Wasting the public dollar to end lap dances
While I may not necessarily agree with the Seattle Crime Blogger's take on legalizing prostitution, we are in agreement that the SPD's insistent focus on staking out Rick's Cabaret is beyond ridiculous.
This 2006 article from the P-I details one of the biggest raids ever conducted in Seattle, when three paddy wagons (does anybody still use that term anymore?) showed up to arrest 14 dancers at the Lake City club. Three paddy wagons? For years, police have claimed that they don't have the resources to effectively clean up the city's many open-air drug markets, but they seem to be willing to do whatever it takes to stop lonely old men from getting some extra love in a poorly lit back room.
Outside of that, many have forgotten what happened after the infamous "Strippergate" story started to develop. A 2007 report, also from the P-I, details some of the bizarre reports filed by undercover officers involved in the sting:
"One Seattle cop reported that he grabbed an exotic dancer's breasts several times as she gyrated in his lap."
Why that officer did this, and why he would ever write this in his own report, remain an unexplained mystery.
Another cop details having spent $100 on consecutive lap dances with the hopes that the stripper would eventually offer sex for money. Don't get me started on the entrapment problems here...but $100? Something tells me that wasn't the only time such a situation arose.
One detective reported that he had purchased 300 lap dances while working undercover. With a dance running $20 to $40, we're talking $6,000 to $12,000 of taxpayer money being spent to bust a dancer for a misdemeanor crime.
According to the P-I, I'm not alone in my assessment:
[Some defense attorneys and legal experts] question the department's priorities: why undercover cops need to be so aggressive in cases that rarely rise above a misdemeanor, and that are frequently dismissed as the result of a court diversion program.
And after all the money, time, and resources spent, we end with a grand conclusion of Frank Colacurcio Jr, whose father has long been linked to local corruption, agreeing to pay $10,000 in fines and spend a year on probation. All said, the city came out with a $55,000 settlement. I'm guessing more than that was spent on the "investigation."
Greg Nickels and members of the City Council have these types of cases a priority, because a headline including the phrase "Strippergate" is sure to illicit more attention than almost anything else. But listen to the radio sometime: Rick's is still advertising, and guessing by the packed parking lots I see when i drive home every day, business is doing just fine.
We don't have to make prostitution legal. Just stop wasting the taxpayer money and the Seattle Police Department's resources on silly cases that aren't helping to stop serious crime.
