Naked Truth: Strip Clubs, Democracy, and a Christian Right

5. “Rottweilers” Lock Their Jaws: Bench Trials

140 | Bench Trials “Rottweilers” Lock Their Jaws 5 Going after nude dancers is easier than catching murderers. club owner In 1996, Councilman Walter Maloney of Prince George’s County, Maryland , contacted a Christian Right organization, the National Law Center for Children and Families, known for being an adult business killer. Maloney wanted assistance in developing a proposed adult use zoning bill. The County overlooked what Judge Herbert F. Murray had said in federal court about a Maryland case, Hughes v. Cristofane (1980). In that case, the judge ruled that it is not a substantial government interest for the Town Council of Bladensburg in Prince George’s County to regulate adult entertainment. Arrests in a Family Business Morality in Prince George’s County led to an uncivil, expensive police raid on the small, unassuming Showcase Theater. It had no citations for violating the law. Yet on March 22, 1999, at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, ten dancers at the small one-stage private club seating up to seventy-five customers were arrested for public indecency by a thirty-person riot squad! The raid is all the more shocking because the establishment is a familyowned business, located in an industrial area, not visible from a main street, difficult to find, and the only business open at night in that area. Larry Bledsoe, a former thirty-year US government employee, is a member of the six-person corporation that owns Showcase Theater. In 1996, his daughter told him she was a nude dancer. He was devastated: “I didn’t think I brought up my daughter that way.” “Samantha” explained to her parents that dancing was a legitimate business, and that they should see for themselves. Dancers needed costumes, so she suggested that they could visit clubs to sell costumes. Bledsoe and his wife, Fran, decided to do just that. Eventually, on November 13, 1998, Bledsoe, Fran, “Samantha,” her husband , and a doctor and his wife opened Showcase Theater in the Beltsville “Rottweilers” Lock Their Jaws| 141 area of Prince George’s County. Modeled after Tampa’s Mons Venus, it is a no-alcohol private nude club with stage and lap dancing. Dancing since age three and a graduate of Suitland Performing Arts High School, “Samantha ,” who is also a paralegal, danced at Showcase until she became pregnant. Showcase Theater patrons pay an annual eight-dollar membership, or a three-dollar-per-visit, plus a twelve-dollar entrance fee. Independent contractors , the dancers fill out an application form, audition, and are selected on the basis of appearance, ability to dance, experience, and agreement to random drug testing. The six to twenty dancers scheduled each night have included a former FBI agent, teachers, single moms, secretaries, and college students. In a lap dance area, topless dances cost thirty dollars; with bikinis, twenty dollars. The dancers pay the club five dollars per lap dance up to twelve dances, after which they keep the full fee. According to club officials, dancers, police, and press reports, the riot squad entered the club with weapons in full combat readiness: laser guns Showcase Theater. naked truth 142 | pointing at dancers, twenty customers, a manager, a bartender, and two owners. The police forced the customers and dancers to lie spread-eagle on the floor with hands behind their heads and the others to kneel as they were handcuffed. The police threatened, “Don’t move or talk or we will use physical force and fuck you up.” An officer wearing combat boots kicked a dancer in the ribs and bruised her. Customers were searched and their identification checked against a computer listing. Joining the Prince George’s County police officers in the raid were Sheriff Department deputies and officials of the State’s Attorney’s Office, which had obtained a warrant for arrests. The warrant triggered C-MAST—County Multi-Agency Services Team—action (about twenty agencies including fire, health, building, and public works) to find any kind of code violation. The police forced the first dancer processed to go outside in pouring rain. Barefoot, in her bikini, hands cuffed by a plastic strip behind her back, she was ordered to get into the rear of a seat-less old van/paddy wagon that had broken glass covering the floor. The dancers had to brush it aside so they could sit. Other dancers asked for a female officer to be in attendance while they changed from dance attire...