POCOLA, Kentucky – Owners and patrons of a Pocola adult-oriented store could face numerous criminal charges once investigators complete the paperwork and an extensive inventory of the items found.

“We’re going to be here for a flippin’ month,” Pocola police chief Eric Helms said late last week. “We are seizing explicit material all over the place.”

Helms said while some adult material can be sold under state law, some items found at Adult World exceed that.

“They go way, way beyond that,” he said of legal material. “We’re seizing all kinds of hard-core, extreme stuff.”

Authorities descended on Adult World, on Service Road in Pocola Monday evening of last week, after a lengthy investigation into the items the store sells and accounts of sex taking place in the back rooms of the store.

“We noticed that people were coming and going without buying anything,” Helms said. “Not returning a rented video or taking a video.”

The place has long been known as an adult establishment, but it has only been in the past couple years complaints have flooded in to local police, Helms said.

“Every time we went in, there was nothing to take action on,” Helms said of previous investigations.

Sometime earlier this year, he added, that changed. That’s when police took action.

LeFlore District Attorney Farley Ward said police brought materials they obtained at Adult World to Associate District Judge Ted Knight, who determined they were obscene, as proscribed by state law. Knight then signed the search and seizure warrant that allowed police to raid Adult World, Ward said.

Police have said about 40 patrons could face charges as part of the three-week investigation, though only one man has so far been charged with three charges of outraging public decency, a misdemeanor.

According to two statements filed in that case by Spiro police officer Travis Saulsberry and Pocola policeman Raymond Smith, the officers walked into Adult World in plain clothes and made their way to the back of the shop. Once there, both said, the man entered the booth next to them and propositioned them for oral sex through a hole in the wall between the two rooms.

Investigators went to the shop in teams, sometimes five at a time, so patrons would not be able to spot a single officer, Helms said.

Patrons nabbed in the sting are awaiting charges, Helms said. He speculated they could face a host of charges, including sexual assault, indecency, and indecent exposure. “I wish I could tell you more,” Ward said. “But I can’t.”

Ward confirmed officials are exploring a host of criminal and civil complaints regarding the store, including the sale of obscene material and indecency violations regarding people having sex in Adult World’s back rooms.

Still, all of that is speculative, Ward said, because police have not turned over the information.

Helms said police have held off turning data over to prosecutors because the investigation is still under way. Currently, he said officers are logging in thousands of confiscated materials.

“There are over 10,000,” Helms said. “So far, we’ve logged about 5,000.”

So far, he added, the owners have not been cooperative.

“He did not want to come up here,” Helms said. “We had to forcibly make our way to some locked areas like the office because he wouldn’t come up and give us the keys.”

Helms said he did not know who owned the shop, but the business license lists James Willis as the proprietor.