Judge rules Long Beach Police illegally targeted gay men in sex sting operation
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled against the Long Beach Police Department in a case where officers were accused of discriminating against gay men by ensnaring them in a homophobic sex sting operation.
Rory Moroney filed a lawsuit against the police department after he was charged with lewd conduct and indecent exposure in October 2014 when an undercover male officer lured him into the restroom at a public park then coaxed him into masturbating, only to cuff him as soon as he did. If charged, Moroney would have been added to the sex offenders roster for the rest of his life.
But, Moroney pleaded not guilty and hired one of the most well known lewd conduct lawyers in the nation, Bruce William Wilkerson, which was a good move, as Judge Halim Dhanidina invalidated Moroney’s arrest on Friday, ruling that the LBPD’s tactics were “tantamount to discrimination” and “indicative of animus toward homosexuals.”
“The presence and tactics of the decoy officers actually caused the crimes to occur,” Dhanidina said.
Although the police tried to justify the sting by citizen complaints about lewd conduct in men’s public restrooms, but failed to provide any evidence of the complaints. The judge ruled that officers had “intentionally targeted men who engaged in homosexual sex” simply because they were homosexual.
In a statement, the LBPD called the ruling “unexpected.”
“We are 100 percent committed to civil rights and equality for all people, including the LGBTQ community,” Police Chief Robert Luna said. “Our department has many openly gay and lesbian employees who are a critical part of our team.”
After the ruling, Nickerson told press the case “should send a message to police in the rest of California not to do these kinds of ridiculous, silly, sting operations,” while Moroney felt proud of standing up for the queer community saying, “it was really hard to come out and be the voice, but I had to do it because I believe that Long Beach is discriminating against gay men.”
Injustice any where is a threat to justice everywhere. Recently Long Beach Superior Court Judge Halim Dhanidina (Ha Leam, Da da dean a) said the Long Beach is discriminating by intentionally targeting and convicting innocent gay people.
That means that some government law enforcement people make discriminatory plans to target ,stalk, trap, and arrest innocent people. Then the prosecutors psychologically destroys these innocent people by getting them falsely convicted as sex offenders. Falsely accused and convicted these innocent gay people have to register as sex offenders which makes them look like pedophiles and that destroys their reputations which causes them to lose their jobs, lose their families, their friends and they end up on the streets where they can kill others or themselves or be killed.
This is proof that some government law enforcement people are vigilantes who make criminals out of innocent people by their discriminatory planning, stalking , harassing, and trapping innocent people. That kind of behavior by law enforcement and the people who work with them not only destroys the peoples belief in the legal system but also destroys the peoples belief that they will ever get any kind of real justice from the legal system.
I have respect for law enforcement people who do their jobs to help all people, get real justice. There now needs to be an investigation done to search out and discover who the people are in government law enforcement who destroy innocent people by their discriminatory planning, stalking, harassing, trapping and oppressing innocent people.
You are now asking for more money for law enforcement after they have been wasting countless tax dollars on discriminatory planning, stalking, trapping and convicting innocent people, when they should have been arresting real pedophiles, like Catholic priest who rape children. Now is the time for real justice and equality.