Santa Ana Strip Club at Center of Police Scandals

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.

A few months later, in April 2002, Parsons joined other friends from the department in Las Vegas for the annual Baker-to-Vegas relay, a popular desert run that attracts teams fielded by police agencies around the country. Thousands of officers travel to Las Vegas for the competition.

That weekend, Johar arranged a complimentary suite at the Bellagio for Parsons and fellow officer Collins, Piho said. The suite came with a bar and a view of the Las Vegas Strip, she said.

It was during that weekend that Piho went to Parsons’ hotel room and had sex with him, she told The Times. At one point, Collins caught them in the act, she said. Piho said she didn’t think Parsons did anything improper.

Neither Parsons nor Collins responded to repeated requests for comment. Johar, who is wanted on an arrest warrant for a drug-possession case, could not be reached for comment.

Piho said Buena Park police internal-affairs investigators somehow learned about the Las Vegas trip, and within a few months, investigators were inquiring about her relationship with Parsons.

After an initial denial, Collins told his superior what he knew about the Las Vegas trip, according to Piho and police sources.

In September, Parsons, 29, and Collins, 24, resigned from the Buena Park department, records show.

While department officials declined to discuss the case in detail, they acknowledged that the department took steps.

“I wish it didn’t happen. But it did, and we were faced with having to investigate it and take the appropriate action,” said Buena Park Police Capt. Robert Chaney. “I think the fact that they’re no longer here shows we take these things seriously.”

Police departments throughout the country train officers to avoid even the appearance of improper conduct with people they encounter on the job. When it comes to dealing with female crime informants, male officers are instructed to never meet with them alone in hotel rooms and to avoid a situation in which they could be accused of misconduct, experts said. Sleeping with an informant is prohibited because it could be viewed as an abuse of power and could taint an officer’s credibility as a witness, police officials said.

George Wright, chairman of the criminal justice department at Santa Ana College, said officers are trained to keep their distance from witnesses, informants and others they encounter on the job. Having sex with an informant, he said, is “out of line and unprofessional.”

The allegations of misconduct by the two officers surfaced during an unrelated internal-affairs investigation of Bryant and his connections to Mr. J’s, police officials said. Tustin investigators heard about the allegations involving Piho and Parsons and passed them on to Buena Park police, according to a source familiar with the case.

Bryant is a longtime friend of Johar, who once served as a Tustin police Explorer scout. Bryant, a Tustin officer for 11 years, was accused of using a department computer to run background checks for Johar, police officials said. Piho and another source familiar with the case said Johar acknowledged paying Bryant for the information.

The allegations of the computer misuse came about four years after accusations that Bryant flashed his badge at a Mr. J’s guest who was disputing a bill for lap dances, according to sources familiar with the investigation. It would have been a violation of department policy to use the badge to help a friend resolve a financial dispute, police officials said.

After an investigation into the alleged misuse of the department computer, Tustin Police Chief Steve Foster fired Bryant on March 7 and referred the case to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution. No charges have been filed.

Bryant declined to discuss specific allegations, but said he frequently visited Johar at Mr. J’s when he was off duty.

“We were just good friends. He’d let me come in. He’d buy me drinks. I knew a lot of the bouncers there,” Bryant said. He said he did not think his friendship with Johar was improper.

Johar’s family sold the club last year. The current club manager said the club does not condone any of the alleged misconduct and does not believe it’s fair to link it to any controversy.

“We certainly had no part with any scandal with any police officers,” said Mr. J’s manager Jason Greene. “That was [Piho’s and Johar’s] thing. It had nothing to do with Mr. J’s.”

In January, a judge sentenced Piho to five years of probation and one year in Orange County Jail for her role in a 2001 collision that claimed the life of Mark de la Fuente and for possession and transportation of methamphetamine. Officers found a small amount of the drug in her car after the accident.

The sentence was lighter than that recommended by the Probation Department, which said Piho -- given a prior reckless-driving conviction and a recent drug arrest -- should go to state prison.

The light punishment stunned the victim’s brother, Tom de la Fuente. “When sentence was passed, I didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or drop to the floor,” he said.

While there is no evidence that any of the fired officers helped Piho with her case, another Tustin investigator -- who got to know her as he investigated the complaint against Bryant -- did act on her behalf.

Before the sentencing, Tustin Police Officer Joseph Stickles wrote a letter to Judge William Evans asking that he consider the help Piho gave Tustin police in a “sensitive confidential investigation.”