Dancer at Police-Staged Party Stands Trial

A 26-year-old Lake Forest woman, who was arrested in August, 1986, on prostitution charges at a mock bachelor party staged by Newport Beach police and attended by 16 undercover officers, went on trial Wednesday in Harbor Municipal Court.

Pamela Grace Weston was one of two erotic dancers hired by a Newport Beach detective as part of an undercover operation in a suite at the Irvine Marriott hotel. Shortly after Weston and Rhonda Linn Gary arrived and began performing, they were arrested on misdemeanor prostitution charges.

Weston is accused of having oral sex with one detective posing as “the bridegroom” at the party, where officers were drinking beer and eating pizza.

Gary, 29, of Mission Viejo, pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in April and was fined $300 and placed on 18 months’ informal probation.

‘Never Committed a Crime’

But Weston contends that she never engaged in sex for money, as alleged by the district attorney’s office, which opened its case Wednesday before Municipal Judge Margaret S. Anderson and a 12-member jury. Weston’s attorney, Greg Jones, said his client never mentioned sex when she agreed to dance nude to recorded music at the party for $150.

“It was a deal to dance only,” Jones said. “She never committed a crime.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Chris Evans said Weston and Gary were known prostitutes. And while he said there was no direct solicitation of sex for money, there was a sexual act performed after Weston had been paid money to dance.

“It is just a standard prostitution arrest,” Evans said outside the courtroom.

But the case has received widespread notoriety because of the nature of the undercover operation and the large number of officers who made the arrests at the Aug. 14 party.

To stage the party, Newport police recruited detectives from within the department as well as from Santa Ana and Irvine. Nineteen 19 officers took part, including a three-member arrest team that was in a adjacent room at the Marriott listening to the festivities through a microphone planted on one of the detectives at the party.

When asked why so many officers were needed to arrest two suspects, Newport Beach police Sgt. Richard T. Long told jurors that police wanted the party “to look authentic.”

Long, who coordinated the operation, also said the show of force was a precaution in case there was trouble, because erotic dancers often carry weapons.

No One Drunk, Sergeant Says

Long said officers at the party were encouraged to drink “so their breath would smell like alcohol.” But he denied that any participant was drunk or unruly and said that at one point he urged the officers to “liven things up” because the atmosphere “was too subdued . . . hardly a proper send-off for bachelor.”

Newport Beach police Detective Randell Parker, who first contacted Weston about performing at the party, testified that when the dancing started officers were seated in a semicircle with the “bridegroom” on the floor in the “danger zone.”

Within minutes, the two women had taken off their negligees and began focusing on the bridegroom, removing his shirt and kissing him, Parker said.

Then Weston had oral sex with the detective, Parker said, at which point Parker began signaling the arrest team to make its move by repeating the code word “Leo, Leo, Leo” into a small microphone he was wearing.

But it took nearly a minute for the officers to respond because they could not get the plastic card-type room key to work, Long said.

Largest Number of Officers

Both Parker and Long, veterans of the Newport Beach department, said under cross-examination that this was the largest number of officers they had worked with on a prostitution arrest.

Allegations of police misconduct led to separate investigations by both the district attorney’s office and Newport Beach police. Both agencies concluded that there had been no wrongdoing.

“We failed to find fault in the officers’ conduct,” Evans said, adding that the only thing about the case that is unusual is “they used four or five more officers than normal” to make the arrests.

Jones conceded that Weston and the detective had sex, but he said that “it was not sex for money.” He said no crime had been committed, because there was never a mention of anything but dancing between Weston and the officers.