Davenport, Iowa- A Davenport adult business that has been the subject of police raids and prostitution arrests has been ordered to close.
The closure comes after guilty pleas Aug. 15 from two women who were charged as a result of an undercover investigation there. The Aug. 18 city order gives Sugar’s Dancers, 1037 W. 3rd St., and owner Dorothy Sampson, until Sept. 8 to appeal the decision and ask for a hearing. It also bars Dale Labath of Davenport, owner of the building, from allowing a similar business to open there for at least five years.
“I can’t discuss it. You’ll have to talk to my lawyer,” Sampson said Tuesday as she sat behind a desk in the lobby of the business.
Sampson directed questions to attorney John Moeller of Davenport. He did not return a phone call seeking comment. Labath also did not return a phone message left at his home asking for comment on the order.
The order says all business at the club must cease immediately, and no new enterprise may reopen at the address for two years without city approval. Sampson is barred from operating a new adult business in the city for at least five years.
Sugar’s violated several sections of a city law that regulates adult businesses, the order says. Employees allegedly also offered to engage in prostitution in violation of the law.
Since 2000, Davenport police have conducted raids or investigations at least five times into prostitution and pimping at Sugar’s, the order says.
After an undercover probe and a raid in 2000 that closed the business for three weeks, Sampson agreed not to supply or display condoms and to remove patrons who exposed themselves. She also promised that “no prostitution or drug activity would be allowed on the premises or on an outcalt basis,” the order says.
The most recent arrests stemmed from a May undercover investigation in which two agents from the Iowa Lottery Commission worked with police. They entered Sugar’s and paid for sessions with women at which time they were allegedly offered illegal sex acts for additional payments.
Police data on calls to Sugar’s since the first of the year list 227 responses by officers to the business. Of those, 186 were extra patrols, but robberies, assaults, thefts, disturbances and vice crimes also were listed.
Cheryl Mix, who sometimes works at a pawn shop next door to the club on West 3rd Street, said she has been accosted frequently by men on the street near Sugar’s. Recently, she said, a man parked outside for almost three hours and kept staring at her as she went about her business.
“I can’t even walk across the street to the store to get a pop without someone bothering me,” Mix said.
Duane Huebee, who owns an auto towing and repair shop on Myrtle Street next to Sugar’s, said he has seen the frequent stops by police at the business, but that its employees and patrons rarely bother him.
“The biggest thing we fight over is probably parking spots,” Huebee said. “I know the city has been trying to get them for a long time. They want them on the outskirts of town, and maybe that’s a better place for them. But we do our thing and they do theirs, and we don’t bother each other.”