Residents of Beatrice, Nebraska—wrangled police, apparently oblivious of obscenity law, to who conceal a clothing store’s window display after complaining about a nearly naked female store mannequin. An obscenity debate has been sparked as the city attorney issued statement that he’s OK with the mannequin being dressed in a bikini.
Beatrice Police covered the window at the Hannah's Treasures store--for a day—after several people in the southeast Nebraska city of 12,500 complained about a mannequin with a pair of pants around its ankles. The mannequin wearing shoes—but nothing else.
City Attorney, Tobias Tempelmeyer, said Monday he had yet to receive all the police reports on the semi-naked mannequin."We're not able at this point to issue a determination whether it's [the naked mannequin] obscene or not," Beatrice city attorney Tempelmeyer said.
Apparently an attorney needs a lesson in obscenity law.
The owner of the closed shop, Kevin Kramer, put the “offending” display mannequin in a bikini.
Store owner Kevin Kramer's lawyer, Dustin Garrison, didn't immediately respond but told a local paper that the store’s owner might sue over the mannequin dispute.
"Nothing about a naked mannequin constitutes obscenity," the store owner’s attorney told the local paper. "I think we've all gone into a department store and seen a naked mannequin at one point in our lives."
Everyone except those in Beatrice, Nebraska.
Shop owner, Kramer, said his shop in Beatrice was closed because he was in the process of moving his business to Lincoln.
Beatrice city attorney Tempelmeyer said the “dispute” was resolved amicably, and that he was OK with the mannequin wearing a bikini—somebody better inform the city attorney that it’s not his place to be creating his decision related to obscenity law.
Attorneys must be in equally short supply as naked mannequins in the “city” of Beatrice.