Just a couple weeks after the documentary James Franco produced about Kink.com premiered at Sundance, Kink CEO Peter Acworth was arrested on the premises of the Armory for possession of cocaine.
What led to the unfortunate arrest is a little weirder, though. It seems an 18-second video surfaced on Facebook on February 1 depicting Acworth and another man someone discharging firearms somewhere inside Kink's Armory headquarters. Someone saw the video and immediately reported it to police, who showed up around 8:30 p.m. at Kink and found drugs that allegedly belonged to Acworth. No gun charges were filed, and it all seems unrelated to any kink porn production.
Acworth's attorney issued a statement saying, "This is a business that Peter has run for over fifteen years without incident. There were no gun charges at all. This charge amounts to $60 dollars worth. It will be handled as quickly and expeditiously as possible."
Acworth himself issued a statement saying, "I am proud of what we do at Kink.com. We employ 130 people and have worked hard to create beneficial change in the neighborhood. While this current attention is regrettable, we will continue our endeavors to be positive contributors to the neighborhood and city of San Francisco."
The whole gun thing, obviously, comes at a bad moment in the culture for guns in general, so that would be the bigger concern here than the completely un-newsworthy revelation that people in the porn industry were snorting cocaine on a Friday night.
Update: A rep for Kink has clarified several things for us. First, it was not actually Acworth depicted in the video, which was shot on January 31, the night before the arrest, in the Armory's basement shooting range. Second, the cocaine possession charge came as a result of a search police conducted for a gun on the evening of February 1 therefore the coke and the guns were not part of a single incident. Third, Joshua Carlberg, the man arrested at the same time as Acworth, is a security guard for the Armory, and he was charged with delaying arrest. Again, they reiterate, there were no gun charges filed.
