A Job I'd like

[MikesVikes]

link

 

City probe took cops to distant strip clubsTrip raises eyebrows, but Minneapolis police defend liquor license investigationBY BETH SILVERPioneer PressTwo guys from Minneapolis embark on a four-state tour of topless clubs, shelling out for champagne, lap dances and various favors from VIP-room strippers.

The men are Minneapolis police officers. They are on duty. And their commanders know exactly what the officers are doing, handing them cash advances for their cross-country foray.

Minneapolis police sent two officers on the road in 2004 to evaluate whether the city should grant a liquor license to a Denver businessman who owns a chain of strip clubs. The license would have given the businessman, Troy Lowrie, control of a well-known downtown Minneapolis club.

Police say the officers' work paid off: VCG Holdings' nightclubs stayed out of town. Lowrie, the firm's CEO, dropped his license request after it became clear the officers' report would reveal allegations of rampant prostitution and drug trafficking in some of his out-of-state clubs.

Police officials called the situation unusual — an out-of-state strip club owner applying for a license in Minneapolis. But they said they have not changed any license-review policies since the VCG Holdings' application and would send officers on similar trips if circumstances warranted.

Still, the city's actions raised questions among local law-enforcement watchdogs, particularly over the decision to send Sgt. Kent Warnberg, a convicted sex offender, on the trip. Warnberg spent six months in a Wisconsin jail in the early 1990s on a fourth-degree sexual assault conviction.

"It's pretty obvious that, on the surface, they have a hard argument to make that all of this was reasonably necessary," said Michael Friedman, executive director of the city's Civilian Police Review Authority. "You've got two unusual facts: Someone convicted of a sex offense was assigned to this, and the second is that the amount of money it took (to investigate) was the absolute maximum."

Lowrie ultimately reimbursed the city $10,000 — plus a $247 late fee — for its expenses. State law allows cities to charge up to $10,000 for processing and investigating an out-of-state liquor license application.

Law-enforcement and city officials said they couldn't recall another time police researched a liquor license applicant so extensively. The city reviews about 800 applications a year for renewals and new licenses, among them restaurants, liquor stores, pubs and 10 existing strip clubs.

In St. Paul, the head of licensing, Christine Rozek, said the city would never send inspectors out of state for a liquor license investigation. Civilian employees do all of the inspections in the city. Rozek noted that St. Paul, unlike Minneapolis, has just one strip club, a bar on West Larpenteur Avenue.

When VCG Holdings attempted to buy Schiek's Palace Royale at 115 E. Fourth St., employees there warned police that a club that had come to be known as one of the city's cleanest could soon turn into a den of unlawful activity, said an officer with knowledge of the matter.

The department took heed of the warnings and launched its in-depth review of the potential buyer. It's much easier for police to ward off a seedy club than it is to shut it down once it's established, said Lt. Robert Skomra, head of the Police Department's licensing division.

So Warnberg and Sgt. Andrew Schmidt, a vice cop, started their quest with calls to police in the cities in which VCG owns or manages 12 clubs. Several told them VCG's clubs had police problems, according to a report they wrote for the City Council.

Warnberg and Schmidt, both of whom declined to comment, wanted to see the problems for themselves.

"You have to experience some of the situations they would be put into to see if they would be involved in illegal activities," Skomra said. "You can only do that in an undercover status."

Lowrie knew the officers would be visiting his clubs. But he didn't know when, Skomra said. Warnberg and Schmidt traveled between May and July 2004 to clubs in Illinois, Colorado, Kentucky and Indiana.

In a report to the City Council's Public Safety and Regulatory Services Committee, Warnberg said the two laid down cash for cover charges and spent thousands for lap dances, booze and other travel expenses. What they said they found was worse than even local vice cops had warned them about: offers of prostitution, narcotics sold in bathrooms, open displays of sex between strippers and patrons, and oral sex contests.

To find out what was going on in the clubs' darkest corners, Skomra said, the sergeants had to pay extra for VIP rooms and lap dances. It was necessary, in some cases, to get several lap dances at the same club in the same night because, he said, the officers had to appear believable.

Phil Hafvenstein, a retired lieutenant in charge of the investigation at the time, said he was pleased with how the officers conducted themselves.

"The officers have more than enough experience to determine what level of information they need to get," he said. "They did a good job."

Neither Lowrie nor Robert Sabes, CEO of the company that owns Schiek's, returned repeated phone calls seeking comment.

If Minneapolis was going to keep out Lowrie's style of business, Skomra said, they had to do it at the liquor license level. No special city license exists for strip clubs; rather, the city regulates them through liquor licenses and zoning. Because Lowrie was attempting to buy an existing club, zoning wouldn't be an issue.

Hafvenstein said other extensive investigations were conducted a decade ago. And such out-of-state background checks are uncommon only because strip clubs so rarely change hands, Hafvenstein said.

Hafvenstein also said he didn't consider Warnberg's criminal history, the details of which he said he knew nothing about, when he assigned him to the investigation.

"He's a good investigator. He's a liquor investigator. It was his job to do it," Hafvenstein said.

But both Friedman and Ron Edwards, who sits on the Police Community Relations Council, questioned why Warnberg was sent, and why police had to experience VCG's clubs firsthand.

Then-police Chief John Laux fired Warnberg in 1993 after he was convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault for fondling a woman in his Wisconsin National Guard unit. Warnberg served a six-month jail term, during which he appealed his firing. The Civilian Service Commission reinstated him as a police officer, and a Hennepin County district judge upheld the commission's decision, saying the incident was an isolated case.

Paul Ostrow, who was president of the City Council at the time of the license review and serves on the council committee that would have reviewed VCG's application, said he trusted that police had safeguards in place before they sent Warnberg and Schmidt on the road. He said he had no comment about Warnberg's involvement in the investigation.

VCG withdrew its application in September 2004, and Schiek's never changed hands. The department hasn't conducted an out-of-state liquor license investigation since

[MikesVikes]

Hey, we need that lap dance to be credible.

 

One of the officers selected for the task was a convicted sex offender.