The late night hours at your local strip club will likely be coming to an end soon.
The email obtained by dallas morning news, the Dallas Police Department announced it will begin enforcing an ordinance that closes sexually oriented businesses from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. This email is from Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia, and violators will have their licenses revoked. He wrote that he may be subject to criminal charges. The penalty is up to one year in prison or a fine of up to $4,000.
Department spokeswoman Christine Lowman said. observer In an email, DPD said it was notifying businesses about enforcement of the ordinance. “The Dallas Police Department's Special Investigations Unit provides education on enforcing hours of operation ordinances for sexually oriented businesses,” Lowman said. “Dallas Police Department sent a letter to each sexually-oriented licensed business and visited each licensed business with a copy of the letter outlining the revised ordinance.”
A local strip club called Buck's Wild is directing its social media followers to email city council members about their opposition to the ordinance.
The city and local sexually oriented business groups have been fighting the ordinance in court since it was passed last January. The ordinance applies to strip clubs, escort services, and adult book and video stores. Roger Albright, the attorney representing the companies in court, did not respond to a request for comment.
“It only gets worse.” – Gary, New Fine Arts Public Relations
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Gary, a spokesperson for Paris Adult Book Store and another sexually oriented business called New Fine Arts, who preferred not to give his last name, said he was angry about the ordinance's enforcement. He said he is doing so. New Fine Arts is one of the companies involved in the New Time lawsuit. He said New Fine Arts has been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the past 40 years and has never had any problems with police. “I'm fine,” Gary said. “But the city seems to think I'm part of the problem because of the crime. … They lump me in with a strip club or something that's causing the problem. It gets worse. only.”
Since the ordinance went into effect, he said, he has had to hire additional security personnel to monitor the store while it is closed. “I need someone to be there after hours, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., because I don't want to get tagged. I don't want people breaking into my store,” he said. . “We don’t have an income for four hours every night, but we have to keep our employees paid.”
The city contends that late-night hours are associated with more violent crimes that drain police and fire resources. A federal district court initially said Dallas had no facts to support its claims. But in October, a higher court, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in the city's favor. The court said the city had ample evidence of a link between late-night hours of sexually oriented businesses and an increase in “harmful side effects” such as crime.
According to the court's ruling, a number of shootings occurred in or near these Dallas stores in late 2020 and early 2021, resulting in multiple deaths. For nearly eight months in 2021, Dallas Police Department task forces conducted patrols near sexually oriented businesses after midnight, making 123 felony arrests, responding to 134 citations, and issuing more than 1,100 citations. I put it out. According to the court ruling, the task force seized more than 350 drugs and weapons. The department compared crime statistics for different times of day, centered on sexually oriented businesses, and found that the most violent crimes occurred between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. These times accounted for the majority of aggravated assaults, rapes, robberies, and murders in 2020 and 2021. According to the court ruling, 911 calls and calls to the fire department also occurred during this time.
Sexually oriented businesses, on the other hand, argue that this crime data is skewed, in part because it includes crimes within a 500-foot radius of the businesses. Lower courts agreed with this argument, adding that the ordinance does not make businesses' protected speech sufficiently accessible. That's why the district court initially granted an injunction to stop enforcement of the ordinance. Many of the sexually oriented businesses named in the lawsuit did not respond to requests for comment.
But the appellate court rejected that, saying it didn't matter that the data included crimes near businesses, it was enough to justify the ordinance and the city could enforce it.
said Gary Krupkin, a local First Amendment attorney. observer“I don't think anyone in our industry particularly likes this ordinance.'' But he said the ordinance is less about regulating the times, places, and manners of sexually oriented businesses than what they say. He said he is doing so. This could hurt a sexually oriented company's chances of winning a lawsuit, he said.
For now, the businesses in question need to keep this ordinance in mind as they proceed with their operations.Over the past few days, several stores have updated their hours on Google to now indicate they are closing at 2 a.m.
