By SHASTA CLARK
6 News Reporter

KNOXVILLE (WATE) – The city of Knoxville used tax dollars to pay for lap dances at local strip clubs. It was part of an effort to force adult businesses to adhere to stricter regulations and the city says, in essence, it was money well spent.

The city paid a private investigator nearly $100 an hour to go to adult businesses. Then the city paid for the investigator to get lap dances while he was there.

On April 23rd, private investigator Greg Lundy went to the Mouse’s Ear and paid a topless dancer $40 for a lap dance. He tipped her $3.00. The same night, Lundy also went to Th’ Katch and paid for another lap dance.

That night, Lundy spent $135 of taxpayers’ money on lap dances, beer and cover charges.

And that wasn’t his last chance to do it. On April 29th, the city paid for him to visit four more establishments and buy two more lap dances with topless and totally nude dancers. He spent $132 that night.

Adding it all together, Lundy spent a total of $267.

6 News called city law director Morris Kizer to find out why the city paid for this. He wouldn’t talk on camera but said on the phone it was his decision to hire Lundy.

Kizer says Lundy put every detail of what happened those nights in an affidavit. He says city council used the affidavit to pass new ordinances demanding stricter regulation of adult businesses.

6 News asked Councilman Rob Frost if he thinks the city should’ve paid for personal lap dances. “It’s a minimal use of taxpayer dollars. I mean, the negative secondary effects that businesses like this cost make this expenditure chump change.”

Frost says he thinks the city will be sued over the new ordinance and the private investigator’s first hand account will help the city build a stronger case in court.

“You want to build the strongest case possible. And rather than allowing speculation over what the exchange of money really was for, we’ve got an independent investigator who can come into court and swears this is what happened,” Frost says.

6 News called some of the adult businesses. They say they were shocked to learn the city hired a private investigator to visit their establishments. They also say the affidavit that Lundy wrote for city council is inaccurate.

Investigators Can Help Build Case In Court
May 26, 2005

HOUSTON – In the back seats of cars, the floors of crowded bars, tables at restaurants and even their own homes, private investigators at a Houston-area agency find infidelity.

Love, Honor, Betray
Private Eyes Help Spouses Learn Loved One’s Betrayal

Investigators at K Griff Investigations & Civil Processing, Inc. have found that cheating happens anytime, anyplace and with anyone.

“You know a lot of times they will just talk and meet or meet and talk first. Then it gets progressively more and more,” owner Kathy Griffin said.

“It is amazing how bold people become. Also, how amazing how flagrant people can be. (They have) just no idea they are being watched or that their spouses would suspect anything,” investigator Tina DeFiore said.

Griffin has spent 15 years building a business that gets dirt on people.

“A lot of people think it is James Bond glamorous. A lot of times it is boring – sitting in the car hours upon hours. A lot of time there is no activity, but your heart starts pounding for that one minute of video,” she said.

She has video of a married man who snuck away to see prostitutes, coworkers who spent their lunch hour in the back seat of cars and a woman who cheated on her husband with another woman.

“I have always kind of looked at it like if you don’t have something tangible to deal with, you can’t deal with it,” Griffin said.

The female private investigators have delivered on the tangible proof.

“We had them hugging and kissing, and (we’re) taking pictures with our phone and everything,” DeFiore said.

“We brought a video camera and acted like we had friends singing karaoke,” Griffin said.

It seems easy enough – borrow a car, grab a camera and follow your mate. So, why hire a private investigator?

In court, a private investigator with a good reputation can make a very credible witness, according to Griffin.

A man named Robert, who did not want his last name revealed, was married for 13 years.

“I wanted some proof. Anybody can say anything, but we are such a proof-driven society,” he said.

A few years ago he and his wife were almost divorced when he learned he would lose full-time custody of his children.

“(The private investigation) put me in more control of the situation. It gave me a voice instead of the court dictating the way it should be,” he said.

K Griff Investigations

Robert did not even watch the tape that helped him win his case.

“Knowing was enough for me. I didn’t want to see the guys. I didn’t want to see them,” he said.

Another man, “Reid,” was married for four years. He hired K Griff investigators, who found his wife cheating with another woman.

“The initial shock was so devastating, I couldn’t believe that it was taking place and that the first thing I thought of was that I had wasted all these years together and now it is getting thrown away for this,” he said.

Reid said that trying to investigate his spouse was too hard emotionally, at first.

“When one lie turned into another and I couldn’t get any answers – that is when I started deciding in order for me to find out something, I need to do something beside using myself as checking up because it was too difficult,” he said.

Houstonian “Kimberly” said she didn’t need a private investigator because her husband had not cheated.

“I was thinking there is something wrong. He has had a nervous breakdown. Maybe he has got a brain tumor,” she said.

On her attorney’s advice, she hired one anyway. She found out that he was not only cheating, but her husband had another family and the woman was pregnant.

“When you see it for yourself, you see it on video, that it is truly your husband, the person you have been married to 20 years, then you know it is true,” she said. “And you have to get through the bewilderment and shock, and once you get through that process, you have to rebuild your life.”

So, how can you tell if someone is cheating?

Griffin said to listen to the nagging little voice in your head.

After doing this for years, she said that in 90 percent of the cases, there is some form of infidelity. In the other 10 percent, someone is doing something they shouldn’t.

More Information:

www.kgriffinvestigations.com

TOKYO — A working group of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has compiled a draft bill which requires private detectives to register their names and addresses with a local public safety commission as well as to retain confidentiality of information obtained in their business, political sources said Friday.

The bill is to standardize the detective business in line with recent laws to protect personal information which ban public and private sectors from using information on a person other than for its intended purpose and from providing it to a third party without permission of the person. (Kyodo News)

Parliament is giving unanimous support to legislation that will make intimate covert filming a criminal offence.

The “peeping tom” bill was given its first reading yesterday after Justice Minister Phil Goff said it dealt with a serious and growing problem.

“Generally, covert filming has a sexual element. Whatever the intention, it constitutes an invasion of personal privacy…it is an affront to human dignity,” he said.

“The old offence of peeping and peering has been aggravated by the advent of new technology. The internet facilitates the transfer of these pictures around the country and beyond.”

The Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill defines the offence as “making a surreptitious visual record of another person in intimate circumstances without the person’s consent or knowledge, and in circumstances that the person would reasonably expect to be private”.

It creates new offences, all carrying maximum sentences of three years jail, covering making a recording, possession, import and export, and selling.

An offence of simple possession – with no intention to publish, export or sell – carries a maximum one year sentence.

Mr Goff said miniature cameras, mobile phone cameras and other devices had been used to visually record women and children while they were undressed.

“Voyeurism is offensive in itself, but additionally is potentially a gateway offence to more serious sexual offending,” he said.

The bill protects agencies which use covert filming for detection and investigation, such as police activities.

National’s justice spokesman, Richard Worth, said his party would back the bill.

His colleague, Wayne Mapp, said the select committee which dealt with it would have to fix the gaps.

He said newspapers could be caught by the legislation, and gave as an example a picture taken of a high-profile person with an under-age prostitute.

“The person involved would consider his privacy had been breached…on the face of it this bill appears to make that sort of activity illegal,” he said.

“Newspapers actually do, from time to time, protect the public good.”

New Zealand First MP Peter Brown pledged his party’s backing.

“It’s a sad day in New Zealand when we have to produce legislation like this, but there are weirdos out there who do this sort of thing,” he said.

“I believe that in future it will become more prevalent…the sort of videos that get through the censors feed the brains of people who do this.”

ACT’s Stephen Franks said the select committee would have a lot of issues to consider.

He wondered whether the bill would put an end to the private detective business.

“For many years they’ve been filming sexual activity for divorce cases,” he said.

The Green’s justice spokesman, Nandor Tanczos, wondered whether it was going to be illegal to possess a magazine with paparazzi pictures in it of topless film stars.

No party opposed the bill and it passed its first reading without dissent.

It has been sent to the government administration select committee for public submissions.