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Who is
Bruce Nickerson
Advice for Surfing the Internet
Lewd Conduct Police Sting
High Court Backs Gays
Double standards, falsehoods and ignorance of the law make
Lewd Conduct Arrests Questionable
How to Safely
Cruise in Public
Lewd Conduct Cases
Primer for Attorneys
My focus is on lewd conduct issues relating to public cruising. I also concentrate on cruising on the internet, and possession of erotic materials including the use of computers.
I am devoted to the legal problems that Gays encounter because of their sexuality
LAW OFFICE
OF
Bruce W. Nickerson
Your
Right to Privacy
Double Standards, Falsehoods and Ignorance of the Law make
Lewd Conduct Arrests Questionable
(Reprinted
from the March 2003 issue of Orange County & Long Beach BLADE Magazine)
Nickerson invited all other men arrested since 1995 to join in the lawsuit, stating, in the "Modesto Bee," "This complaint is for all those closeted residents of Modesto who don't want to come forward, but who nonetheless have been discriminated against."
"For a long time being gay was criminal," Nickerson says. Mat is, having private consensual sex was a crime. Our state and many states finally saw the light and decriminalized it; but the police, who were never enthusiastic about this, have used the lewd conduct laws to continue to make criminals out of persons who, if their conduct were heterosexually-oriented, would not be arrested. It is an extension of the old prejudice, of the old second-class citizen. It is creating a large body of persons. whose entire careers are compromised because they have a sex crime against them."
Police sting operations still occur in California and throughout the United States, but some counties with higher arrest rates have been "exposed" to Nickerson.
"In my area, they just don't do [sting operations] anymore," he says. "I live in San Mateo County, and we haven't had one here in 10 yrs. It has been quite a while in Main and Santa Cruz too. In Santa Clara, I won a six-figure judgment from the city of Mountain View in a Supreme Court case. San Francisco was cleaned up before my time. But I don't think there will be many more in Modesto after the $1 million class-action suit I filed a couple of months ago after their sting operation was ruled illegal. When they have to pay through the nose, they stop doing it," Nickerson said in a March 19, 1999 "OC Weekly" article. He reaffirmed this in a recent interview. "[If you do it en masse, win some cases and then sue the arresting agency [for false arrest], then you'll put a stop to it. It can be done."
"They haven't stopped in Stanislaus County because they love gays, or Contra Costa County, or Kern, one of the most homophobic ones around. They stopped because they had to pay money as a result of lawsuits - not because of acquittals on this type of thing."
Section 647(a) of the California State Penal Code makes it a crime to solicit or engage in lewd conduct in a public place. Section 647(d) outlaws loitering in or near a public restroom for the purpose of soliciting or engaging in any lewd or unlawful conduct. The offenses are misdemeanors, essentially disorderly conduct
"However, because they are sex-related crimes, 647 arrests often carry consequences that go far beyond the terms of what's usually a plea-bargained punishment package consisting of about $1,000 in fines and court costs, three years of probation, picking up trash alongside the freeway, and an order to stay away from the place they were arrested," says "OC Weekly" staff writer Dave Wielenga. "Sometimes punishment includes relinquishing