A police raid during Valentine’s Day dinner has got the owners of The Hartley House upset at South Bruce OPP and at the ongoing rumours surrounding their new business.
“I know they have a job to do, but they could have used some discretion,” said Jim Wakeford, co-owner of the Hartley House.
Wakeford told The WHT that around 5 p.m. on Feb. 14 approximately 10 OPP officers entered the Hartley House dining room wanting to search the building. With them were some representatives from “child services”. At least five OPP cruisers were seen surrounding the area around the restaurant by one eyewitness.
The police didn’t have a search warrant, and Wakeford said he was told they didn’t need one because they were acting under laws protecting children. But he did admit he let them search the premises after they asked permission.
Co-owner Katherine Tanner was upset at how the search – which they say took almost two hours to carry out – was conducted. “They quarantined the customers, no one could go in or go out,” she said, adding police were stationed at every door.
Police then proceeded to “search every room, every closet,” but found nothing, Wakeford said.
He said police were “looking for girls chained to the walls”.
Wakeford blames the bad publicity generated from the “raid” with fuelling ongoing rumours that he’s running a brothel out of the building and for causing several dinner cancellations since Valentines Day.
“We’ve had about 30 cancellations since then,” he said, during an interview last Wednesday morning. “One cancellation was for 22 people.”
Tanner said the entire episode was disruptive and disturbing to their staff and customers.
“We were being compliant but they still didn’t use discretion,” she said.
Wakeford and Tanner said the ongoing rumours about the brothel are killing their business.
“We hired 20 local people but we’ve had to lay most of them off because business is so bad,” Wakeford said.
“This rumour has gotten so dumb, we use to think it was funny. We don’t think it’s funny after what happened on Valentines,” he said.
The rumour involves the start up of ‘Bella’s Beauties’, an escort service that recently appeared online and is reportedly based in Walkerton.
Wakeford said they’ve had people calling and even coming into The Hartley House “looking for girls”. He said “it’s got to stop. The cops have to catch the people behind this,” he said.
“Why do people listen to such stupid rumours anyway,” Wakeford asked.
For its part the OPP is remaining silent about the Valentine’s raid, refusing to say anything about the allegations or how many officers were involved.
“Confirming or denying any investigation is inappropriate,” is all that Staff Sgt. Paul Bradley would tell The WHT.
Wakeford said that when the police left after their search, “they apologized at the end, but the damage was done”.