Police arrested Holden and Mejia on charges of public lewdness, claiming they were spotted masturbating. The two named plaintiffs, Cornell Holden and Miguel Mejia, had similar experiences at the bus terminal in 2014, according to the lawsuit.īoth described standing at a urinal and having a plainclothes officer stand at the urinal next to them, then step back in an apparent attempt to see their hands and genitals. Many had claimed the charges were baseless, brought by officers who targeted men using the restrooms if they perceived them as gay, largely to inflate their arrest statistics. The settlement, announced on the first day of Pride Month, resolves a lawsuit brought by people arrested as a result of the patrols by the Port Authority Police Department. Under a legal settlement entered in federal court Tuesday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will give its new police recruits LGBTQ+ sensitivity training for the next three years and only reinstate the so-called public lewdness patrols at the Port Authority Bus Terminal if approved at the highest levels.
NEW YORK (AP) - The police agency that patrols New York City’s main bus terminal has agreed to stop sending plainclothes officers into its public bathrooms to try and catch people propositioning strangers for sex, a type of sting long criticized by activists as a discriminatory relic of an era of crackdowns predominantly aimed at gay men.
