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Police Charged with False Arrests of Gay Men at Adult Video Stores
by Andy Humm
February 2, 2009
There has been a sharp increase recently in the number of gay men arrested for prostitution at adult video stores in Manhattan.
Anger is building against the police department in the wake of an
increase in arrests of gay men for prostitution at Manhattan adult
video stores. Last week, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined in
the outcry. She said she is working with the mayor's office and
commanders of the police department to set up a meeting that will
include gay community groups "to get to the bottom of this."
The arrests have been documented by Duncan Osborne of the Gay City
News over the last several months. Police are allegedly using handsome
young undercover cops to cruise middle-aged gay men, offering to go
home with them for consensual sex. As they leave the store together,
the cop offers to pay the man for the sex, confusing the victims who
can't imagine why the younger man would make such a proposal. Then, as
they walk out of the store, the victim, despite never having agreed to
any exchange of money, is surrounded by undercover cops, handcuffed and
charged with prostitution.
Gay activists and civil libertarians see the arrests as part of a
continuing effort to shut down porn operations in the city and a
tendency by the police department to criminalize gay sexual behavior.
We need to see [the arrest policy] stopped and to figure out how it
started," Quinn told Gotham Gazette, calling the arrests of gay men
"the most egregious I have heard of" going back to her days as
executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, which is part of a coalition to stop these arrests. "It's not even entrapment," she said. "These are false arrests."
Recounting the Arrests
Anger over the arrests also brought more than 200 people to a town
hall meeting at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community
Center in January.
Robert Pinter, a 52-year-old gay man who was arrested for
prostitution at the Blue Door in the East Village on Oct. 10, spoke at
the town hall meeting. He said a young man — a 29-year old undercover
cop who, Pinter said, looked even younger — cruised him in the store.
He was "charming and persistent, and we agreed to go home for
consensual sex, but as we were leaving he said, 'I want to pay you $50
[to have sex].' I didn't respond, but I thought it was strange," Pinter
recounted. As the men left the store, Pinter said, a group of men who
did not show police identification pushed him against the wall
"I thought I'd been set up by a gang," he said. "I asked them why
they were doing this to me. I was totally clueless. They handcuffed me
and said, 'Why the f--- do you think we're arresting you — loitering
for the purpose of prostitution.'"
Pinter spent several hours in a police van, more time at the Seventh
Precinct, and "16 or 17 hours in the Tombs," the city jail downtown.
His Legal Aid attorney "strongly suggested I plead guilty to disorderly
conduct," which he did, although he now regrets it. He was also ordered
to go to city-sponsored classes on how to engage in prostitution more
safely.
Most of the victims, some of whom are foreign tourists and almost
all of whom have never been arrested before, have been encouraged by
their lawyers to plead guilty to "disorderly conduct" and end their
ordeal, rather than risk trial on the much more serious charge of
prostitution. But as the arrests have piled up, civil rights and Legal
Aid lawyers have convinced some of the men to fight the charges.
Michael Spiegel, a veteran civil rights litigator, who won a
landmark case in 2006 against the Port Authority police for targeting
and falsely arresting gay men in Port Authority restrooms, is the
process of identifying men caught up in the current sweep who are
interested in fighting the charges. "Their civil rights have been
violated," he said.
The arrests at the Blue Door, Osborne said, "are suspect and
improbable. While overall, 17 percent of men arrested for prostitution
in New York City are over 40 years of age, 66 percent of the men
arrested at this location targeted by police were over 42.
The experience has radicalized Pinter, who founded a Coalition to
Stop the Arrests that meets on an ongoing basis at the LGBT Center. "We
have to hold the NYPD accountable," he said, "and keep the pressure on
until it ends."
Going After 'Nuisances'
At the town hall meeting and in his stories in Gay City News,
Osborne has tied the arrests to the city's aggressive enforcement of
the 1977 "nuisance abatement law." Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and
now Mayor Michael Bloomberg have used the law to sue and close
businesses where alleged "criminal activity is demonstrated." According
to Osborne, such nuisance abatement cases increased from 110 in 1994 to
709 in 1996 to 899 last year, closing everything from chop shops to
unlicensed massage parlors.
"The commander of Midtown South said that civil enforcement is a
police commander's best friend," Osborne said, who noted the city has
had an ongoing effort to shut porn stores.
Following a spate of arrests at another porn shop, the Unicorn in
Chelsea, the city sued to close it, citing the arrests by undercover
officers.
The Police Department did not respond to Gotham Gazette's e-mailed
query after the town hall meeting. Previously, Paul Browne, the
department's deputy commissioner for public information, told Gay City News,
"The fact remains that the locations had become notorious for
solicitation of sex acts, with complaints from the public resulting in
police attention."
Bloomberg's press office refused comment, referring questions to the
police department. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's spokesperson,
Alicia Maxey Greene, also "declined to comment" on the arrests or his
office's prosecution of these cases.
State Sen. Thomas Duane said he has been in contact with the
district attorney's office and placed a call to Morgenthau himself, but
almost a week later had not received a call back from the district
attorney.
Duane, who spoke at the town hall meeting, called for the arrests to
stop immediately. "People's lives are being ruined," he said. He was
noncommittal about whether there should be a criminal investigation
into the police conduct. "We have to take things one step at a time,
"he said.
City Councilmember Rosie Mendez of the Lower East Side issued a
statement criticizing the police for "targeting and criminalizing
behavior that is legal."
"In this instance, they are targeting the sexual conduct of gay
men. This type of targeting is simply the harassment of certain type of
commercial ventures and of potential customers of legitimate
businesses. This type of harassment infringes upon an individual's
civil liberties," she wrote.
At the town hall meeting, some speakers said police use of false
prostitution charges has gone beyond the video stores. Jennifer Ramirez
of the Anti-Violence Project said that police go on the "casual
encounters" section of Craig's List to trawl for potential arrestees.
"The cops go on the assumption that everyone's a sex worker," she
said. "It's not getting better, it is getting worse." As a
transgendered outreach worker, she said, "When I'm out on the street
doing education, I'm perceived [by the police] as a sex worker and I'm
criminalized."
Andrea Ritchie of the Urban Justice Center's Sex Workers Project said police arrest gay and transgendered people for conduct "that would
be ignored or winked at in heterosexual people." African American and
Latino people are particularly at risk, she added.
There was a sense at the town hall meeting that the public outcry
might prompt the police to end their arrests of middle-aged white gay
men on false prostitution charges. However, they said, the wider
problem of police abuse of their arrest powers for gay, lesbian and
transgendered people will continue unless the political leaders
protesting the former look into the latter.