Judge Refuses To Dismiss Warm Sands Sex Sting Charges In Palm Springs

An Indio judge today refused to dismiss charges against 14 men arrested in a sting operation targeting public sex in the Warm Sands neighborhood of Palm Springs.

Attorneys for the men claimed Palm Springs police unfairly targeted gay men and used discriminatory language during the June 2009 operation.

During closing arguments of an eight-day hearing on the dismissal motion, defense attorneys contended that Palm Springs police were intent on running gay men out of Warm Sands.

“They are obsessed with getting the gay guys,” attorney Roger Tansey said

Another defense lawyer said no police records supported the idea that Warm Sands residents were complaining about men having gay sex in public, as police claimed after the June 2009 sting.

Read Reaction From The Palm Springs Police Officers’ Association

“There was a multi-day sting directed at gay men when the crime pattern had nothing to do with gay men,” Joseph Rhea said.

Superior Court Judge David B. Downing said, however, he was convinced by the testimony of former Palm Springs Police Chief David Dominguez and other officers that police were not acting in a discriminatory way against gay men.

The sting involving decoy police officers occurred over four days in June 2009 in a parking lot outside a Warm Sands resort that has a predominately gay clientele.

The controversy surrounding inappropriate police behavior cost Dominguez his job and changed city policy concerning police operations. Dominguez has admitted using insensitive language the night of the sting. He later apologized and resigned.

A videotape of officers taken the night of the sting captured Sgt. Bryan Anderson making what was described as a discriminatory remark against gays. Anderson testified during the hearing that he made the remark to ease tension among the officers, and he did not intend it to be disparaging to anyone.

Only three complaints about gays in Warm Sands were lodged with police, and the only one documented was an e-mail from Bill Burgess, a member of a neighborhood group, according to testimony at the hearing.

Burgess said in his e-mail he was worried about the “sex trade,” and he testified that he meant prostitution, although police took that to mean gay prostitution.

Burgess “completely disavowed the sting, and didn’t like being used as the rationality for it,” defense attorney Mark Foster said today.

Dominguez testified during the hearing that he did not mean to degrade the men arrested in the sting.

“In 31 years, I’ve never seen anything like that in public … I was taken aback … and was offended about that occurring in public and it bothered me,” he said. “It was not directed at anybody, but it came out and it was wrong.”