City settles suits over arrests at strip club
Columbus is on the verge of paying a total of $150,000 to two women who were arrested alongside adult film actress Stormy Daniels at a Columbus strip club last summer.
The Columbus City Council will vote Monday on whether to approve the lawsuit settlement on the recommendation of Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein’s office.
Miranda Panda, of Marion, and Brittany Walters, of Pickerington, sued the four Columbus Division of Police vice officers in October, alleging that they suffered emotional distress in what the suit says was a politically motivated arrest July 11 at Sirens Gentlemen’s Club on Cleveland Avenue.
The incident garnered national attention because Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said
President Donald Trump paid her $130,000 to keep secret a sexual encounter that the two had before the November 2016 election.
Daniels also sued the city this month, seeking at least $2 million in damages as part of a civil-rights complaint.
Police released Daniels within hours, and charges were dropped against Panda and Walters July 18. After the incident, Klein said he would no longer prosecute similar cases against women because of ambiguities in the state law and that his office would review previously prosecuted cases, if requested.
The state law used to charge
all three women makes it a misdemeanor for employees at a sexually oriented business to touch a patron.
“We are pleased that the city attorney’s office and the Division of Police stepped up and did the right thing for these two women who were swept up in this politically motivated takedown of Stormy Daniels,” said John Marshall, the attorney representing both women.
Both Panda and Walters signed the settlement in December. If council approves the settlement, the city will pay for it out of money set aside in the general fund. City settlements
vary widely from year to year. In 2018, the city paid out $1.5 million in claims, up from about $500,000 in 2017. In 2016, it paid out more than $3.1 million.
“Based on the potential legal exposure to the city, including the risk of paying out attorneys’ fees, we believe this settlement is in the best interest of the taxpayers of the city of Columbus,” Klein said in a written statement.
In the lawsuit, attorneys argued that three of the four officers involved in the arrests were registered Republicans who supported Trump, and that if
the women didn’t violate the law, the officers planned to fabricate evidence to incriminate them.
The arrests, in part, sparked an FBI investigation into the Police Division’s vice unit. Two of the four officers involved in the arrests have been relieved of duty, and Chief Kim Jacobs and Deputy Chief Tim Becker instituted new rules prohibiting vice detectives from going into strip clubs without explicit consent when the unit resumed some operations in December.