A class action lawsuit has been filed against police officers with New York and New Jersey Port Authority over targeting gay men who use bathrooms at New York City's main bus terminal using baseless charges of exposure and public lewdness.
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"The PAPD have continued to make such targeted arrests knowing or believing that most of those arrested will ultimately be forced to plead to lesser charges to avoid public embarrassment and humiliation, costly legal fees, and jail sentences, as well as reputational and professional harm associated with the false charges," the lawsuit filed Monday said.
It claims that plainclothes agents at Port Authority would pretend to use the urinals in the bathrooms next to men they thought were gay and then stare at the suspects over privacy dividers.
Also in some cases the police officers would "actually step back from the urinal in order to see around the privacy wall, in an effort to view the target's hands and genitals," according to the lawsuit.
As they leave the men’s bathrooms, the officers would then arrest the suspects and charge them with illegal conduct the complaint said.
Plaintiffs argued that Port Authority police discriminated against men based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation in order to increase quality of life arrest statistics.
The class action lawsuit, filed at a federal court by Legal Aid Society and the law firm of Winston & Strawn, seeks an end to the practice as well as economic compensation for those who were targeted.
"The use of police assets and resources in this unconstitutional and unconscionable way is particularly stunning in light of the world in which we live," Thomas Patrick Lane, of the lawyers on the case, said according to the Associated Press.