PROVIDENCE – The owners and managers of the adult entertainment club Silhouettes on Thursday filed a $10 million federal lawsuit in R.I. District Court against the city, the police department and the Providence Board of Licenses, alleging a targeted campaign of racial discrimination and constitutional violations.
The plaintiffs, listed in the complaint as Lola’s Rendezvous Inc., Miami Employment Inc., The Pink Building Inc., Steven Medeiros and Shay DiPina, accuse the Providence Police Department of multiple instances of harassment and intimidation that led to lost revenue and the closure of the establishment.
The suit alleges that patrol officers began targeting the club on March 6, 2021, two days after it opened, ostensibly to monitor compliance with COVID-19 regulations. The club is located at 245 Allens Ave. and has gone through multiple former iterations in the adult entertainment business.
“Despite the fact that Silhouettes was well below the required capacity limit, Detectives of the PPD directed off-duty detail police officers to make sure that no additional customers were allowed inside the establishment,” reads the complaint.
After DiPina, the club’s manager, complained to department higher-ups, the establishment became the target of retaliation from law enforcement, including refusal to provide requested security details and shutting the club down during business hours, according to the suit.
The plaintiff’s attorney, Joseph Carnevale of Providence-based Savage Law Partners, issued a cease and desist letter to the department on March 31, 2021, arguing the department’s “activities were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment for their disparate treatment and discrimination against Silhouettes and its patrons.”
The complaint says the harassment stopped for “several months” after the order was filed but returned in the summer when police “implemented a new strategy to intentionally interfere with Plaintiffs’ business and began stationing marked and unmarked patrol cars directly outside of the Property.”
Between August 2021 and October 2022, the plaintiffs allege that there were more than 30 instances of unwarranted police presence, including the taking of video surveillance “and unconstitutionally stopping and frisking patrons in the parking lot … simply for walking to or from the establishment.”
The lawsuit accuses the department of targeting the club because it caters to minorities.
“There is no other adult establishment within the City of Providence that is victim
to the overzealous attention that Silhouettes receives from the PPD,” the lawsuit states.
Requests for comment from the Providence Police Department and Carnevale were not immediately returned.
(Christopher Allen is a PBN staff writer. You may contact him at Allen@PBN.com.)
I hope they win a FORTUNE!! NO DOUBT the PD cops did this, they are a department run wild with goons, bullies and tyrants that enjoys harassing minorities.
I’m a gay man and I can say without ANY hesitation that the PD police have done FAR MORE injustices to the LGBT community than they’ve done to protect it.
Truth: There is no situation that the arrival of the PD police can’t make worse.