Gender: Female
Status: Single
Age: 24
Sign: Libra
City: GREENSBORO
State: NORTH CAROLINA
Country: US
Signup Date: 4/29/2006
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
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Sex, Coke & Pot, Oh My - Part 27
Cops in Black & White by Jerry Bledsoe, Part 27
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March 22, 2007
In June 2003, Brian Williamson, a Vice and Narcotics Division detective for the Greensboro Police Department, received a call from a person in the Glenwood community known to be responsible and reliable. This person complained about a club that was operating in a single-story brick building at 1214 Grove Street.
The name of the club was spelled out in red letters on a white sign above the front door – Game Time Lounge. The sign was adorned with illustrations of a football, a basketball and a hockey player. But those illustrations were hardly representative of the games that were being played inside.
Nude female dancers from strip clubs such as Sugar Bares, Twiggy's Lounge and the Mint performed with sex toys on stage, the informant reported, and were available for sexual activity with customers in VIP rooms. The informant told Williamson that people in the community were saying that the reason the club had been operating for several years without being raided or shut down was because it was being protected by a Greensboro police officer who previously had worked in Vice and Narcotics. That officer, the informant said, was Julius Fulmore, called Jay.
The Game Time Lounge, Williamson learned, was operated by Otis A. Dunlap Jr. Dunlap, who is black, was 45 at the time and had a criminal record of more than 50 charges. The business did not have a license to sell alcohol or to operate as an "adult establishment."
Williamson also discovered that two previous complaints had been made to Vice and Narcotics about the club. Both had been made when Robert White was chief. The first came in December 2000, reporting that the club was operating illegally as a topless club and liquor house. The second complaint came in September 2002, from another informant who named a man and woman who lived together in Glenwood and provided their address. This couple was reported to be involved in prostitution as well as selling drugs at the Game Time Lounge. Nothing had resulted from those earlier complaints.
Williamson reported the call he had received about the Game Time Lounge to his superiors. Records show that because the informant had named a police officer as protecting the club, Williamson was instructed to report that information to Craig McMinn, who at that time was the sergeant in Special Intelligence.
McMinn, who is white, had attended Lt. James Hinson's bachelor's party, where strippers and officers openly committed sexual acts, although McMinn was reported to have left soon after the strippers arrived. Two of the dancers at the party had referred to him as "the white shadow." Det. Scott Sanders, who was investigating Hinson's bachelor's party, had been attempting to identify the white shadow, but McMinn, who was Sanders immediate supervisor, had not made his presence at the party known.
Now McMinn assigned Sanders to assist Williamson in investigating the Game Time Lounge.
The club, Williamson and Sanders discovered, had an unusual schedule. It was open only one night a week, Thursday, and then not until about 11 p.m. It usually closed by 2 or 3 a.m. During that period, however, the clientele were many. The vehicles of customers lined nearby streets and were an irritant to neighbors. Occasionally, Dunlap also would rent out the club to different groups for private parties on other nights.
On June 26, vice detectives succeeded in getting a confidential informant into the club to find out what was going on. The informant reported that he had to pay $5 to enter. Beer cost $3 and mixed drinks were available in plastic cups for $3.50 to $5. Several females were dancing nude, he said, and the bartender told him that he could go to a private room with one of the females and, for different sums, could watch her masturbate or engage in various sexual acts with her.
On the following Thursday, the detectives conducted surveillance on the club. They watched from a distance as customers arrived and were patted down at the door for weapons before being allowed to enter. Two weeks later, they returned for more surveillance. They brought video cameras and arrived in time to see Otis Dunlap and another person opening up the building and carrying in cases of beer and other supplies.
This time, the detectives also had arranged to bring in undercover officers from Winston-Salem to present themselves as customers and gather evidence about what was happening inside. One of those officers had a cast on his arm. Inside the cast was a small video camera.
The undercover officers were patted down at the door and directed to the bar, where they paid Dunlap $5 each to enter. Both ordered beers. The officers observed that marijuana and cocaine were being used openly. According to a report filed later, they also watched "a patron having oral sex with a female dancer on the stage in the center of the club."
A dancer who called herself Hennessey approached one of the undercover officers and told him if he would pay $10 to the bartender for a blue ticket, she could accompany him to a private room to discuss other activities. The officer bought the ticket. In the room, the officer later reported, Hennessey told him that she could do private dances for $25 each. He paid for two. After that, she told him that for $150 more, she would perform oral sex on him and have sexual intercourse with him, but he would have to use a condom.
"What if I don't have a condom?" the officer asked.
Otis would sell him one at the bar for $3, Hennessey responded.
The officer passed up the offer and both officers soon left the club. They later identified Otis Dunlap from a driver's license photo.
Vice and Narcotics officers conducted surveillance again the following week. A week after that, the undercover officers from Winston-Salem returned. This time, both bought beers and condoms at the bar, and both purchased blue tickets to accompany dancers to private rooms.
One of the dancers called herself Orgazimm. She performed two dances for one of the officers for $40 before offering other services for $150, which the officer declined. The dancer told him that she would see him away from the club if he desired and gave him a note with her telephone number and room number, 133. The number was for Motel 6 on Greenhaven Drive.
Later that day, officers went to the motel and interviewed Erica DeCarla Williams, who was 23 and a resident of Wake Forest. She said that she was a dancer at the Lost Dimensions Night Club and performed under the name Orgazimm.
By this point, enough evidence had been gathered to obtain a search warrant. Surveillance continued while a major raid was planned. On Thursday night, August 21, just three weeks after David Wray had become police chief, more than 30 officers gathered for instructions before heading for the Game Time Lounge.
A surveillance team and the two undercover officers from Winston-Salem preceded the raiders to the club. The undercover officers entered at 12:45 a.m. They were carrying marked bills, which they used to pay for admission, beer and dances. They received more offers for prostitution.
The undercover officers had been inside the club for an hour when the raiding team arrived with a search warrant. The raiders broke open the door with a battering ram at about 1:45. Manning the door was Rodney Harper, a High Point fireman who worked regularly at the club. The startled patrons were collected in one area of the club, searched and photographed. Two were found to be in possession of marijuana and were cited. The patrons were then escorted out of the club and allowed to leave.
Six dancers were in the club at the time. They were searched, questioned and photographed. Cocaine was found in the purse of one, and she was arrested. Marijuana was found in the purse of another, and she was cited for simple possession.
The dancers told officers that they had to pay $10 to Otis Dunlap for the privilege of performing at the club, but could keep what they made from private dances. One denied any knowledge of prostitution taking place. Another admitted that it took place but said that she didn't participate. One dancer said that the reason the Game Time Lounge was so popular was because it was different from other clubs. Customers knew that they could openly use drugs and have sex with the dancers. Another openly admitted the prostitution, saying that the dancers told Dunlap "We've got a show" when it was about to happen.
One of the dancers, Christina Watlington, was arrested for soliciting prostitution from one of the undercover officers. Later, Erica Williams, the dancer who called herself Orgazimm, was discovered outside the club. She was charged with soliciting prostitution from one of the undercover officers on a previous visit.
In the search, officers seized beer, liquor, cash, several bags of marijuana and cocaine, two marijuana cigars and a loaded .380 handgun.
Otis Dunlap was arrested on three counts each of maintaining a place for drug use, selling alcohol without a license, maintaining a place for prostitution, procuring prostitution and operating an adult establishment without a proper license. He was taken to the Guilford County jail where he agreed to be questioned.
Dunlap said he'd started his business several years earlier as a TV repair shop and later turned it into a game room. He rented the building a few times to some Greensboro firemen who brought in nude dancers, he said. They had such success that he decided to do the same. At first, he said, he paid girls $100 to $150 a night, but later discovered that not only did he not have to pay them, but that he could charge them. He said that he never had any trouble at the club and didn't think it was creating a problem.
The interviewing detective asked about the open drug use. "Mr. Dunlap then said he knew this goes on," the officer wrote in his report, "and sometimes he gets on the microphone and tells people he has got the police inside the club and if they are smoking they had better stop."
Dunlap claimed that he knew nothing about prostitution taking place in the private rooms and denied ever selling any condoms. He was taken before a magistrate and released on a promise to appear in court. Dunlap hired prominent lawyer Joe Williams, a leader of the Simkins PAC, to represent him.
No news about the raid appeared in the media. Two-and-a-half years later, however, News & Record columnist Lorraine Ahearn and police reporter Eric Townsend wrote that the seeds of the racially motivated investigations by David Wray's "secret police" had been planted during the raid on the Game Time Lounge. They quoted Otis Dunlap as saying of the raid that "it was neither narcotics nor prostitution allegations that appeared to interest investigators most. After police kicked in the door and drew their guns, Dunlap said, he was questioned for hours about police corruption and shown a 'black notebook' of officers' photos."
According to a written report, Dunlap was questioned briefly on the night of the raid about officers protecting the club, but denied any police officers were involved. No mention is made in the reports of Dunlap being shown a black notebook of officers' photos, and officers who were in command positions during the raid say that it never happened.
During the periods that the Game Time Lounge was under police surveillance, no Greensboro officers had been seen at the club. But concern remained about the report from a reliable person in the community that Jay Fulmore had provided protection for the club. If any officers had been involved with Otis Dunlap, the department wanted to know about it.
On Monday morning, August 25, three days after the raid, Detective Sanders and his supervisor, Sgt. McMinn, met with Rodney Harper, the High Point fireman who manned the door at the Game Time Lounge. On the night of the raid, officers had found a handgun in the floorboard of Harper's car parked in front of the club. Harper denied that the gun was his. He said he had found it on the sidewalk near a garbage can. Police seized the gun.
During the raid, Harper also told officers, "Your guys are in here, too."
McMinn and Sanders wanted to know what Harper meant by that. He told them that about a week before the raid a black officer, whom he knew only as Graves, had come to the club with a white officer he didn't know and talked to Dunlap. Harper said he later asked Dunlap about the visit and Dunlap told him, "Graves knows what's going on."
Well before this, Harper said, Dunlap had called Graves about a guy named Tony who provided security for the girls at the club. Dunlap had rented the club to Tony for a private party, Harper said, and the club had been trashed and not cleaned up. Dunlap and Tony had a falling out over that, and Dunlap called Graves and told him that Tony had an outstanding warrant against him. Dunlap wanted Graves to serve it. Graves came to the club and talked to Dunlap in the front hallway, where the smell of marijuana smoke was heavy, Harper said. Graves left shortly and arrested Tony later as he was leaving the club, according to Harper.
Photos of all Greensboro police officers are maintained in a computer database and the detectives showed Harper a photo of officer W.J. Graves on a laptop computer. Harper identified him as the officer he knew as Graves who came to the club.
Another development occurred that Monday morning that would affect the investigation of officers allegedly involved with the Game Time Lounge. Mike Toomes, a sergeant in Vice and Narcotics, got a call from Ben Holder.
Ben Holder grew up in Greensboro, the son of a parole officer. He harbored a passion to help those who got bad breaks in life. In his mid 20s, he moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he worked for a year as a cook in a homeless shelter and learned the basics of community activism. Among the basics he favored were these: attack the obvious first; never depend on committees.
He returned to Greensboro determined to pressure local government to tackle the problems of those in need who had little power. He married, started a family, took a job at Panera Bread, freelanced articles to the Carolina Peacemaker – a newspaper published primarily for a black audience – and devoted his free time and fierce energies to improving life for the poor and disadvantaged.
He worked to shut down Asian massage parlors that served as fronts for prostitution, where, he believed, some of the women virtually were held as slaves. He helped to clean up crime-ridden Randleman Road, where prostitution and drug trafficking were dominant and murder was common. He frequently rode with police officers and provided information to them. He campaigned to stop the sale of crack pipes in convenience stores and exposed escort services that exploited teenaged girls.
In December 2003, the city offered Holder a job in the code inspections department, and he took it. He struggled against blight, cleaning up vacant lots and removing junked vehicles in impoverished areas. He came up with a plan for using various city departments to focus simultaneously on individual problems in distressed communities. Many of his ideas later were incorporated into a program created by the city, called SCORE, to overcome such problems.
Holder left his job with the city two months after the death of his wife, Donna, from Leukemia in September 2004. He worked briefly as a reporter for the Carolina Peacemaker. Late in the spring of 2005, Holder started a personal internet web log, or blog. He called it the "The Troublemaker," and it would live up to its name.
Holder's first post on the blog appeared on Thursday, June 9, 2005. He wrote about the Police Department, reporting that WFMY-TV reporter Frank Mickens, who is black, "was chasing down a tip about how the chief was a racist and had people on the force that belonged to white supremacist groups working to attack the careers of African-American officers. You know like nazi groups and KKK groups....the rumor was that certain officers actually went to meetings and participated in hate groups....the rumor got better....not only did frank M hear that the cops were in the KKK but they worked with the chief to ruin black cops careers.....
"The tip WFMY got allegedly came from a African American Lt. On the Greensboro Police force. He3 is being watched for something...but it aint because he is black...something to do with him screwing around or self promoting his causes....some have even said he has some unusual and even dangerous rleationships with undesirables....so...this cop...he saw an officer at friendly shopping center and atomatically thinks he is being followed...now..it is true he also found a monitor on his patrol car....but that is not illiegal...he is suspected of not being where he is supposed to be all the time....he sees the other cop and then starts calling any media who will listen to tell them how he is a marked man by the KKK/Nazi/Greensboro Police connection....There is no proof and very little story for WFMY...But they sure did want to find it." (Mickens declined to be interviewed for this series of articles.)
The following day, Lorraine Ahearn's column in the News & Record bore the headline: "'Secret police' use black ops on black cop." It told of Lt. Hinson finding a tracker on his police vehicle and contained allegations that a secret police unit was targeting black officers because of race. It set off the turmoil that has roiled the department and the city for nearly two years. But Ben Holder is not shy in noting that he broke the story first.
Holder was aware of the activities that supposedly were taking place at the Game Time Lounge and the problems the club was causing for the Glenwood community. He said he had asked Vice and Narcotics officers several times when they were going to do something about the club.
He was not aware that a raid was being planned for the early morning hours of Friday, August 22, 2003, and didn't find out that the raid had taken place until he talked to a police contact on Sunday. The next morning, Holder called Otis Dunlap to ask what had happened.
"He said, 'They came busting in the doors wanting to know about cops,'" Holder remembered.
Holder called Vice and Narcotics Sgt. Mike Toomes. "I said, 'What's this about dirty cops and the Game Time Lounge?'" Holder recalled. "He said, 'How'd you find that out?' I said, 'I called Otis.' He said, 'We might need to talk to you.'"
Holder met with Toomes and other officers that afternoon and they concocted a plan. Holder called Dunlap and told him that he was planning to write an article for the Carolina Peacemaker about the Game Time Lounge raid and wanted to present Dunlap's side. Dunlap agreed to meet Holder at Panera Bread on West Market Street at 6:30 that evening. Holder was wearing a wire. He agreed to do it, he said, because a new administration had taken over and he wanted to win the confidence of the commander of Vice and Narcotics, Rick Ball.
When Holder met with Dunlap, Detectives Toomes and Sanders were recording the conversation and watching nearby. Holder said that the detectives did not instruct him on what to ask and he had no idea that they had been told that Jay Fulmore was protecting the club, although he knew that detectives wanted to know if any officers were involved with Dunlap.
Dunlap told Holder that he knew two officers who patrolled regularly in Glenwood, and that another officer, W.J. Graves, had come in once and given him his card.
"I don't want to know no cops because they are all crooked," Dunlap said.
Dunlap recalled that he told Graves about Tony and the outstanding warrant against him and that Graves said, "Well, I don't want to come in your place and get him. That would make your business look bad."
That was why Graves had arrested Tony after he left the club, Dunlap explained.
"There may be some dirty cops," Dunlap told Holder, "but they don't work for me."
Holder said that after his interview with Dunlap he was asked to call David Wray. "I said, 'Chief, this guy doesn't know anything.' I got the impression he [Wray] was relieved. He wanted to move on."
Holder said he also wrote an article about the raid on the Game Time Lounge and his interview with Otis Dunlap for the Carolina Peacemaker, but attorney Joe Williams pressured the publisher not to use it and the article didn't appear. Holder wrote about the matter at length on his blog after Lorraine Ahearn and Eric Townsend represented the raid as the seeds for the secret police following David Wray's resignation in January 2006. Among the things that Holder wrote was a rumor that former Chief Robert White had visited the Game Time Lounge disguised in a dreadlocks wig. Holder said the rumor had been passed on to him by Lorraine Ahearn, who complained to David Wray about the club weeks after it had been raided and shut down. She apparently was unaware that action had been taken.
Capt. Rick Ball set up an interview with Dunlap following Holder's meeting with the club's owner. Det. Sanders also participated. Dunlap was talking on his cell phone with Holder when he arrived for the interview and Holder later said that he asked Dunlap to maintain the connection so he could listen in.
"I heard everything that was said," Holder said.
At no point in Holder's interview with Dunlap, or in Dunlap's interview with Ball that Holder overheard by cell phone, did Dunlap or anybody else make any mention of being shown "a black book of officers photos" as reported by the News & Record, Holder said.
Joe Williams denied that any officers had been involved in protecting Otis Dunlap and the Game Time Lounge. He arranged for Dunlap to take a polygraph test and invited Detectives Brian Williamson and Scott Sanders to be present. The detectives went to Williams' office where they were introduced to the polygraph operator, who asked them what they wanted to know. Their only interest, the detectives told him, was to determine whether any officers had been involved in protecting Dunlap's illegal club.
"The operator took this information and formulated his own series of questions," Sanders wrote in a summary. "The operator later returned and told us that Dunlap was telling the truth that no police personnel were helping him …."
Dunlap later pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors but received no jail sentence. No evidence was produced that Julius Fulmore had any involvement with Otis Dunlap. But only a few months later, a prisoner in the Guilford County jail would begin revealing even more intriguing information about Fulmore to Sheriff's Department detectives.
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3:21 PM
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