By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Thai Seafood & Grill, tucked into an anonymous strip mall in Charles County, offers panang curry, satay chicken and -- on weekends, after closing time -- go-go music.
The chairs are taken up, the lights are turned down and the restaurant draws hundreds of teenagers, most of them African American, all eager to hear music that has served as urban Washington's homegrown soundtrack for more than 20 years.
This, in turn, has drawn the police. Deputies for Rex W. Coffey (D), the county's sheriff, have searched cars in the parking lot with drug-sniffing dogs. Drivers say they have been pulled over for minor offenses. One parent said that, while waiting to pick up her daughter, she was ordered to move along because she was loitering.
Although Coffey's aggressive approach has drawn criticism from the local NAACP, the weekly go-go events have crystallized for many residents the long-held fear that crime from Prince George's County is spilling into Charles.
"Obviously, the word is out in Prince George's County and Washington, D.C., that it's a place to party," Coffey said of the restaurant in Waldorf, repeating his public vow to run lawbreakers out of town.
More than 50 patrons have been arrested outside the restaurant since the fall, including 24 -- all but five of them from Prince George's -- on a recent night after closing time. Most were charged with possession of marijuana. Two loaded guns were found in car trunks.
County judges have imposed an unusual condition for some people being released on bail: "Do not return to Thai Seafood."
More recently, there have been fewer incidents outside the restaurant, the Sheriff's Office and the restaurant have said.
Disagreement over the sheriff's tactics has come as Charles has developed the fastest-growing black population of any large jurisdiction in the nation except the Atlanta suburbs, according to a Washington Post analysis last year of U.S. Census data. Many of these newcomers have moved into $400,000 and $500,000 homes, increasing the county's median household income as crime rates fell.
Although almost all patrons of the go-gos are black, reactions to Coffey's crackdown do not break along racial lines. Fearing that crime could lower property values, many residents say they find the sheriff's rhetoric appealing.
"If people start saying Charles County doesn't play around, that's a good thing," said Anthony Rowland, 41, an African American who is a former D.C. police officer. He moved from Prince George's a few years ago and started a neighborhood watch in his community.
Rebecca Groseclose, part of a Caucasian group from a local church that dines regularly at Thai Seafood, said she is concerned that the sheriff is hurting the county's image. "Charles County is already called 'Chuck County' by people, as in backwoods and redneck," said Groseclose, 23. "How is saying you're going to run people out of town going to help that?"
The restaurant's owner, Sam Thana, emigrated from Thailand 32 years ago and opened the restaurant in 2003. He once had good relations with local officials. In 2006, the county's five freshly sworn-in commissioners threw a private party there for 200 guests, later writing him to compliment the restaurant's cleanliness and food.
Around that time, though, Thana had a different kind of late-night event, featuring exotic dancers, an experiment that ended when the county deemed one of the performers unlawfully lewd and pulled his liquor license.
With the license gone, Thana said his dinner and lunch sales dropped 50 percent. He pushed go-go events, which on a good night can clear $2,000. Even so, he said, he barely squeaks by with a monthly rent of $9,000. "We die without alcohol," said Thana, 50. "That's why we had to go with go-go."
Go-go, a mix of funk and hip-hop, originated in the District in the 1970s. Over the years, the gatherings have picked up a dangerous reputation -- unfairly, devotees say. In the District, Club U was closed after a 31-year-old patron was fatally stabbed in 2005. Prince George's temporarily shut down nine clubs last year, some of which featured go-go bands.
In Charles, the Sheriff's Office reported no violence inside the go-go dances since early last year. Nine barrel-chested men, who charge Thana $1,000 total for a night's work, walk among the packed dance floor or stand outside to check for weapons. Males are patted down; metal detectors are waved over females. All must remove their shoes, turn them upside down and smack them together.
"Just like the airport," Thana said on a recent Friday night.
Inside, there is no drinking or smoking. In one corner, patrons pose for pictures as though at a high school prom. The main draw is a small stage in the opposite corner, largely hidden behind mobile barriers during the week. As many as five go-go bands take the stage on a single night. Dance lights whirl overhead.
Rena Cunningham, 18, arrived on a recent Friday. Like several other patrons, she saw nothing strange about being at a go-go in Charles. In a Thai restaurant.
"The other ones get shut down sooner than you think," she said. "There isn't enough security."
Outside, parents in minivans and sport-utility vehicles were dropping off teenagers, some as young as 13. One parent, Niccole Matthews, a nurse from Clinton, said she was stopped coming out of the parking lot recently for having a broken light next to her license plate.
"They look for you," she said. "They follow you out. To me, that's harassment."
Coffey said that such tactics strike him as a bit overboard and that he would get that message to officers. But the overall aggressive approach is warranted, he said.
The Sheriff's Office responded to about 145 incidents outside Thai Seafood from Jan. 1, 2007, to Jan. 31, 2008, according the office's statistics. More than half were the result of officers seeing something amiss, and about 10 percent were for fights and other disturbances, a sheriff's spokesman said.
Early this year, using federal gang suppression funds, Coffey's agency set up a large operation.
Undercover detectives moved in by 8 p.m., stationed in unmarked cars. Later, as the 10 p.m. dance crowd arrived, the detectives watched as several men smoked what appeared to be marijuana while standing outside their cars. The detectives saw one driver step out of his car, pull a pistol from his waistband, put it in his trunk and head toward the dance.
By midnight, as the party swelled inside, uniformed officers arrived, fanning across the parking lot. They shone flashlights in the cars, looking for anything suspicious -- flakes of marijuana on the floor, for example. When the crowd spilled out two hours later, about two dozen officers began to make arrests. Several fights broke out among patrons, according to the Sheriff's Office.
William Braxton, head of the county NAACP, went so far as to liken the sheriff's crackdown at Thai Seafood to efforts to break up demonstrations during the civil rights era. "The only thing missing was the fire hose," Braxton said.
Coffey, 55, was elected sheriff in 2006, on his third attempt at the office. On the wall behind his desk, he keeps a long flashlight mounted in a display case, a gift from co-workers during his first stint with the Sheriff's Office, from 1976 to 1996.
"Those who have been enlightened by Rex know 'The head stops here,' " reads part of the inscription.
Coffey said the display reflected his approach years ago but not today. "I was known for doing a fair amount of fighting," he said. "But I didn't hit anyone on the head with a flashlight. It was more of a metaphor. . . . I actually liked to fight. So I used my fists and that sort of thing."
He said times have changed. And Coffey certainly has a softer side. On Sundays, he drives to the home of Rarday Burrell, a 7-year-old African American boy he mentors all afternoon, reading and playing sports. Rarday's mother, Yolanda Harvey, calls the sheriff a godsend.
Coffey said he would like to erect a sign at the county's border welcoming shoppers but warning criminals to stay out. Certainly, he said, he would put signs up to the east, as well, visible to those arriving from Calvert and St. Mary's counties. Coffey said he is not anti-Prince George's; he is anti-crime.
"People that are being offended" by his comments, he said, "are just looking at this thing too deeply."
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