Senator thinks case of masseuse who got citation was mishandled

By Joe Schoenmann

Saturday, April 26, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Help may be on the way for a woman who pleaded with the Las Vegas City Council two weeks ago about her massage career being ruined by a potentially unjust citation by undercover Metro Police vice officers.

After an item about the Las Vegas woman appeared in the Sun this week, state Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, who was instrumental in establishing the Nevada Board of Massage Therapists, said she thinks police acted wrongly.

Vowing to look deeper into the woman’s story, Carlton said she thinks police had no right to ticket the woman for giving a massage to a man.

“I don’t think Metro had the authority to do what they did,” she said.

County and city ordinances, in an effort to curtail prostitution, forbid same-sex massages unless the masseuse is working for a licensed establishment.

This woman — a single mother who feared repercussions if she were named — said she went to an upscale Las Vegas hotel after getting a call for a massage. She is an independent masseuse who travels to customers.

After she was treated rudely by men in the hotel room, she said, and refused their come-ons to perform sexual massages, a lieutenant entered the room. The undercover officers, she said, told the lieutenant she didn’t do anything wrong. But the lieutenant, she claimed, said she broke the same-sex massage ordinance. She was given a citation.

With the citation on her record, she could get only a probationary license from the state massage board.

Several hundred people have signed an online petition to get the same-sex ordinances repealed or changed.

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Late last year, Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese practically begged a representative of REI Neon, the winner of the right to build a sports arena downtown, to move quickly so that the city, not the county, would end up with an arena.

Two plans for sports arenas are competing. One would be built by Harrah’s and AEG near the Strip. The REI project now is planned for a site close to the Stratosphere.

In December, before giving REI Neon another time extension to make a deal with the city — the group is having problems coming up with financing for the $500 million arena — Reese told company officials: “It would be a terrible travesty to the city of Las Vegas if, (after) all the work that our mayor has done to bring an NBA-type team or league to the city, it goes someplace else.

“I think it’s important that you understand how important it is to us that if an NBA team comes to Clark County, it needs to be in the city of Las Vegas,” Reese said.

Mayor Oscar Goodman, the point man in talks with the NBA to get a team here, said he has had three or four conversations with NBA officials via telephone this month.

That does not mean a team will necessarily end up in the city.

Asked if he would support an arena if it were in the county, the mayor said he just wants it “in the community.”

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Sometimes, it pays to know the nefarious.

When he was a practicing lawyer, Goodman represented numerous infamous characters including Jimmy Chagra, who allegedly paid for the assassination of federal Judge “Maximum” John Wood.

Now, with a deal being worked on for a movie about Chagra called “Do a Nickel,” Goodman said he might play himself in the movie. (Local writer and Sun columnist Jack Sheehan wrote the screenplay.) If it works out, it would be the camera-loving mayor’s second major motion picture stint playing himself. His first was a cameo in Martin Scorcese’s “Casino.”

Drug dealer Chagra allegedly hired Charles Harrelson, who killed the judge in May 1979. Harrelson, father of actor Woody Harrelson, died in prison in March 2007 while serving two life sentences. Chagra, who went to prison on drug charges, was released from prison in 2003.