Six fired over lap dances at club

Keith Paul

Monday, Aug. 12, 2002 | 10:56 a.m.

Six Olympic Garden dancers were fired earlier this month after Metro Police saw the women having too much contact with their male customers during what police called a routine check of the club.

Olympic Garden owner Pete Eliades was given a notice of non-compliance after Special Investigation unit detectives went into the downtown strip club on Aug. 3 and saw some dancers going beyond what is allowed during lap dances, said Lt. Pat Neville of the Special Investigations unit.

"We try to do spot checks all the time," he said. "This wasn't a part of a county-wide sweep, but the (detectives) go into the clubs all the time to check them out. They are generally in there about five minutes and this time they saw some inappropriate behavior."

The notice will go to business licensing department for the city, but Neville said it will not cause any revocation or suspension of Olympic Garden's license.

"This is nothing specific to Olympic Gardens, similar things have happened at other clubs," he said. "If a club gets enough of them and is not taking care of the problem, then there can be sanctions or in some cases suspension of the license. That's not going to happen in this instance."

Eliades said he was told he got the warning for allowing six dancers to have too much lewd contact with customers.

Eliades said he wasn't at the club at the time, but he took swift action and immediately fired all six dancers.

"Sometimes, they just get carried away," he said.

Police instructed Eliades to improve his enforcement of the city's topless dancing codes at the Olympic Garden, something Eliades pledged to do, said attorney Jay Brown, who represents Eliades.

"He wants to run a clean operation," Brown said. "Sometimes, you can't control all of the girls, but he's going to work at it."

Neville said firing the dancer was an appropriate response to what happened.

"(Eliades) has taken care of business in the past," Neville said.

The issuance of the warning came just days after the Clark County Commission passed new lap dancing regulation for strip clubs in the county forbidding among other things putting a tip into the G-string of a dancer. But Neville said the check at Olympic Garden had nothing to do with the new regulations, especially since the club is in the city.

"We check on the clubs all the time," Neville said. "We will have detectives check out the clubs every week. We don't care what the regulations are, we just enforce whatever ordinances are passed."