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Worst Of Jobs: Disrupting The Cycle Of Sleaze

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Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 21, 2008

Not that this is information you really need to know, but it would appear - perhaps in a cost-cutting move - that the producers of hard-core pornography have decided to do away with extraneous and needless time-wasting filmmaking devices such as plot and dialogue.

Up on the screen at a quaint establishment called Buddies Adult Video, men are doing things to each other that defy most laws of engineering, orthopedics and, certainly, good taste.

"Boys Town" this is not. But Tampa police Detective Mark Dinsmore, a 26-year veteran of the force, thought it would be a swell idea for me to experience what he and his undercover partner, Mike Victor, have been dealing with for the past six weeks in an intensive operation to attack some mighty naughty behavior going on in Drew Park.

"Uh, what do I do if I get groped," I nervously asked Dinsmore.

"I'll let them grope you for a minute and then I'll arrest them," the cop said, smiling. How comforting.

As fate would have it, it was Victor who was getting groped a few rows back in the pitch-black darkened theater, which would never be confused with Radio City Music Hall.

Upon entering the theater, Victor had noticed one of the patrons of the arts with his pants down around his ankles masturbating. Within moments the man had moved next to the detective and began aggressively rubbing ..., well, let's just leave it at that.

"I was getting ready to pull my badge, it was that bad," Victor later recalled.

Suddenly the theater was filled with officers waving flashlights, as 57-year-old James Laird of Wesley Chapel was escorted from the building, to be charged with lewd and lascivious behavior and exposure of a sexual organ.

Are you beginning to get the impression that this is probably the worst job in law enforcement? And if you aren't, stick around. Bad word choice, perhaps.

Since May 1, the Tampa Police Department has been engaged in an intensive $130,000 effort - which might be dubbed "Operation OH-MY-GAWD!" - aimed at bringing the various adult-use businesses that fester in Drew Park into some form of compliance with city decency codes.

To date, counting the Thursday night busts, Dinsmore and Victor, aided by officers from other units in the police department, have made at least 108 arrests, mostly for lewd and lascivious conduct.

Public, Private, Secret Lives

The net has been wide and embarrassing. To date, Robert Linger, who was vice president and general manager of WTVT, Channel 13, and Victor Martinez, a well-known Tampa lawyer, have been charged with lewd and lascivious conduct and exposure of a sexual organ.

As well, the cops have nabbed businessmen and even a doctor from Miami. Indeed, Dinsmore noted that about 60 percent of those who have been arrested have come into the Drew Park hoochy-coochy scene from outside Hillsborough County.

If you're wondering why men engage in such tawdry behavior, putting their lives, their reputations, their career at such high risk, neither detective had a definitive answer.

"It's all walks of life," Victor said. "People have a private life, a public life and a secret life."

And both detectives agreed that although the charges imposed on these offenders are misdemeanors, in some cases, this sort of behavior can mark the first step on the road to becoming a sexual predator, which might explain why the city is willing to spend $130,000 to disrupt the cycle of sleaze.

Part of that money allows undercover officers to buy an $11 ticket to enter Fantasy Land on North Lois Avenue.

This time Victor was accompanied by undercover narcotics Detective Stephanie Haley, and the two posed as a young couple.

The piece of cinema verite on-screen made "91/2 Weeks" look like "Heidi."

But the real drama was taking place in the audience of film lovers.

Earlier, in another, smaller theater within the Fantasy Land building, a middle-aged man had exposed himself in front of Victor and Haley, who had now moved to a larger auditorium. So had the middle-aged man.

After about 30 minutes of watching a movie that made "Last Tango In Paris" look like "Driving Miss Daisy," a man who appeared to be in his late 30s stood up behind the couch where Victor and Haley were sitting and began to masturbate.

Soon he was joined by the man from the first theater and another older male, all exposed, all fondling themselves in a loose semicircle around the cops. The man behind the couch was standing only inches from the back of Victor's head when Haley asked if he intended to consummate the moment on her "boyfriend."

"That would be a beautiful thing," the man replied, suggesting perhaps that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Okay, now do you agree this is the worst job in law enforcement?

Before life could get any more beautiful, Tampa police officers flooded into the theater, arresting Michael Hubbard of Hudson, John McThune of Tampa and Jesus Miranda Morels of Lakeland. By now, you've figured out the charges.

Proving that law school probably isn't a career option, McThune insisted to Dinsmore that he didn't think he was committing a crime. "Not really; I wasn't bothering anybody," he argued. "Nobody was around."

Not quite, Dinsmore explained. McThune had exposed himself in a theater filled with people. Doesn't that bother him? Doesn't he think it's wrong?

"Now it does," McThune sighed as he stood handcuffed in a parking lot.

A mortified Hubbard - Mr. Everything is beautiful - who said he had been married for 12 years, "until now, maybe," added that he was supposed to be in Gainesville for a business meeting instead of one of Tampa's seedier neighborhoods. "I'm just stupid."

And Morales, at 69, insisted he couldn't possibly have committed a crime because of the "limitations" of his age. But he still went to jail, probably for giving it the old college try.

Efforts Show Progress

So far, since May 1, "Operation Put That Away, Now!" has resulted in the closing of at least eight coo-coo-ca-cho establishments. Prostitution arrests have dropped to almost zero.

Dinsmore drove past one of the closed businesses, XPosed, which had a sign reading "We are open for business."

"You are not open for business," he said with a smile.

"Do we have enough cuffs?" one of Dinsmore's officers asked before heading back out into the night.

More than enough. And plenty of anti-bacterial hand lotion, too.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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