Bill Ryan's Other Blog

One of my all time most visited blog posts was related to my friend Barbie Cummings’ incident with a police officer. In a nutshell, he pulled Barbie over in her hot pink Mustang.  He was clearly turned on and one thing led to another.  After that, they both went on their way. Barbie didn’t receive a ticket btw.  So off she went.  The cop however, couldn’t keep the news to himself and started bragging to coworkers about what happened.  Many didn’t believe him.  Anyway, his bragging ultimately led to discovery of the incident by his superiors.  He said there was no quid pro quo but well, that’s a hard one (no pun intend) for anyone to believe.

Abuse of power by law enforcement is a bad thing but not all abuse of power is the same.  In Barbie’s case, she was cool with it.  To that end, the abuse was minimal.

Compare that to this case of David Park.  Clearly the lady involved wanted no part of this. Clearly she was afraid of him. Clearly there was a pattern of this guy seeking out strippers (which, let’s call it what it is, is him preying on people he thinks are vulnerable. If not, why the follow up phone calls?).  Clearly he’s lying.

So the defense attorney attacks the woman as a slut and he walks.  Just read the parts of the case that are not in contention and ask yourself, how does this happen?   When it the last time you had a cop call you at your house to ‘make sure you got home ok”?

If I was on a jury w/ the Barbie cummings case, I’d be inclined to give the guy a pass. David Park however, no way. This was predatory behavior from start to finish (and that’s not even touching the fact he’s a married man).

Here’s a taste of what happened, be sure to read the whole thing if you’re interested:

In the wee hours of Dec. 15, 2004, Lucy (only her first name was used during the trial) finished her final shift at Captain Cream in Lake Forest, not far from the Irvine Spectrum. Management had let her go after an incident involving a female customer in a bathroom stall. According to court records, there had been a small amount of cocaine, kissing and breast fondling.

Meanwhile, Park was on patrol in the southwest portion of Irvine. Prosecutors believe he was craving a sexual rendezvous, and so he watched for Lucy’s white BMW to leave the strip club parking lot, then tailed her, waiting for an excuse for a stop. Park insisted he’d been cruising on the 405 north and coincidentally saw Lucy’s vehicle weave and speed.

Kamiabipour, the prosecutor, shook her head in disbelief. She knew the facts—that the officer had waited at least eight or nine minutes before stopping the stripper on a secluded section of a highway that was out of his jurisdiction.

“He was stalking her,” she said.

Four months earlier, Park had stopped Lucy under similar circumstances. That time, he’d ignored a plastic drug baggie he’d found in her car and her suspended license. But the stop wasn’t a waste of time. After friendly chit-chat, the officer had scored Lucy’s phone number. Telephone records show that Park called the stripper the next morning. She told him she was too busy to meet.

On the witness stand, Park explained that he’d called Lucy out of concern for a citizen’s safety. He also shrugged his shoulders when Kamiabipour slowly listed the first names of nine Captain Cream female employees—Annette, Denise, Rashele, Marlia, Brandi, Andrea, Deborah, Laura and Shannon—whose license plates he’d run through the DMV computer in the weeks prior to his sexual encounter with Lucy. (Another coincidence, according to Stokke.) Jurors also learned that Irvine Police Sgt. Michael Hallinan had previously warned Park as they left work to stay away from the strippers.

Park, who works in construction nowadays, conceded that he’d been given the warning but claimed that he had no clue it was Lucy in the vehicle or that she had an invalid driver’s license, even as he approached her car window.

Kamiabipour believed she’d caught the 6-foot-3 cop in a lie. Records show he ran the bosomy, 5-foot, 110-pound dancer’s license plate before the stop, did not call for backup despite the potential for an arrest and failed to tell his supervisor or dispatch that he was leaving Irvine. Several Irvine officers testified that Park’s behavior that night was odd.

“[Park's] testimony was just incredible,” said Kamiabipour. Irvine city officials must have doubted his story, too. After an exhaustive police internal affairs investigation, they felt it was prudent to give Lucy $400,000 to make her civil lawsuit go away—for fear a jury might give her much more.

In a secretly-recorded phone call to Laguna Beach police shortly after the incident, Lucy recalled that she’d told Park she had no license. Park began “rubbing himself up against me,” she said. “Then, he said, ‘What are we going to do here, Lucy?’”

Park unzipped his pants, took his penis out and got an erection, she explained. “Basically, the officer made me give [him] a freaking hand job and he let me go. I’m so freaked out about it.”

The rest is barely safe for work, but it’s worth reading to understand how this happened. It’s really disgusting.  I’ve had many good friends who were strippers and a few that were adult entertainers.  Stripper != Hooker for one thing.  Two of the strippers I knew were fellow grad students at Univ of Miami with me and were both great students and wonderful people.  I hear a lot of guys (especially a few self-righteous talk show hosts) claim they are hookers.  Thou protest too much IMHO.  Even assuming every nasty thought you want to about strippers, prostitutes, adult entertainers or what have you – who do these people hurt?  Don’t give me some indirect stuff about broken marriages or porn addictions.  If you have to stretch that far to find a victim, you have no argument.  They don’t hurt anyone.  Many prostitutes for instance, are scared to go to the police so they put up with assaults and abuse all the time.  They aren’t people worthy of basic human dignity b/c they formalize agreements that people make everyday?  Hmm, I don’t recall Princess Diana dating any poor guys, but I digress.

[tags]David Park, Captain Cream Cabaret, Police Misconduct[/tags]