Police crack down on gay cruising at parks

If Citrus Heights police get their way, trips to the park no longer will be X-rated.

The Police Department has declared war on "cruising," or the practice of seeking anonymous gay trysts in public areas.

Cruising has been a mainstay at many Sacramento area parks, according to law enforcement officials and Web sites dedicated to the practice. Among the most popular is Tempo Park, according to the Citrus Heights police and San Juan Recreation and Parks District officials.

Tucked into a residential Citrus Heights neighborhood, Tempo Park is a popular place for local soccer teams with its large fields that host league play. The park is separated from the surrounding neighborhoods by a wooded area.

Michelle Fuller wishes she had known about Tempo Park's popularity among cruisers.

Fuller was in the park near Fair Oaks Boulevard on a Saturday outing with her children in November.

As she ate lunch on a park bench, she noticed a man leave his parked car and disappear into the bushes.

Then, she saw another man get out of a car and follow.

What she saw next shocked her.

"When he got to the bushes, I could see the first guy (perform a sex act on the other man)," she said.

The crackdown on cruising comes with the Citrus Heights Police Department's pledge to focus on blight crimes throughout the city.

"Certain things cross a line," said police Commander Mark Boettger. "It affects places where children and families should be able to go without fear or concern of finding a needle or a finding a condom."

Boettger said his department received complaints about cruising in many of the city's parks before sting operations were started.

Many Web sites dedicated to cruising have Citrus Heights parks listed and rated.

One such site lists Tempo Park as a "nice little cruising park with cover for activity."

On the site, users can post messages warning others of police activity or recommending good times to go.

"This place is great, but only during the day," said one user in July. "The sport teams show up at around 3 p.m., and it isn't a good idea when they are there."

Police Sgt. Eric Dias leads a detail of officers tasked to eradicate the problem. His officers have worked undercover operations in various city parks.

He said his officers look to the Internet for clues as to which parks are hot. Information sometimes comes from people arrested during the decoy operations.

One man arrested at Tempo Park told Citrus Heights Police Department officers that "word on the street" led him there.

Sometimes, Dias' units do surveillance, looking for "the same cars (coming) every day" or "two guys looking like they don't belong together walking out from somewhere."

Officer Eric Gora is part of the police detail. "If you walked into the bushes (at Tempo Park), you'd find condoms," he said. "You'll also get (methamphetamine) baggies and needles."

The bathroom at Tempo Park, where a lot of the cruising action takes place, "is just steps from a playground."

"There's no doors on the stalls," he said. "Kids can just walk in and out."

Jon Davidson is the legal director for Lambda Legal, an organization that works on civil-rights issues concerning the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community and people living with HIV/AIDS. He said his organization has published "The Little Black Book," a guide to cruising from a legal standpoint, since the 1980s.

"The point of the book was to advise people across a wide range of issues on how to be safe (while cruising)," he said. "It's not trying to encourage people to engage in this activity, (it's saying) if you do it, you should be careful."

Davidson said cruising stings unfairly target gay men and often result in charges that are shaky at best.

"Frequently, departments do this when they are trying to get their arrest rate up," he said.

Most often, people arrested in these stings are charged with lewd conduct, he said. But under California law, there needs to be an offended party for such an act to occur.

"If police are doing something to act interested (in someone's advances) and there's no one else around, the police have arrested someone for no crime," he said.

Davidson also said the expenditure of public resources on cruising stings is sometimes frivolous.

He used the now infamous arrest of Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho as an example.

"Given everything else that's a problem at airports, why is there someone in the bathroom all day tapping his toe?" he asked.

Detective Derek Stigerts is part of the Sacramento Police Department's vice unit.

Cruising, he said, is "hardly a priority for us at this point."

"We're more dealing with the victimization of juveniles and prostitution," he said. "But if we get complaints from people, we do go out and enforce it."

He said Del Paso Park and the park at North 10th and Vine streets have been major cruising areas for as long as he can remember.

"I've been a cop for 17 years, and it's been the same," he said. Men who cruise for sex are often "people having issues with their sexuality. They're in a situation where they can't openly live their lifestyle, and they think the best way to do it is out where no one will know them or see them."

Davidson agreed.

"It's men who don't have other sexual outlets and like the fact that it's anonymous because they're hiding," he said. "They're afraid of what would happen if other people knew."

As for Fuller, she said she's interested in getting a Neighborhood Watch together to keep cruising out of Tempo Park.

"I thought about making some fliers and handing them out," she said. "Eventually, they'll get the message not to go there."