Starlets, limos, guns: Sex offender unit doesn’t get its wish at adult expo

Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2007 | 7 a.m.

Chris Dreyer wanted very badly to attend the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo last week. He wanted to roll in with an entourage of 15. He wanted to roam as a rajah among thousands of adult movie aficionados, wired with the nearness of adult starlets. He wanted special parking for his crew, and, most of all, the blessing of the pornography convention's organizers.

He almost got it all.

Security at the Sands Expo & Convention Center approved. But then event officials learned Dryer is a sergeant with the Nevada Public Safety Department's parole and probation division, sex-offender section. They learned Dreyer wanted to come not as a guest, but to make arrests. They learned he wanted to bring his whole unit, "just to see who we could spot."

"I hate to say it, but we didn't really have to ask for permission," Dreyer said. But they did ask, and they didn't really get it. At least not on terms Dreyer could live with.

For the past six years, parole and probation officers in Las Vegas have been quietly attending the AVN Expo, hoping to catch registered sex offenders who should know better than to show up. (Among the 23 conditions that convicted sex offenders must abide by, "No pornography" factors high. It's considered a trigger for repeat offenses.)

Officers from the sex offender section have always attended the adult expo undercover - "strictly street clothes" - in small groups, no more than two or three at a time. In all, they've caught five or six offenders this way.

"It's a crapshoot, obviously," he said. "We're not going to find everybody, but the likelihood of us seeing somebody is pretty good."

Dreyer's unit monitors around 700 sex offenders in Las Vegas. The 2007 AVN Expo, which ended its three-day run Saturday, drew an estimated 37,000 attendees.

This year, Dreyer wanted to make things more official. He wanted to bring the entire sex offender unit, all 15 officers, and turn the traditionally casual undercover exercise into a more rigorous search of the salacious. No longer content with "badging our way in and walking around," Dreyer asked convention organizers for permission to step up the sex offender sweep. It was the first time anyone from parole and probation ever asked adult expo officials for such clearance.

The result was disappointing.

Dreyer was told his officers could attend, but in drastically reduced numbers. The officers also had to stay off the convention floor, limiting the hook-and-book to the lobby. And lastly, no guns.

Convention officials did not return several queries for comment.

Dreyer, meanwhile, balked. From a legal standpoint, it does parole and probation officers little good to catch a sex offender strolling off the convention floor. And sex offenders know getting caught might mean a trip to jail, Dreyer said, so they'll do anything to avoid it. In other words, he said, working the convention without guns was "totally unacceptable."

"I understand their (convention officials) point of view, they don't want their business affected," he said. "But we know that this kind of convention triggers possible re-offending."

But despite having a cop's carte blanche to come and arrest as they please, the parole and probation officers stayed away. They didn't want to sour what could someday grow into an ideal working relationship, Dreyer said. If not this year, then perhaps next.

"We were going to make every attempt to make arrests off the showroom floor," he said. "We want to go in there, get our people and be done with it."