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“Honestly, how can I predict what you’re going to do?” she said. There’s also no guarantee that they would have sought sex in the first place had they not run into the undercover deputies. And she noted that these men weren’t arrested for having sex in public - they were arrested for agreeing to have sex that never happened, and how could they have predicted whether anyone would have seen them? To her, it appears that the Sheriff’s Office is targeting certain locations, regardless of who’s having sex there, rather than gay men.īut it concerns her that these operations were conducted without any complaints from the public. Snider, a former New York Police Department officer, used to work undercover prostitution operations. Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said Florida’s law seems too broad. “It’s almost like the police take that position, that they know they are going to be able to get a fish on the hook,” he said. The maximum punishment is up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.Īmarosa, the defense attorney, said all of his clients had been approached by undercover deputies, not the other way around, which felt like a potential overstep. The first offense is a second degree misdemeanor. In plain English, it means going to a place with the intent of having public sex or patronizing sex workers. The men arrested in these stings typically face a charge of entering or remaining in a place for the purpose of prostitution, lewdness or assignation.ĭespite its name, that charge doesn’t always involve prostitution, nor is it a sex crime that would require those convicted to register as sex offenders. The Sheriff’s Office said it hadn’t received any recent complaints, either.ĭefense attorney James Amarosa, who has represented several men accused in such cases, put it bluntly: “I believe they’re targeting homosexual men.” Explore all your optionsīut a county spokesman said the parks and recreation department had received no recent complaints about such incidents in the two parks targeted by “Operation Park Cleanup”: Sun City Heritage Park in Ruskin and Sydney Dover Conservation Park in Dover. Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started. The men were exposed to public ridicule, harassment, even threats - and potentially outed to family, friends and coworkers. 18, sending the names and mugshots of all 11 men, ages 37 to 76, to local news outlets and its hundreds of thousands of social media followers. That’s what the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office did in this case on Sept. “If police run across a couple of spring breakers having sex in the dunes, they’re more likely to tell them to go home and get a room, not arrest them and humiliate them by putting their mugshots out in the public.” “People rendezvousing in public places is so common a theme that everyone knows what Lover’s Lane is, Lookout Point and similar places,” she said. Was the Sheriff’s Office criminalizing gay sex? She wouldn’t want to stumble across people having sex in public, but she said it seems like a double standard is at work here. Nadine Smith, the executive director of LGBTQ civil rights organization Equality Florida, called the operations “some sort of time warp” and a waste of taxpayer money. The arrests and the sheriff’s words left experts and LGBTQ advocates wondering: Would undercover deputies have arrested a man and woman for meeting in public and agreeing to have sex? Would this have happened in another public setting - in the parking lot of a nightclub, or on the beach at night? The men are not accused of human trafficking, or forcing themselves on anyone, or crimes involving children.
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The undercover sting dubbed “Operation Park Cleanup” did not target anyone attempting to pay for sex.