San Jose Cops Still Arresting Gay Men With Undercover Baits {Because of Lawsuit They Will be in Court}
TThe City is being sued so this time the police will be in court as defendants. The County of San Jose still wasting tax dollars going after men in porn shops and parks. The cops as you can see don't mind that at all. The few places that still do this will usually ask for volunteers with certain prerequisites.
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| San Jose cops after booking gays |
A notable gay-rights attorney has filed a federal lawsuit against the San Jose Police Department over undercover lewd-conduct stings targeting gay men more than a year after a judge threw out six cases and deemed the “decoy” operations unconstitutional.
While the complaint filed last week in federal court seeks monetary damages of at least $1 million for the five of the six defendants cleared by the June 2016 ruling of Judge Jose S. Franco, attorney Bruce Nickerson is also seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, and is hoping it will help end the practice by police overall.
Nickerson has made a name for himself over the past 30 years defending gay men caught in the decoy operations where undercover police officers solicit and suggest sex acts in public places like city parks and arrest men who reciprocate interest.
“They’re invalid and discriminatory,” Nickerson said of the stings, “because they target male-male public sex and not male-female public sex.”
San Jose police referred comment about the lawsuit to the City Attorney’s Office, which did not immediately respond to an inquiry by this news organization Thursday.
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| This police cadet just saw a suspect |
The San Jose case at the heart of the current lawsuit involved undercover lewd-conduct stings at Columbus Park, which police said was spurred by citizens’ complaints and their own observations of unlawful activity in the park on Taylor Street between Highway 87 and Coleman Avenue.
Around the same time, the San Jose cases were dismissed, a Los Angeles County judge threw out similar charges involving Long Beach police. Police in Mountain View, San Leandro, and Manhattan Beach have stopped conducting such stings in response to lawsuits over the tactic, which have been argued to be violations of constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and equal protection under the law given the target demographic.
San Jose police suspended the sting operations in late 2015. It was not immediately clear whether they have resumed since, and at the time of the dismissals, police defended the tactic. They contended they were responding to complaints and noted that the bathroom had a hole cut into one of the stall walls for the purpose of facilitating oral sex.
One of the defendants told this news organization last year that the park was a meet-up spot and that any sex with an interested partner would likely happen elsewhere. Nickerson said the undercover nature of the enforcement is what is problematic, arguing that it preys on men struggling with their sexuality and looking for a safe place to explore it without retribution from their families and co-workers.
“The guys that these catches are those who are half in and half out, the most vulnerable. For them this is the only way to explore their sexuality,” Nickerson said. “If they were completely out, they would go to a gay bar. Because they have this need, they go to quasi-public places, and use signals to avoid offending members of the public.”
Nickerson also emphasized that lewd-conduct crimes in California are based on whether the conduct would “offend the observer,” which he said in the case of undercover stings is muted by the fact the decoy officer is expressing — albeit falsely — sexual interest.
“I have no objection to uniformed cops doing patrol,” he said. “But when they go decoy, that’s what makes it invalid.”
The arrests, Nickerson added, can “destroy” the psyches of the men caught in the stings.
“It’s one thing to be arrested. What’s worse is to be arrested and deprived of your liberties because you’re gay,” he said. “That’s essentially what’s going on.”
By ROBERT SALONGA | rsalonga@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
Staff writer Tracey Kaplan contributed to this report.
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