Porn Valley- It’s been six months since the cops raided Greg Sakas’ store- Pure Bliss- in New Born, North Carolina. During that raid police confiscated all of Sakas’ adult inventory including DVD’s, toys and the store’s records including computers. www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=21569.
Sakas’s case, now a political football, was supposed to have gone to trial on June 11th, but it has been postponed. A new date has been set of July 27. The reasons for delaying the case are simple. The opposition isn’t ready to proceed and now they’ve assigned an assistant district attorney to the case.
In the meantime, the city of New Bern has told the police chief Frank Palombo that he’s not to use the state ordinance to come back into Sakas’ store. But Palombo’s been holding his guns stating that he’s going with the law of the land in the state. Not to mention the fact that the assistant police chief is a member of the Christian Coalition. Neither circumstance of which is happy news to Sakas. Especially with the fact that the assistant chief is pushing harder on the case because of his religious affiliations.
Sakas has been contending all along that he wasn’t in violation of an ordinance which says store inventories must be 50% non-adult. Sakas was stocking something like 2500 non-adult DVD’s in his store, more general than adult.
The city attorney is also saying that he wants to make sure there’s no further misunderstanding of this ordinance, and that Palombo is not to use this ordinance as an excuse to come back into Sakas’ store. Palombo to this point, though, had stood firm against the city attorney stating he doesn’t report to him or to any of the city officials in this matter, that it’s a state matter- and he can come back into the store if he so chooses.
But Sakas has been given a verbal assurance there will be no further police intervention until this matter’s resolved. Meanwhile, police continue to hold his inventory and Sakas has had to replace everything in the store.
The police are saying it’s evidence to determine what criminal charges they will prosecute on, if any. According to Sakas, if the city officials or police renege on the verbal agreement he will file a lawsuit.
Another issue on the table regarding the ordinance is the use of the term “preponderance”.
“We’re asking for clarification and they can’t clarify that,” says Sakas, noting that the city and district attorneys are drafting a response so that they can come to an agreement that all parties can live with.
A major stumbling block in these negotiations has been the Christian Coalition which is intent in fighting a holy war on porn in the state.
“It’s never been this bad in North Carolina,” says Sakas. “And this is where we stand. Maybe in the next six weeks we can get clarification and a set of guidelines for the future.”
With a new trial date set for six weeks from now, the D.A. is evidently not looking to dismiss. To which Sakas has told them that if they move forward, they’re going to have problems with the case including the police seizures. In turn, Palombo’s been arguing that everything’s been done to the letter of the law, reinforced by the notion that city officials can’t appear to be soft on pornography with the Christian Coalition looking over their shoulders.
On another matter relating to his store’s inventory, the Christian Coalition had been complaining that foreign tariffs had not been paid on the sex toys in the store.
“They said we weren’t meeting the standards for this country,” says Sakas. “What are they talking about? We told them here’s who we bought it from- you need to talk to our distributor who in turn can tell you who the manufacturer is. If you’ve got a problem you need to go to them. This is highly irregular. They’e trying to use anything to get this store closed.
Buoyed by the verbal agreement, Sakas has informed city officials that he’s resuming advertising and re-stocking his store back to pre-raid levels.
“We’re telling people that we’re bigger and better than ever- come see what we still have in the store.”
With North Carolina acquiring a black eye on the Mike Nifong case, I suggested to Sakas that you’d think the state would proceed cautiously now with sex-related matters before the court. Sakas gets the impression that if it were left up to attorneys, the matter would be dropped.
“But this is political,” says Sakas. “You’ve got a police chief who isn’t listening to the mayor or city council. He’s saying this is cut and dry. We’re saying, no it’s not. You’ve got to prove the 50% violation. You’ve got the records, prove it.”
Sakas notes that, so far, he’s received somewhere around $10,000 from the adult industry in terms of product and contributions to cover legal fees. Except how far that will go in fighting the porn equivalent of the Scopes Trial has yet to be determined.
“We’re willing to go to court,” Sakas states.