It was alarming when Gov. Dannel Malloy agreed three years ago to withdraw state police from regular assignment in the two tribal casinos, even though the compacts that allow the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes the right to conduct gambling required that they reimburse the state for policing the casinos.

Not only did the governor agree to withdraw state police from the tribe's big gambling joints, as the tribes requested, but the deal left law enforcement at Foxwoods Resort Casino to a tribal department overseen by someone with a criminal history.

That terrible, puzzling decision by the governor was illuminated last month when Antonio Beltran, Mashantucket Pequot chief of staff, in charge of a wide swath of tribal government, including police and fire services, allegedly ran a red light in Santa Monica, Calif., and crashed into a train, critically injuring one of his two teenage sons who were in the car with him.

Everyone in the car had been drinking, police said, and 54-year-old Beltran was charged with driving under the influence with injury involved, child endangerment with serious injury and furnishing alcohol to a minor.

He remains in custody, held in lieu of a $380,000 bond.

And evidently, although behind bars, he still is responsible for managing law enforcement at the world's largest casino.

Lori Potter, a tribal spokeswoman, would not comment this week when I asked whether he has resigned or been removed from office.

"As a general rule, we do not provide public details regarding employment and personnel matters," Potter said in a statement.

Of course I am not asking how many sick days he has left. I want to know why they haven't shouted news of his firing from the rooftops.

The accident was more than a week ago. It is remarkable that a tribe that wants the Connecticut General Assembly to double down on its approval of a new commercial tribal casino in East Windsor and to claim exclusive rights for sports betting in the state hasn't removed the criminal supervising much of its government.

I would like to say that being accused of letting your teenage kids get drunk, then seriously injuring one by driving drunkenly through a red light into a train, are some of the worst things Beltran has been charged with.

But that's not true.

He served four years in San Quentin as a young man after stabbing a teenager who was paralyzed in the attack. Prosecutors in California, where the incident occurred, when Beltran was 17, say he told others he was riding with in the car the night of the attack that he wanted to "kill a white boy."

The eventual victim, found walking alone on an empty street, was stabbed in the back.

According to media accounts at the time, Beltran, when leaving the courtroom in which he was sentenced, leaned over to his victim and said: "You may be smiling, but at least I am walking."

In 1991, still living in southern California after being released from San Quentin, he was charged with aggravated assault with a rifle after a fight in a bar.

Beltran was charged in 2000 with speeding and drunken driving in Norwich. The year before, he was charged in two hit-and-run accidents on Route 2 in Preston.

In 2016 Beltran hired to work in the chief of staff office Michael Thomas, his cousin and the former Pequot tribal chairman, who recently had finished serving 16 months in prison on federal charges that he embezzled more than $100,000 from the tribe.

Of course, in any other gaming jurisdictions, these criminal convictions for executive-level managers would be red flags for licensing reviews. But Connecticut has no licensing authority over tribal government officials.

Both Thomas' and Beltran's criminal records were raised before the Massachusetts Gaming Commission and considered factors in the tribe's not being selected for a gaming license.

The chief of staff's criminal history was apparently no problem for Gov. Malloy here in Connecticut, though, when he decided that he would cede the state's right to be reimbursed for its policing of Foxwoods and let a tribal police department overseen by a convicted felon take control instead.

That decision may go down in time as one of the worst made during the long reign of Dannel Malloy, even though there have been nearly more bad decisions by this governor than anyone can count.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com