quorum. So what I'd like to do is call the members who are here to do the quorum and then we can get started. So I have to say I'm here. And then Eileen Driscoll from EOPS. I'm here. And district attorney Galini. Present, good morning. Good morning. And then Chief Eric Gilles from Aguaamigos standing in for chief Fowler soon to be here on your own. Good morning. Good morning. So that makes four of us. So we do have the quorum to go forward. If I don't know who again the 857 number is if you hit star six, you should be able to unmute yourself and participate. If you have any other questions you can try to shoot an email in and I can direct you to the IT people. We also have a new member, Kathleen Celia from the AG's office. She is the new chief of the gaming enforcement unit. I believe she's trying to join but is not currently on the line. So we do have the second item on the agenda is meeting minutes from our last meeting, May 31st, 2023 in the beginning of the packet. We do not have a quorum without either Brian Connors or Tom Rogers to actually vote on those today. But if any of the members who are here who took a look if there's anything you want changed or you think is not accurate, you can let me know before the next meeting. So that moves on to the chunk of this, which is item three, which is research and responsible gaming. We have our director of research and responsible gaming, Mark Vanderlanden, as well as Dr. Bonnie Andrews, the research manager here. And I wanted them particularly to give it, they gave this presentation about the research agenda and how they took all the reports that we had and sort of tried to put them into action points and where they go. And we did this in our meeting in Springfield and I thought it would be helpful for those of you on this subcommittee to hear it because there's a fair number of these things that I think would be executed through DA's, police, EOPS. You guys seem like the right forum. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Mark to go through items three A and three B, the research agenda summary and an update on the upcoming studies. Great, thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. Hey everybody, thanks for having us. We're excited to share some of the information that we have here. Actually, I have two items for you. One, just kind of summarizing the FY23 research agenda reports that were delivered in FY23, focusing very specifically on the public safety piece of it. But then we also, you'll see the next item we will talk to you about current item in the FY24 research agenda that looks at the impacts of casinos on the human trafficking in Massachusetts. So I will go ahead and share my screen with you. There we go. And again, I'm here. I'm joined by Dr. Bonnie Andrews. She and I work closely together on all things research within the gaming commission. We have a small group, probably six or seven contractors who work with us as our research review committee. It functions a lot like a peer review and the academic journal setting, an independent body to review every single report that comes to the commission. A very experienced group in the area of research and we have some diversity in terms of sort of what specific type of research they're interested in and have experienced. Just to make sure that the products that come to us are academically robust is as thorough and complete and sound as possible. And our research covers a lot of different areas. Some of this will look new to a few of you, but I'm sure for others, this is probably familiar territory. But we break our research agenda into a number of different ways. Social impacts, economic impacts, community-engaged research, which means that we work closely with community members in and around the casino communities in order to understand what impacts are happening directly to the communities in and around the casinos. It also includes public safety research that we'll dive into a little bit more, but we do evaluation, we do, we did a large cohort study, and we follow the large group of people over the course of time to try to better understand what is the course of gambling behavior, specifically at risk and problem gambling behavior. In the end, we have a 60, clearly close to 70 reports now. Everything for epidemiology, probably gambling, social, economic, across the spectrum we've covered these areas. So why do we do this? Because it's in statute. Section 71 of chapter 23K, which is the Expanded Gaming Act, calls on the commission with the advice to the Gaming Policy Advisory Committee to develop an annual research agenda in order to understand the social and economic effects of expanded gaming in the commonwealth. It also, and actually section 71 is quite broad and long, and so you're just getting a snippet of it here in the highlights. It also, within section 71, calls for an assessment of the relationship between gambling and levels of crime. And so therefore, since I think 2014, 2015, before the first casino opened up in Plainville, we began working with experienced crime analysts to build baselines across each of the casino communities and then tracking levels of crime over time. In the last meeting, we shared with you results of a public safety study that was done in Everett and the surrounding communities. The Sports Wadering Act, the Act to Regulate Sports Wadering in Massachusetts extended section 71, and it growth down specifically looking at, it extended section 71 and it added a few things here, including the assessment of whether problem sports wagering is comorbid with problem gambling and assessment as to whether individuals participating in sports wagering are different from those and other forms of gambling. There's always been a focus and better understanding youth under the age of 25, and then finally an assessment on the impacts of sports wagering on college and professional athletes. FY 24, so after sports wagering was legalized, and we've allocated roughly a third of our overall research agenda that we've focused specifically on sports wagering. We do have one study looking at the effects of sports wagering on youth under the age of 25 at the Community Engaged Research Project. We have a, there are two other studies that were required in the Sports Wadering Act. One of them was looking at the effects or feasibility of sports wagering kiosks in bars and restaurants. So outside of sports wagering kiosks, outside of casinos, I imagine this committee specifically would have some questions about what are the public safety considerations for allowing that. And so there is a study that we currently have with a company or a group called Spectrum Gaming, and that is a core aspect of looking at what would the potential public safety aspects be of that. So the challenge is we have a lot of research and you're probably at this point well aware that there's challenges of mobilizing that research. And so there's another piece of what we're required to do, which is to share our research, its findings and recommendations with a number of committees, including the Gaming Commission and making sure that it's posted on our website. And I would say we've met this threshold. We have an annual report, our annual report makes it to the various committees. The, that annual report includes a section on the research agenda, including those studies that were released in the past fiscal year and recommendations and findings. We have a very robust website that I think does a pretty good job of organizing the different research that we have, but I also think that there's ways that we could do that better. And so a few years ago, we began working with a company called Greo, which is an independent knowledge translation and mobilization organization. In other words, they're really good at helping us figure out how we can communicate our research findings to the right people so that it can actually really make, begin influencing policy and practice. And so this past fiscal year, fiscal year 23, as Commissioner O'Brien mentioned, we did a report that just a standalone report which summarized all of the research that was created in FY23 and its findings and recommendations. And it's easy to say here are all of the recommendations that came from our research teams, but there's a lot. And so we took an additional step to try to make it a little bit easier for everybody. So Dr. Andrews and I kind of boiled it down a little bit further and we use the following criteria. So what are recommendations that pertain for the commission and key stakeholders? You all are key stakeholders. What recommendations to the degree to which they cut across all of the different studies? So there would be greater power to those recommendations. There would be more meaning to those. And then finally, recommendations that were actionable in the near future. And so as I said before, there were a number of studies that were released in FY23. There was social economic and public safety. We decided not to give you the full thing, the full report, but to just give you the findings and recommendations as it related to public safety studies that were released in FY23. So I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Andrews to just briefly discuss that. Okay, thank you, Mark. And so I'm just going to be talking a little bit about the public safety recommendations. As Mark had said, we kind of grouped the recommendations from the research agenda into three buckets depending on the area of research that the recommendations came out of. So in your packet, you'll have kind of the full spectrum of recommendations. There's community-engaged research recommendations that emerged from that. There's social and economic research, so recommendations that emerged from that. And then these are the public safety recommendations. And we had one study come out in the public safety area in FY23, and that was from Dr. Noah Fritz at Justice Research Associates. Previously, we had been working with Christopher Bruce to produce the public safety research, and we've now switched over to Justice Research Associates, though Christopher Bruce still does consult on those studies. And I believe you had heard from Dr. Fritz at a previous meeting, the results of this study, which is assessing the influence of gambling on public safety in Massachusetts cities and towns during the COVID-19 pandemic, analysis of the influence of Encore Boston Harbor on its surrounding communities. So this particular study focused on Encore Boston Harbor, a harbor, so Everett and the surrounding communities. So next slide. So just to give a little bit of an overview of the study. So again, the study was a comprehensive analysis delved into the impact of the Encore Boston Harbor casino on crime rates and public safety in its vicinity and surrounding regions during and after the COVID-19 closures. So it examined both crime patterns within that area and also comparison with other areas, and it kind of wanted to shed light on the factors, influence and crime trends, as well as providing insight into the relationship between the casino's presence and crime in the region. And just to give kind of an overview of the major findings of the study, the study found a significant increase in crime before the Encore Boston Harbor casino reopened after the COVID-19 closure. So that suggested that the casino was not the primary cause of crime, but other social, economic or psychological factors may be at play. The study also found that crime patterns were impacted differently during the COVID-19 closures. So there were some types of crime, like theft from persons, shoplifting, robberies and burglaries declining while auto thefts and domestic violence increased. And the study also found that overall crime in the region has been declining over the past 10 years with some exception. So some cities like Lynn, Malden and Melrose experienced some upward trends. So that's just kind of like a little bit of an overview of the major findings of the study from which the recommendations emerged. So next slide. And the recommendations that emerged from this study, there were three recommendations. So the first one is to conduct micro-analysis for more precision. So that is conducting further micro-analysis using tools like risk-train modeling to study risk and to assist agencies in developing crime prevention and problem-oriented policing projects to improve their effectiveness of practice. So this is something that I know that is going to be explored in further research emerging from the commission, sort of further micro-analysis. The next recommendation includes collaboration among agencies. So the report found, or the report noted that public safety agencies in the region could pool resources, collaborate on innovative problem-oriented policing solutions and look to create regional task forces to target the most prevalent crime and individuals committing prolific amounts of crime. The report noted regional agencies should consider tapping into mitigation funds that the Massachusetts Gaming Commission offers specifically to address crime related to the casino. So that kind of includes mitigation fund grant program for some of those strategies. And also suggested that a regional crime analysis consortium should be considered that meets regularly to share intelligence, review patterns and trends and collectively conduct problem-oriented policing projects. And when I talked to Dr. Fritz about this particular recommendation, he had pointed out that this doesn't even have to necessarily be regional as in all of the surrounding communities. This could also be regional as in agencies in regions that have casinos could collaborate across the state to kind of examine crimes that tend to be common to casinos. So kind of thinking expansively about opportunities for collaboration in this kind of area. And the last one involves continued monitoring and assessment. So future research and attempt to ascertain causal factors and correlates related to crime and proximity to the casino. So an additional focus of research include patterns of crime in the state, the region and comparable hotspots to monitor crime going forward. With the also noting that as sports betting opens across Massachusetts, additional attention should focus on various types of establishments given licenses to operate. As cash base establishments demonstrate unique risks and crime opportunities and attract distinct clientele and individuals specializing in distinct types of crime. So focusing on distinct types of crime that may be related to sports featuring. So I think those three recommendations were the main recommendations emerging from the report. And I just kind of wanted to get, I wanted to turn it back over to commissioner O'Brien to kind of get questions, feedback, impressions and your thoughts on these findings and recommendations. Great, thank you, Mark and Bonnie. So yeah, that last one was really the reason that I was hoping to put this in front of this group because I know everyone is working collaboratively but there's nothing now that we have sports wagering in particular that goes across the state. I wanted to throw out for conversation and just thoughts on, I know MSP has the fusion center where they'll have certain things and everybody can send in the reports that are topical. I mean, I did in ours in case, right? And everybody was sort of directed and I think it remotely anticipated to be connected to that went in on that topic. I know that we've had some conversations of late with the AG's office and the human trafficking group there and our community mitigation fund grants and can we get something going where there's a cross-pollination between the human trafficking and the gaming enforcement unit. But I didn't know if there was an appetite for further conversation amongst this crew about that recommendation in terms of should there be something beyond this subcommittee which is really set up to give feedback to the commission about regulations that really focuses on taking some of these reports and the recommendations and or trends requests for community mitigation funds that would help in this area in terms of law enforcement and deterrent. So I know Chief Gillis you're new to this but I'd love to hear if anybody has any thoughts on that. Commissioner, I would speak up just given a Western mass perspective and my job is as the district attorney of Hampton County, really one of the things that we've prioritized is communication and collaboration between different agencies in this area. I think it's achievable here given our size and I think some of the preexisting relationships and just for instance, we have two things that I think have some relevancy to this discussion. About eight years ago, I and the supervising assistant United States attorney in Springfield started what we call a high impact player strike force and it brings together all kinds of law enforcement that has anything to do with Springfield. So it's federal, state, local, prosecutors, cops, sheriff's department, et cetera. And for a while, Lieutenant Ronnie Gibbons was at the casino in Springfield and he would come because some of these guys would go in and out of the casino and he could talk about, hey, is there some money laundering or watching the end with this or certain intelligence that would come from that. So we've actually talked recently, I think with Brian Connors about bringing whoever is leading the GEU and Springfield back into those meetings. The second thing I would mention is we have a human trafficking task force also with the United States attorney's office here in Springfield where we're talking about the region and human trafficking issues collaborating on investigation. So that might be another touch point for the casino given the obvious HT issues that could and do occur there. With that said, those specific initiatives that already exist, again, I'm a big sort of proponent of that collaboration, that communication in the building of relationships that come from that. So in a place like this, you bring people together, they talk about certain things, investigations, they exchange numbers and those relationships usually result in good things down the line. So my vote would be in favor of something as you described commissioner. Okay, great. So Elaine, I don't know if you had thoughts. Yeah, just really quickly, two things are on my mind which is in about the human trafficking, January is human trafficking awareness month and typically the last few years we've worked with DPH to put a seminar together. So it seems to me that when we're building out the agenda for that, maybe there's an opportunity to invite you to provide some of the findings from the report. So let me look into that. And then about the sports betting piece, I wonder if the municipal police training committee might be a resource there because our academies bring together a lot of the municipal police departments and it seems to me that in education summit on what the sports betting introduction means and to your point, like if they're gonna start doing that out and discussions about doing that at restaurants and night clubs and wherever that's happening if there's an educational component to that, I think we could do something, a partnership with the MPTC for education. Oh, that's great. Yeah, and we also do have, Mark, you remember the circumstances of this, the statute 23N mandated that the commission conduct a study about the feasibility of allowing some of this also, Mark, at what kind of vendors was it? I'm trying to remember. The sports wagering kiosk. Yeah, that's what it was, is the expansion and implementation of kiosks, sports wagering kiosks outside the brick and mortar. So that's something that obviously is part of the study. Everybody on this call and who you've talked about obviously is critical to that analysis too in terms of the impacts. I know we have thoughts here about just compliance, right? Knowing what it's like on the ground of three brick and mortar some of what compliance would have to look like in that scenario, but that's only one part of this. So I think the Mark and Bonnie, you obviously, we can get your information to Elaine directly in terms of January and then what I might do is sort of take some of the people, take this list and maybe pull another couple of other people. I know Kathleen is not able to make it today from the AG's office, but we do have the chief of the human trafficking unit. Again, we've had conversations with her. I think it would be helpful to get, even informal communication, some sort of email trail, something going to get relationships going, particularly I was thinking if you started off with the three regionals, right? Springfields, the Everett area and down in Plainville. And obviously again, it goes, not just in those borders, it goes beyond that, but I do think it would be helpful to get that communication going, given what Bonnie just presented in terms of the recommendations of the research that we have, we're trying to figure out, we have a ton of research, how do we get it out there and then how do we make it useful on the ground? So yep, sorry, Chief Gillis. I think for your other two locations, I know the DA spoke to the Hamden County approach and I think that's a great idea is to leverage those existing committees and relationships. Perhaps the focus should be on trying to get the law enforcement councils where those other two locations are up and running involved because they're already bringing together all of the interested parties. I think that's probably the best way to go rather than developing something new. Let's just jump on to something that already exists and is already functioning at a high level. I think that would be the way to go for those Eastern facilities. Right. So yeah, I don't want the commission to get in the way but I'd love for us to be able to facilitate. I know part of this came from the grant requests. We got a very detailed grant from the Everett Human Trafficking Task Force and the work that they were doing in some of the collaboration with Boston PD too. So making sure that if there's anything particular to what we do that we can help with that, I think would sort of implement that finding that Bonnie just talked about. So I don't know, Mark, Bonnie, if you had any follow-up on this or if not I can move on to the last agenda item. Sure. Okay. So the last agenda item that I put on here and I had them, I had Trudy Attach, the NCAA poll from the spring that talked about reporting. Oh, I'm sorry, Mark, did you want to say something before I did that? We did have some more information to share about the Human Trafficking Study, if you think that you may be interested in and I think that there's some interest in this and I think that there's some involvement so we could cover that for a few minutes. Sure, absolutely, go ahead. Okay, sorry, I'm going to share my screen again. Okay, so we're actually really excited to get this pretty close study off the ground and this was part of the FY24 research agenda. And this table that you see on the slide here is really how it all started. Bonnie and I propose a host of different studies that we then share with the Gaming Policy Advisory Committee and then back to the commission and a few other key stakeholders before it's settled but you'll see the public safety research for FY24 includes two studies. One is sort of a general sort of public safety research study like we just reviewed for Everett and surrounding communities like you'll see is being done in Springfield and surrounding communities. We're going back to Plainville. We haven't done a public safety study there for a number of years so we'll be doing that again. The other one was a study assessing the influence of the expanded gaming on human trafficking in Massachusetts and Plain, you'll remember this is the study that we actually began talking about a long time ago pre-COVID and we started getting some traction. COVID came and it got derailed. Well, we're back on it and we were fortunate enough to have the commission approve a study that looked specifically at this issue. And so just a couple of points on background. Sex trafficking is the most common form of human trafficking associated with casinos. You know, sex trafficking is associated with widely with travel, tourism and hospitality and so certainly that includes casinos. Casinos can be venues where prospective buyers can solicit those being trafficked. And casinos do have some unique aspects to it, just the people coming and going, the nature of money, the ability to sort of launder that money through the casinos. We also recognize that casinos are ideal partners in fighting this and this is not an issue that escapes our licensees or the gaming industry in general and we've had some really good conversations with our licensees about sort of what efforts are currently in place in order to monitor for human trafficking that would be happening. And this is obviously far more relevant to Angkor Boston Harbor and MGM because they're resort casinos that have hotels that are attached to them but it doesn't mean that it wouldn't happen at Plain Park Casino that it's not a resort style casino and does not have a hotel. So they would be partners and trying to figure this issue out as well and partners in this research. It probably doesn't escape you either that there are some significant challenges here as well including sort of the clandestine nature or sort of secrecy of this industry around the world really as well as issues about sharing sensitive data between different agencies. But that shouldn't stop us because as the Polaris Project nonprofit organization pointed out that there really is a need for some high quality research in this area to really understand human trafficking and how it works and how to prevent it and address it. And this is certainly true if you narrow it down into the area of understanding what is the role of casinos in human trafficking. In our literature review and just in our experience in this area there is, it's widely acknowledged there is a connection here but in terms of the research that backs this up and to really dive into it it's pretty darn thin. So we're proceeding with the study and I would say that as I said to the group that we've assembled this study makes me really nervous. This is something that we want to get this right as much as we possibly can and so we're taking a different approach rather than just simply draft up in the RFR for request or proposal and send it out. We decided to do a lot of sort of background which means that we assembled a multidisciplinary partnership to develop the RFR. Make sure the research questions are right. So I'm gonna turn it over to Bonnie now to take it from here. Okay, thank you Mark. So we got together we brought together a group of stakeholders to have the initial meeting to kind of talk about what the proposed scope for the project was and also what our areas of interest were. And that initial group included representatives from the AGO, from MOBA, Boston Police, survivors, people who work with survivors like the YWCA of Western Mass, researchers like the Public Health Institute of Western Mass and the Municipal Police Training Committee. And we kind of brought them together to kind of again talk a little bit about the scope and the background and also to talk about some things that we wanted to know and kind of get their impressions and their feedback. So these are the research questions that we presented to this group. And I wanted to emphasize that knowing that there isn't a lot of data in this area or there isn't a lot of research in this area because of the challenges that Mark just outlined. This is kind of a wish list of like all of the possible things we may want to know. So the first is around characteristics of human trafficking related to casinos. Some example questions of that includes sort of questions about the extent of human trafficking occurring in Massachusetts related to casinos. The characteristics of human trafficking survivors, general characteristics of human trafficking perpetrators, any similarities or differences in kind of human trafficking incidents that are related to casinos from others that aren't related to casinos. So the next slide includes sort of identification, perceptions and reporting of human trafficking by law enforcement. So these kinds of questions include how is human trafficking identified by law enforcement in Massachusetts? How do law enforcement agencies perceive human trafficking problems involved in casinos in Massachusetts? What's the level and nature of collaboration among law enforcement, survival organizations and casino staff in Massachusetts? So there's just some example research questions from this kind of area of interest. Next slide. Also, there's the identification, perceptions and reporting of human trafficking by casinos. So sort of how is human trafficking identified by casinos in Massachusetts? What's the relationship between employee role and perceptions of human trafficking problems within casinos? How do perceptions of human trafficking sheep identification of possible human trafficking issues have certain types of casinos identified different human trafficking problems? And if so, were there common characteristics identified by casinos? So again, some kind of, some questions of interest in this area. Next slide. And then there's also the experiences of human trafficking survivors. So experiences of survivors who are involved in human trafficking related to casinos, challenges faced by survivors who are involved in human trafficking related to casinos. What types of assistance services have been utilized to support survivors of human trafficking related to casinos? And what kinds of unmet need for services are there? And then finally concluding with maybe recommendations to address human trafficking related to casinos in Massachusetts. Next slide. So possible data sources include existing literature. Again, Mark kind of reviewed that there isn't a lot of existing literature, but there is some. So kind of reviewing existing literature and not just research, but also involving reports that have been issued by different agencies and things like that. Any existing quantitative data. So any state, local and federal law enforcement data that's available. Data from organizations assisting survivors and data from casinos were available. And lastly, looking maybe at some qualitative data. So maybe key informant interviews with state, local and federal law enforcement. Key informant interviews with casino staff. A casino employee survey maybe or key informant interviews with employees. And also maybe some key informant interviews with organizations assisting survivors as well as maybe key informant interviews with survivors. So the last slide actually talks a little, so we got feedback from this group and the feedback kind of fell in four different areas. So the feedback from the group firstly involved the data and the group told us that again, detailed data may be really difficult to obtain for sex trafficking generally, not just for sex trafficking related to casinos. So there's the idea of saying to be able to drill down to casino specific impacts may be really difficult with existing data given kind of the scarcity of data that exists in the first place. And then also they were saying it may be helpful to build on previous efforts. So they had talked about some studies that had been ongoing with law enforcement. There was a partnership with a Polaris project that they were talking about and saying maybe building on that effort would be helpful to collect some additional data. Also important to consider was the Massachusetts definition of sex trafficking and how that differs from federal so that forced fraud and coercion are not required in Massachusetts for adults. So that's something else to kind of consider definition wise, as well as that survivors may be exploited in multiple ways, not just those involved in casinos. So again, broadening the scope of the study may be helpful because to kind of not just to kind of narrowly focus on casinos but more broadly open that up given that reality. And then there were some additional study partners, suggestions to make sure to include law enforcement agencies that are local to Springfield as well as maybe pulling in some representatives from federal as well, saying that there's a lot of collaboration happening with federal law enforcement. And then some process considerations, feedback included including a focus group of key stakeholders as part of the research process to kind of help to further shape research questions is something that was considered really important. And lastly, there are considerations related to the kind of overall RFR and process considerations which is including the procurement a support agency that works with survivors. So that if to again, ensure that, to ensure that the approach to the study is consistent with that approach and also to ensure that survivors if we're including survivors in the research process there's adequate support for the survivors all the way through the research process. So including that, including in the procurement that applicants must articulate their experience working with survivors as part of their response including compensation for any survivor participants that participate in the study. And also maybe kind of other correlates like thinking about the high profile events or high volume events that may occur in casinos and kind of relationship to human trafficking. So again, having presented all of our wish list of questions, that was the feedback that we got that we're now going to kind of use to then draft the RFR. But we were also interested in your feedback. So again, I wanted to turn it over to commissioner O'Brien and kind of get your thoughts, questions, concerns, feedback about any of these areas. Right, so I dig a glissade that you unmuted. Thank you. I would imagine this is, you know one of the first considerations of the researchers and it's a very well-known thing I assume in research but particularly around an issue like this and it was sort of touched on a little bit in Marx and Bonnie's remarks. How do you like sort of grapple with the idea that finding accurate data is a major challenge in your outcomes. And I mean, in particular when you talk about the hotels and the casinos, I would imagine that they have sort of a built in interest in not necessarily reporting to the gaming commission ultimately that there are instances of human trafficking or other crime for that matter within their casinos. I mean, furthermore, I think the bigger problem and maybe the more vexing problem is the fact that outside of criminal prosecutions and arrests like, you know, how are you gonna determine that there's human trafficking that is a crime committed by people committing that crime who aren't gonna self-report obviously, right? So, I mean, it's a well-known thing in human trafficking like clandestine was the word I think that one of you used. Like how do you deal with that and end up with a study that has value for things that are the outgrowth of it, right? Like funding and law enforcement, like this is important stuff. How have you guys thought about that? That's a fair question. And Bonnie and Commissioner O'Brien may have more to say, but yeah, you're right. We acknowledge that that is a major challenge for doing this type of study. And I think that that's where sort of the balance we just focused on chasing the data. I think it would be really challenging that we're looking at that sort of qualitative, quantitative approach. So we already kind of have a general sense of that there's an issue here. So we have public safety studies that will point out that there is an increase in activity in local hotels, but it doesn't necessarily say that it's human trafficking activity. But we did a community engaged research project in Springfield in the two zip codes right around Springfield that said, human trafficking is an issue here. And so it wasn't showing up in our public safety research, it was showing up in our qualitative study that was happening in the community. And so it's, I think it's just that power of looking at different methods of data collection that gets you to a clearer picture of what is going on. And so we've tripped upon it. I mean, we've been interested in this, but we've been paying attention to it. But I think that this particular study is going to be that opportunity to try to zero in on that specific question as much as possible with a wide variety of methods. Thank you. And by the way, getting the buy-in of wide range of stakeholders to share and to gather information from is going to be really key, especially in, I mean, not especially in Springfield, but particularly like yourself and others in the Springfield area. If I can help with that process, please let us know before the pandemic, my office was doing trainings of hotel employees in the Springfield area on the issue of human trafficking. So the sort of cues, the things to look for so they could identify it and report it to police. We did a few and it was probably like 2019 and then 2020 happened. So maybe something we should get back to and consultation with you and what your data shows. But yeah, if I can help identify stakeholders and people who might be helpful to the research, please let me know. Great, we will take you up on that, I guarantee. Yeah, I mean, what you said, what you said, Diego and Mark and Bonnie were saying as well, which is in the time that I've been here, we talked the last meeting or meet me for about that, the perception and how the perception was not lining up with the stats that we were getting. But even in the review of the report that we were getting when the chiefs of police would come in, we would sort of get the anecdotal, but this isn't picking up these domestics, I'm getting at hotels that are one, two towns away from the casino and your point about training, et cetera, not only for the hotel, but the local PDs in terms of this is the stuff that would raise an eyebrow where you would start to kind of ask these other questions because you might have stumbled on something like human trafficking. So that's the frustrations and the pitfalls that you talked about. Mark and Bonnie are very aware of them and hopefully this will help us kind of get a footing on what are some of the other questions we can ask. I do think the training is very helpful. I know that the hotels affiliated with our licensees, they have trainings for their staff as well, but I do think it goes beyond, there's a lot of surveillance and a lot of cameras at those hotels too that don't exist to the extent when you go out to the other hotels and facilities. So I think training is absolutely a part of this. Chief Gilles, I didn't know if you wanted to add anything or Elaine, no? Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna have some internal conversations with my team about, because there's a collaboration here that I just need to think through a bit because I'm noting that we were running a subcommittee, a human trafficking focus subcommittee through the governor's council on sex assault and domestic violence. But recently I wanna say that the governor's council that subcommittee was lifted into the main work of the overall council. And I'm gonna inquire about what, I'm just not, I don't have all the details, but I just wanna understand precisely what that means and see where there's an opportunity for us to coordinate. Great. Thank you. All right, thank you, Mark and Bonnie. So the last item, substantive item on the agenda was the underage online bedding discussion. And that came out of a meetings we've been having some quarterly meetings from the sports wagering licensees, giving us, one of the things they give us is their compliance stats. And one of the areas is whether or not they've identified underage bedding going on in their platforms. And of course there's a difference between them going through a process and then definitively determining that they've identified underage bedding and then what's reported in other areas. And so one of the things that actually Commissioner Maynard reminded me of at the last meeting we had was the NCA poll that they had done themselves in the spring and what the self-reporting was and that there was a fair amount, a rather sizable percentage of the under 21 that was saying that they were somewhat regularly participating in online bedding and that it was really prevalent in the Northeast in our region. And so I wanted to start a conversation with this group as well on that in that, again, our function in terms of compliance and when they know they've had a violation versus deterrence and education in this area, we can participate and help. But obviously this is an area where I would love to get input from law enforcement and the other agencies on the subcommittee in terms of what they think would be helpful in terms of maybe what we're asking the licensees to report to us that might be helpful for deterrence or trainings or any other thoughts you guys might have in terms of how to deal with what seems to be a prevalent, according to the NCA poll anyway, participation in online, even though we're not seeing it when we look at the stats that we get. Yeah, Diego Lenny. Listen, it reminds me a little bit as I think about it for a moment of the advertising campaigns of smoking, cigarette companies, and more recently, Jewel and the vaping companies who upon called on it said, of course not, we're not marketing to underage people, but it's almost obvious. And I'm a huge sports fan and the ubiquity of gambling and almost the merger now of gambling and sports is incredible. When you look at ESPN now, I think most people's main source of sports programming and analysis has its own betting company. And in every show, they're talking about lines and so on and so forth. I don't gamble at all. So I don't really know the terminology, but when you watch some of the commercials, to me it resonates as though it's really targeting that 18 to 24 set obviously over certain ages legal, but it reminds me a lot more recently of the vaping companies and how I think in their marketing and advertising really is focusing on a younger age than what they're supposed to. So I don't know how we grapple with that, that NCAA poll is troubling. I think when you look at particularly like a Barstool sports company, engaged in gambling, I would imagine if you looked at the age groups of their followers or whatever, a lot of them are under 21 years old, under 18. So I don't know, those are my thoughts. To me it really is reminiscent of what we saw. Now we're a couple of generations with smoking and then with vaping how it seems like these younger people are being targeted so it should be no surprise many young people illegally are gambling on sports. Chief Gillis. Yeah, I think this kind of seems like a, I'm gonna sound arrogant, but it seems like an easy one for me. The Northeast has a very high density of higher education institutions when compared to the rest of the country. And the bottom line is the target group here is 18 to 21. And any of us who have been to college knows that trend toward gambling and getting involved in sports betting really begins there. So I think if there's gonna be any education or deterrence that's rolled out, I think it needs to target our institutions of higher learning and probably specifically the male demographic who seems to be most adversely impacted by these behaviors. So maybe target it toward that. And even maybe more specifically toward the athletic teams that are at the universities that are here in the Commonwealth. Maybe that's where we can start, but that's the real problem. And I agree with the DA 100%. I'm a huge college football guy and those commercials are just coming every two seconds and it's definitely targeted toward the demographic that we're discussing here. And maybe we need to apply some pressure along those lines as well. Thanks. Yep, Elaine. Which is another quick question, which is I know that it's tough in absence of the data that we wish that we had, but Mark, we did such a robust PSA style roll out with game sense when we open brick and mortar. We put a lot of dollars towards digital advertising, but I think one of the things we learned through that process is the beauty of the digital advertising is how targeted that advertising can now be. What we didn't do at the time was expand to things like TikTok and really, really targeted outreach. And the PSAs that we were doing at the time with Chip, the ambassador, probably wouldn't resonate with the 18 to 22 demographic, but it seems to me are there discussions about sort of re-imagining what that game sense style advertising looked like and then working with the advertising companies to really hone in on the digital outreach. Yeah, Chip has been retired, by the way. Chip was a fictitious character that we created for the game sense campaign and then anyway, it was time to retire him. We have developed, we have turned much more towards social media and leveraging to the maximum extent we can social media and targeting specific groups. And I can't speak to exactly how we know, how we get to those groups, but we have done, I think a pretty good job at this point of shifting that strategy. We have developed sports wagering specific material for game sense that I think we'll just need to continue to evolve over time. It needs to stay fresh as much as you can, but I think we launched our new website and a host of different spots, not that long ago. I've had some data in months, definitely not years. So we are working in that way, Elaine. It's just, we have a limited budget. I think our budget for this stuff is pretty meager if you think about sort of the type of impact that we would like to have kind of across the state. It's no longer like digital advertising or billboard next to plain rich park casino we're talking about statewide, although digital advertising can be a lot and less expensive too. So we're balancing all that out. I would say this is a drastically different form of gambling than when you look at a lottery player or you look at a slot machine player and our research is really kind of highlighting that. It's younger, it's male, it's white, it's more educated. Like this is a new group and that younger group, while we would say that it includes those in their 20s is the group that is not of legal gambling ages right next to that. And I do feel like they're swept up in that as well. And so this is a high risk group and definitely we need to be paying attention to it and tending to how we can do a better job of promoting, communicating that it's illegal to gamble under the age of 21 and doing prevention activities. One more quick question. I'm sorry, is any jurisdictions out there doing really innovative work in this area? For example, I knew like BclC and is it Vancouver was always a few steps ahead. Is there anyone that's sort of setting the gold standard right now on this topic that might be just a little bit further in their sports betting journey than Massachusetts is? It's a good question. I mean, we work really closely with British Columbia Lottery Corporation and have adopted anything we possibly can. So anything that they've done, you can pretty much count that we've picked it up in Massachusetts. It's just, the other challenge of this issue is that it's so wide, it's state by state. There's no federal response here. There's no federal campaign. And so I could say, Ohio is doing a great job, oddly, Ohio. Colorado is doing a good job, but nobody I would say has created a fantastic model of how to address this. It's a really tricky issue. I mean, sports wagering is really enticing, and especially to this new apparatus group. So we're just trying to stay in top of it. There's not a great model after the lane that I've seen. So just following up too on some of the comments you made, Diego Lune, in terms of the regs that we have in place, there are restrictions on the advertising in terms of they're not allowed to market to youth under the age of 21. If you're captive in a physical place, they're supposed to be greater than 75% over the age of 21, or you're not supposed to be advertising there. I mean, but there's that nuance, right? Of how do you determine what the actual audience is? And then I know, Mark, we've talked about this. I know you know more about this than I do too. I think it's gonna be a combination of that and education, and then what other tools do we have? And one of the things that we talked about, I think the chair brought up at our last public meeting, we talked about some of the data privacy and some of the KYC know your customer restrictions on the mobile apps. And some of these have facial recognition capacity and would that help diminish that, you know? In my mind as a former prosecutor, I also think it would help diminish to some life, but then you might just get a beard, right? Who's sitting in the dorm room and putting his face up, just putting the bats in for you, right? But then that might also give us more data, right? That might also give the betting company a trend if you have this prolific batter who's putting way more in and we might be able to regulate and say, you know what, we want you to cap this many on that type of prop bet or something like that. Like we might be able to come up with other ways to try to minimize somebody being able to do something like that. But I think we are gonna have to keep looking at the advertising rights. And Mark's point I think is an important one, which is absent. It's not like the tobacco companies. It's not like, you know, what happened in Juul. There is no federal standard for this, right? So it is state by state. So even some of the advertising regulations we put in effect, if states near us where they can, you know, broadcast in from New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, we don't have control of the national media in that regard. So there's somewhat of a limit that we can do. I don't know, Mark, you talked about this. The Juul comment made me think about it too, which is you wanna train in a way that doesn't entice, too. You wanna educate without enticing. And I know that that can be also a tricky line for this age group. Right. All right, more to come. Commissioner, one last point. As I just think about this, I'm sorry to hold us up. Has the NCAA done anything in this area around underage gambling? I mean, given, I think the relationship we have or the connection we have now to its leader and I think what his sensibilities are, at least as they were in public service, I would think that one, there's an opportunity to engage with the NCAA given his connection to Massachusetts, but also just have they done anything to discourage underage gambling from their massive platform? And I think the interest that they have around sports gambling with athletes, I mean, is there something that we can pull from that they've done with their expertise and reach? Right. I don't know, Mark, do you know whether it went beyond? I mean, I know obviously they've got an interest in it and I would agree with you in terms of, the former governor's position there being something that if we can help have a conversation would be fantastic. Mark, I don't know if you know of anything specific in terms of education or? I know, well, I know that the NCAA has taken steps to educate their athletes through, there's a company called Epic that is doing sort of wide-ranging trainings and education for student athletes, but in terms of a broader campaign, I'm not aware. I know that like that MGM just funded a study on gambling advertising through the International Center for Responsible Gaming and that there's a recognition by some of these sports wagering companies of what the issue is and that there's some effort that's been put forward there. Again, it does feel like a little bit of piecemeal here and there's not sort of a stance that would include NTA, NFL, the gaming companies, it just doesn't exist. Yet. Yet. Thank you. I like that optimistic. All right, so I don't know if anyone had any other updates or comments that they wanted to throw out to the group before we wrap up and if not, I can take a motion and a second for adjournment. Motion to adjourn. Second. Second, okay. So, D.A. Galuni. Yes. Yes. All right. Elaine Driscoll. Hi. And Chief Gillis. Yes, we're moved to adjourn, yeah. Okay, and then I'm a yes, that would be four, zero to adjourn. Thank you. I apologize for the technical difficulties that we had. Hopefully it won't happen again. We will hopefully have a quorum the next time to get rid of those minutes and then the minutes from today. And then if you have anything you want to circle back with Mark and Bonnie on or myself in terms of what we talked about today, particularly Elaine, what you talked about in January in terms of this seminar, that would be fantastic. And thank you all again for taking the time. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Happy holidays.