Shark Tank fish arcade shut down by CMPD. A neighboring business owner is relieved.

Figs Auto Repair owner Greg Miller hopes the fish arcade next to his business is gone for good.

He watched Tuesday morning as police raided the fish arcade. They arrested someone for an outstanding warrant and cited others with working as unlicensed security. They also seized guns, gambling equipment and money.

Since the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled against the arcades in 2022, police have started cracking down.

When Miller first bought his west Charlotte shop eight years ago, the building was an appliance store, he said. Now it’s a nuisance.

“They’re not a great neighbor,” he said of Shark Tank. “I mean, they have people loitering at all hours at night through our parking lot. There’s garbage all over the place.”

Fish arcades

Black covering blocked the view into Shark Tank’s windows on Wednesday afternoon. That’s always been there, Miller said. After the raid, the front doors were also boarded off.

Fish game arcades popped up in Charlotte about six years ago, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.

Their owners used to claim a loophole in the state’s gambling laws. The games let people shoot at fish swimming across a screen; it’s skill-based, the argument goes. Winners get a payout. Losers don’t.

They are “havens for criminal activity,” CMPD has said, and bring violence, drugs and other trouble to the neighborhoods they’re in.

Police delivered letters to more than 100 local arcades in May 2022. Now, they are fewer in number and more discreet.

Unlicensed security

Across North Carolina, unlicensed security guards often work at places like Shark Tank.

The director of the Private Protective Services Board, a small state government office in Raleigh, says that they are a public safety threat. Without a license, there’s no guarantee that they’ve gone through basic training or a criminal background check.

Last November, Lynette Matusik, a transgender woman who went on a bar crawl in NoDa, said that she was the victim of a hate crime. She got into a scuffle with an unlicensed security guard. Pictures Matusik shared showed her with a black eye and bruising, and video showed her being brought to the floor by the guard.

“They’re not security, and I’m not going to use that word,” she said at the time.

It’s not unheard of.

State reports obtained by the Observer say that unlicensed guards often create problems: firing rounds into the air to scare off a crowd, getting into a fight at the place they’ve been hired to protect before shooting someone and even impersonating a police officer.

It’s a misdemeanor to hire unlicensed security or to do the work without a license. But the charges are so rare that the state has no log of when they have been issued. In those rare instances, prosecutors often dismiss the charges.

The crime mostly goes under the radar, Private Protective Services Board Director Paul Sherwin said in July.

One solution would be to better educate business owners and the public that it’s illegal to use unlicensed security, he said.