With its worn interior, dust-coated liquor collection and unobtrusive location off the Costa Mesa Freeway, Santa Ana strip club Mr. J's hardly seems a place that would attract attention.
Yet the topless bar is at the center of scandals that have cost three Orange County police officers their jobs and hampered prosecution of some defendants.
A Buena Park narcotics detective, once the department's officer of the year, resigned in September after he allegedly spent the night with an informant, a Mr. J's dancer, at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. A second officer resigned after he was accused of concealing the tryst, law enforcement sources said.
After Detective Jason Parsons and fellow officer Tom Collins left the Buena Park Police Department, Orange County prosecutors dismissed charges in some cases for which they were possible witnesses, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The exact number of cases affected by their departure could not be determined.
In a separate incident, Tustin Police Officer Anthony Bryant was fired March 7 for allegedly running police background checks for the club owner's son, a longtime friend, police sources said. The same officer had previously been accused of misusing his authority by helping Mr. J's employees deal with a customer who was disputing a bill for lap dances.
And a woman whose reckless driving left a 55-year-old man dead ended up getting a light sentence for vehicular manslaughter after she cooperated in an internal police investigation.
The trouble began in July 2001, when Lisa Piho, a Mr. J's dancer, drove through a pair of red lights in Huntington Beach before her sports car struck and killed a man out for a morning walk with his dog.
While prosecutors were deciding whether to file criminal charges, Piho said she went to the Buena Park police station to see if she could negotiate a deal. Accompanying her, she said in an interview at Orange County Jail, was Sammy Johar, whose father owned Mr. J's. Piho offered to work as a drug informant, hoping to win leniency if prosecuted for the traffic death, she said.
Parsons told her he might be able to help, she said.
According to Piho, Parsons and five friends from the department paid her a visit at Mr. J's a few weeks later. When her shift ended, the officers gave her a ride home, opened a few beers and made a proposal, she alleged.
"They were expecting me to dance for them," Piho said, adding that she declined the request.
