KFVS12 News & Weather Cape Girardeau, Carbondale, Poplar BluffAdult Entertainment Crackdown

Adult Entertainment Crackdown
By: Susan Stiegman

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO --It's an issue that never fails to ignite controversy here in the Heartland. Paducah, Du Quoin, Carbondale, Pinckneyville -- just a few of the towns that have tried to crackdown on adult entertainment. Many people say these businesses attract trouble, but legally, cities or towns cannot ban them. Instead, restrictions are used to regulate the clubs once they're open. One way to do that is by setting up city ordinances. Now, a strip club in Cape Girardeau is in trouble for violating some of these rules. Four dancers and the manager of 'Stephanie's Caberet' -- formerly known as 'Regina's House of Dolls' -- will be headed to court next month. They got a little too close for comfort last night with some undercover agents.

You can look..but you can't touch. And it works both ways. It's the city's policy for strip club patrons =and= dancers.

"The city of Cape Girardeau has established an ordinance," says Corporal Ike Hammonds, with the Cape Girardeau Police Department. "The dancers can't go within ten feet of the customers and the costumers can't go within ten feet of them."

But that ordinance isn't always followed.

"We had three undercover officers in here that received dances from the girls or tipped the girls," says 'Stephanie's Caberet' manager Carol Kellison.

Those officers walked out..and their = uniformed = counterparts walked in.

"They told me the girls violated two city ordinances," says Kellison. "They wrote us tickets and left."

This isn't the first time this strip club has been busted: it's more like the 20th time. And that's part of the reason some city officials argued against it when it first came to Cape Girardeau.

"The ministerial alliance was opposed to it coming to town for various moral reasons," says former mayor Al Spradling. "And we had people who were afraid of what type of conduct this would bring to the community and what persons might come into town as a result."

In the past, this club has accepted the citations it has received. But this time, the owners may fight it. They say the dancers at this club deserve the same rights as employees at any other company.

"When they come in here and give us tickets, it hurts the girls and our business," says Kellison. "These girls are trying to go through college and feed their kids, and it just hurts that."