More than 200 people have been arrested at a known cruising spot in New York City’s Penn Station since June. And advocates are concerned about what appears to be a targeted crackdown on gay people in the city.
According to the local New York news outlet The City, Amtrak Police officers arrested 23 people for “public lewdness” in June as part of a series of sting operations targeting a men’s bathroom listed as a “hot spot” on the gay hookup app Sniffies.
The Legal Aid Society, an NYC-based non-profit legal group, told The City that 20 people were arrested at Penn Station in just a single day in September. And as a result of this crackdown, at least 20 men who were arrested have reportedly been taken into ICE custody.
According to NYPD data, only eight people were arrested for public lewdness in and around Penn Station in the first five months of the year.
An anonymous Amtrak Police officer told another local outlet, The Gothamist, that the agency placed plainclothes officers in bathroom stalls or at urinals and would make an arrest if they suspected any sexual activity.
U.S. representative Jerrold Nadler and three other New York politicians wrote a letter to Amtrak president Roger Harris demanding the agency to stop “identifying and targeting members of the LGBTQ community” and to provide “justification” for the arrests.
These arrests come at an inflection point of rising anti-LGBTQ2S+ sentiment and legislation as well as an increase in ICE raids and National Guard deployment across the U.S.
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