Tempe police chief: No rules violation for officers who visited strip club during work trip

Uriel J. Garcia | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir on Thursday briefed the media about a work-related trip in which several officers went to a strip club.

Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said on Thursday that her officers didn't violate any rules or laws when at least three of them visited a strip club during a taxpayer-funded trip to Palm Springs, California, where a police conference was held last month.

But, Moir, who also attended the "Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Training Symposium," said during a press conference at the Tempe Police Department that she wanted to address the issue publicly to apologize for the negative image it may have sent to the city’s taxpayers.

“If in any way it brings discredit on the professional work that our people do every single day to safeguard Tempe, then I owe the community an apology,” she said. “We spend money responsibly and we do it in an open and transparent way.”

Moir's comments came after someone sent an anonymous alert to news outlets and city leaders in an email about some of the officers' outing to the strip club.

In her own letter to the City Council addressing the episode, Moir said the tipster had misidentified the officers who attended. During the press conference, she declined to identify any of the officers other than to say they all were women.

Moir said the officers spent 20 minutes at the strip club and about three or four officers had gone to the strip club during their off-time. She said a total of eight officers were part of the conference, while she was a panelist.

She said there is no way of confirming if the officers who attended the strip club spent their $66-per-day city allowance at the establishment or if they spent any money at all.

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The chief said she became aware of the outing when the city manager told her about the anonymous letter on Nov. 7.

Moir said she spoke to one of the officers who went to the strip club and that officer expressed regret.

The conference was scheduled from Oct. 21-23, according to the webpage for the California Police Chiefs Association.

The chief also said there is no internal investigation and no talk among city leaders to change the allowance policy.

While the chief said there was no illegal activity or rules broken, she said she doesn’t condone the “poor choice” by the officers who attended the strip club.

"I have personal feelings about these establishments and believe that they objectify women,” she wrote in the letter to the council.

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