Now that Vero Beach is being sued for the way the city’s police department conducted its video surveillance of a downtown massage spa during a highly publicized – but legally troubled – prostitution sting, it’s fair to ask:
Was it worth it?
Was it worth all the man hours and money invested by police and prosecutors in an exhaustive, months-long investigation that, to this point, has produced far less than claimed during February’s crime-of-the-century news conference?
Was it worth the relentless public shaming endured by the 160-plus men arrested in this county on misdemeanor solicitation-of-prostitution charges based on secretly recorded videos – footage that two local judges have ruled inadmissible in court because police violated the accuseds’ constitutional rights?
Was it worth the legal fees the city will spend on outside lawyers to defend itself against lawsuits stemming from an operation that now appears to have been as botched as it was overblown?
The city already must contend with one class-action lawsuit, filed in Circuit Court here on May 25 by one of the alleged “johns” – identified in the complaint only as “John Doe” to protect his privacy – on behalf of himself and the other men arrested during the prostitution sting.
The filing was entirely predictable, after County Court Judges David Morgan and Nicole Menz ruled on May 16 that police violated the accused men’s Fourth Amendment rights to privacy when secretly video-recording spa customers in varying phases of undress.
The judges’ video-suppression orders put a serious dent in the state’s felony cases against the massage-spa operators and made it difficult to prosecute the solicitation cases against the men.
As a result of those orders, in fact, the State Attorney’s Office has offered the men a diversion program by which the misdemeanor charges against them may be erased.
But the rulings by Morgan and Menz did something else: They provided the impetus, as well as legal arguments, for lawsuits challenging the way police executed the court orders that permitted the secret surveillance.
Twice in his complaint against the city, the unnamed plaintiff quoted from Menz’s ruling, in which she deemed “unacceptable” the police’s failure to minimize the invasion of privacy of innocent spa customers who were watched and video-recorded while getting massages.
Future plaintiffs might also cite Morgan’s ruling on the Sheriff’s Office’s video surveillance of the East Sea Spa in the Sebastian area. The judge wrote that he had “strong doubts as to whether any of the investigating detectives understood the constitutional issues inherent in this type of warrant.”
Both Morgan and Menz described video surveillance as the most intrusive investigative tactic used by the government, which makes it imperative that police resort to such measures only when necessary and, when they do, strictly adhere to the court orders that legally allow them.
As we’ve seen in this case, the consequences of any missteps can be devastating – to both the police, whose cases are now in jeopardy, and the accused men, whose reputations have been damaged by news outlets that continue to post on their websites the solicitation suspects’ names and mugshots.
In his suit against the city, the plaintiff, who has pled not guilty, claims to have been “subjected to public humiliation by incessantly published photographs and references in the press and media” and “suffered emotional upset, depression, loss of self-esteem and other damages as a result of this unlawful, unconstitutional conduct” by the police.
The suit also claims the police’s actions “were taken without regard for the risk of public defamation” of the accused men, and that the police “relished in the aftermath of this operation and enjoyed the publicity.”
The plaintiff’s Fort Pierce-based attorney, Brad Jefferson, said he expects other plaintiffs to join the lawsuit.
The city has hired an Orlando law firm that is seeking to have the case transferred from state court to federal court – a move Jefferson said he won’t oppose. William Lawton, the city’s lead attorney, did not return a message left at his office.
Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey and Mayor Val Zudans both declined to comment on the lawsuit. However, Zudans wrote in an email that he has “full trust in the men and women who risk their lives on a regular basis to serve and protect our citizens.”
Certainly, we should applaud Vero Beach’s police for shutting down a prostitution ring that was doing business at the East Spa on 14th Avenue – an effort that led to the Sheriff’s Office doing the same to the East Sea Spa in the Sebastian area.
Law enforcement’s job is to protect and serve, and the Vero Beach police rid the city of a criminal enterprise that posed a health risk to our community. Good for them.
Unfortunately, though, the police didn’t stop there, opting to chase a suspected human-trafficking operation that allegedly was providing the local massage spa with sex slaves for prostitution.
So what should’ve been a two-day prostitution sting grew into a five-month investigation that included six weeks of nonstop video surveillance and culminated in a mid-February raid and screaming-headlines news conference.
Since then, however, local law enforcement’s roar has been reduced to a whimper.
Police mistakes have been uncovered. Video evidence has been excluded. Felonies have been plea-bargained down to misdemeanors. Prosecutors are offering new deals to the accused men. And, as of Monday, only one woman still faced a human-trafficking charge.
Now, the first lawsuit has been filed, and nobody knows how many more will follow or what the ultimate cost to the city will be.
Was it worth it?