City Put your hands up!: Police raid Rick’s
posted by on December 14 at 12:42 PM
As the PI’s blog reports, in the culmination of an “undercover investigation” Seattle police staged a huge raid on Rick’s strip club on Lake City Way last night, arresting 14 dancers and one manager for violations of the Adult Entertainment Ordinance. While down at the police station in early November, I stumbled across a packet of police reports from a similar raid on Ricks, where a few dancers were cited (but not arrested) for inappropriate dance moves and touching and some illegal flashing of T,A&V.
Last night, between 16 and 20 officers showed up at the club, arresting 14 dancers and detaining all 25 other strippers for license checks, according to Rick’s lawyer Gil Levy. The club closed for two hours.
From the PI post:
One dancer who wasn’t arrested complained outside: “Well, now I’m not going to make any money tonight.”One officer who allegedly said it was his first raid at a strip club actually was getting his photo taken with some of the women, said a dancer named Miracle, who showed some of the photos she had taken of the raid using a camera phone. She said police were also take photos of each of the dancers and checking them for their city dancing license and to see if they had any outstanding warrants.
She said police did not appear to be searching lockers, only checking individual dancers.
“This is absurd,” Miracle said outside the club, waiting and hoping it might reopen before the night ended. “I just came on when this happened and haven’t made a dime.”
Levy thinks the raid is politically motivated. “From 2002 to present, there’s been sporadic enforcement of the adult entertainment ordinance,” he told me, “Now, since the election, things have definitely heated up.” Levy says in the 7-8 months leading up to November, there were no arrests made at Rick’s but since November 7th, a dancer has been arrested “every few weeks”, though he didn’t know the exact number. “I don’t know if it’s revenge, or if it’s them trying to make a point because during the election we talked about how the Ordinance isn’t really enforced anyway,” says Levy.
“Are there really no thieves to chase, no meth labs to bust, no missing children or lost puppies to track down?” asks our own Amy Kate Horn.
UPDATE: Police also raided Rick’s last Thursday, December 7th, arresting two women for prostitution and two for “vice-prostitution” (golly!). “During a covert operation of the above listed establishment, the suspect violated the above listed sections of the Adult Entertainment Ordinance and Prostitution Ordinance,” reads the report in, I think, rather defensively technical language. The above listed sections are: Illegal Touching, Nudity, Accepting Money for an Illegal Act* and Prostitution. The suspect’s “clothing, scars, marks, tattoos, pecularities” are identified as “White Mesh Top with darker Bikini Bottom AKA: Bridget”
*this always bugs me — shouldn’t it be “illegally accepting money for an act” since blow jobs and sex themselves are not illegal acts? These are the kinds of hard questions we ask at The Stranger.
Well, of course there are, Amy Kate. But, seriously does that sound like nearly as much fun as sending half the UC Vice Squad over to the local strip club for a little boob-ogling, followed by some group "pat down" searching? Especially since they're probably not going to get nearly as many opportunities to do so in the future.
I mean, come on - where are your priorities? I think we KNOW where the SPD's are.
You have got to be kidding me! What a ridiculous use of SPD resources. How many people (both civilians and police) have been bitching and moaning about needing more police? I know that it's just one night, but I can't believe there weren't other things thos officers could have been doing. Someone should do a check on 911 calls around that time to see what else was going on.
Bunch of pussies.
Yep, this is the same Seattle PD who earlier this year took 2-1/2 hours to respond when our house was robbed (with us in it) and when our bank account was drained we were told that it was up to the bank and not us (since, according to the officer the "loss" was the bank's and not ours) whether there would be a full investigation.
Glad to see they're on porn patrol instead of protecting the public at large, as per usual.
It's seeming like we need a few more referendums to spell out for the police what shouldn't be a priority. I mean, it is their job to enforce all laws, not to choose which they're going to enforce, but to go out of their way to organize a sting for this when there are obviously other things they could be putting their efforts toward seems pretty incompetent. I'm curious, though, what portion of people in the city would actually think this is a good idea.
We need a new referendum that explicitly:
a) allows strip clubs to serve drinks
b) allows strippers to touch customers
c) removes the minimum distance between nude strippers and customers
d) decriminalizes escorts
It would pass.
We could call it the Mom Referendum, because most of the money from those customers goes to raising stripper's children. To my knowledge, many of the strippers are moms.
However, it would be nice to include a provision in that initiative making it mandatory for strip club owners to toss out troublemakers.* I would hope that most do it anyway, but it wouldn't surprise me if there a more than a few assholes out there who tell their strippers to get over it.
*Especially if strip clubs are allowed to serve alcohol.
I'm so glad my tax dollars are helping SPD wives to get fucked extra hard the night after these strip club raids.
There ought to be a stripper's union to negotiate work conditions, pay, club responsibilies for obnoxious customers, etc.
In any case, as more new clubs open up and have to compete with each other for dancers, strippers will have more options and more bargaining power.
UPDATE: Heh. I encourage The Stranger to continue wrapping its soft, warm perspective around those hard, throbbing questions.
Sean, the Lusty Lady is unionized.
Gidge, right on. The Police Guild is always going on about how they need more officers. Neighborhoods are talking about how they need more officers. The City Council is taking about needing more officers. Maybe we wouldn't need quite so many if the cops we do have weren't wasting their time on this bullshit.
Seattle is no plaec for a boner.
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