John Dolan, an enforcement agent with the Mississippi Gaming Commission, is retiring after six years with the Vicksburg agency and 22 more years in local law enforcement. (Melanie Duncan ThortisThe Vicksburg Post)

[4/19/04]In a varied law enforcement career, John Dolan has investigated almost every type of crime. The most memorable, he said, are also the saddest.

Sitting at his desk last week at the Mississippi Gaming Commission office, Dolan remembered in detail the day he found a child less than a year old asleep and dirty, alone in a Warren County mobile home with no air conditioning on a hot summer day.

“Those are the things you hate to see, but when you can help a kid …,” he said. He didn’t finish the sentence.

Dolan, 49, is turning in his badge at the end of the month. He won’t miss the sad cases, he said.

“You really didn’t want to work those cases because you didn’t want to see those children abused, but when you made a good arrest, it was very satisfying,” Dolan said.

Dolan began his career with the Warren County Sheriff’s Department in 1976, later spent four years as administrator of the Vicksburg Police Department and then joined the enforcement staff of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

“I’ve been on call for 28 years,” Dolan said.

Casino gaming was brand new to Mississippi in 1992, and the first casino opened in Vicksburg in 1993. Dolan, who had been in patrol, then a detective and chief of detectives for the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, served as Vicksburg deputy chief under the Joe Loviza administration starting in 1993, when casinos were new to the city.

It meant a lot of learning had to take place. Gaming enforcement officers work in a highly regulatory atmosphere and must learn how the machines they license as well as the table games work.

As a gaming officer, Dolan has investigated cases including employee theft and cheating at Vicksburg’s four local casinos and in Greenville and Natchez. He said crime at casinos isn’t as bad here as it is in some parts of the state, although he did once watch a slot attendant steal from the machine before making an arrest.

“I was in the surveillance room watching him do it,” Dolan said.

Now that he’ll be shifting to the private sector? Not security. He’s done with that.

Dillard’s will be his new workplace.

He’ll be a sales manager.