For those wanting to know precisely why the city cannot and will not shut down Northwest Dallas' all-nude Diamonds Cabaret, where police discovered 12-year-old and a 17-year-old girls dancing in recent months, here's a link to the city's code regulating sexually oriented businesses -- not an easy thing to find on the city's Web site. But, in short, there are really only nine reasons listed that can lead to the police department's yanking a club's license, and not one of them mentions anything about penalties for hiring minors. (If the name Diamonds Cabaret on Walnut Ridge Street rings a bell, it's because "the adult go-go club" appeared in the December '07 CNN story about folks praying for the "Highway to Hell." Turns out, they may have had a point.)
Among the ways to get the license revoked: Someone who owns or works at the club is selling drugs on the premises; they've "knowingly allowed prostitution on the premises"; the license-holder's been convicted of a criminal offense twice in a 12-month period; or the licensee or an employee has "knowingly allowed any act of sexual intercourse, sodomy, oral copulation, masturbation, or sexual contact to occur in or on the sexually oriented business premises."
Also, the license can and will be yanked if the "licensee is delinquent in payment to the city for hotel occupancy taxes, ad valorem taxes, or sales taxes related to the sexually oriented business." Which means they'll shut you down for not paying your bill to the city, but if you've got a child on the pole, well, that's not a problem at all.
Also, the organization about which Jesse wrote earlier this week now has some new leads, especially when you also consider that Lt. Chess Williams of the DPD told ABC News earlier this week that the department has discovered "far more juveniles than we anticipated" working as prostitutes in Dallas. --Robert Wilonsky
Either the link to the code cited was badly parsed, or it has been pulled.
Who actually prepares these ordinances? Sanford and Son?
Posted at: March 27, 2008 9:46 AM