
Originally Posted by
Melonie
In general, you're probably being overly paranoid ! However, because I used to dance extensively on the road, I can tell you that your odds of taking a (bogus) bust do increase. The reasons are pretty obvious ...
- much of the bust risk at a particular club in a particular city has to do with a very localized LE climate between the club, city officials, local cops etc. This is usually a subject that only the 'locals' will be aware of ... or put another way this is not a subject that a clubowner will tell a travelling dancer about before she actually arrives to work !
- as an out of town / out of state dancer, local LE takes no risk of potentially expensive backlash if they choose to bust that dancer. Busting local girls also can mean dealing with the local girl's family connections, well connected local defense attorneys, appeals being filed etc. - all of which can add up to additional costs for local cops & courts. However, when an out-of-town dancer is (bogusly) busted, local cops & judges know that the odds of her pleading innocent and going to court / filing an appeal are practically zero - because doing so would involve the busted dancer having to return to this city several times for future court dates at her own expense. Thus local LE is far more likely to attempt to press 'questionable' charges against an out of town dancer.
- there's also the big reality issue that, where a large percentage of clubs are concerned, 'normal' levels of customer contact which take place on a nightly basis are actually illegal under local laws. Any traveling dancer is probably not going to be able to research the content of local laws independently, and thus will be reliant on the clubowner and local dancers to 'tell' her what's OK versus what's NOT OK. However, the info that the out of town dancer is 'told' may in fact be wrong from a legal standpoint. This is especially true in the case of clubowner info, because the clubowner has a financial stake in dancers 'bending' local laws to maximize sales / earnings, while at the same time the clubowner has no stake when a dancer is busted (i.e. the charges are always levelled against the dancer, while the clubowner can plead 'gee, officer, I had no idea what was going on in that private room' )
- for a travelling dancer to minimize her bust risk, it's necessary to evolve a 'nose' for potential problems. There were many occasions when I walked into a new club for the first time, where I spent the first hour watching what was going on inside the club and 'reading' the attitude of the local dancers and club staff, and then simply packed up my s#!t and left. Admittedly this is a difficult 'sixth sense' to develop without the dancer already having a fair amount of experience in a cross section of different clubs and a cross section of different cities / states. The problem of course is that even if the traveling dancer herself chooses to offer lower levels of contact than the house dancers, if and when a bust occurs it's entirely possible that local LE will simply sweep up the traveling dancer right along with the house dancers, charge them all, and let the judge / court sort things out later. And unless the club has been making complete coverage security tapes that can provide hard proof of what the traveling dancer was or was NOT actually doing, everything eventually boils down to a 'he said, she said' issue i.e. 'stripper' credibility.
Even if a traveling dancer exercises caution and 'instinct', if a traveling dancer keeps working in enough first time clubs in enough first time cities for a long enough period of time, a (bogus) bust WILL eventually happen. When it does, unless the travelling dancer is prepared to eat a plea bargain arrangement (i.e. a de-facto guilty plea ... which will appear on her criminal record), life can quickly get very complicated. Pleading innocent and standing up for your rights will probably involve spending several thousand dollars for local legal defense plus spending another several thousand dollars in travel and accomodation expenses (and lost income potential) to return to this city for future court appearances, and with no guarantees that you'll actually be found innocent with the charges then being dropped and your criminal record being wiped clean. The real problem of course stems from the out-of-town 'professional stripper's' total lack of credibility with a local judge and jury, versus the word of a well respected local cop (who may very well be lying, but that's beside the point !).
~
Bookmarks