Port Authority settles lawsuit accusing cops of targeting gay men in ‘downright creepy’ bus terminal restroom busts

Port Authority cops will no longer be the bathroom police, after settling a class action lawsuit that accused officers of targeting gay men for bogus lewdness arrests in its Midtown bus terminal’s restrooms.

The lawsuit, filed in 2017, contended that the agency’s cops were following gay and bisexual men and gender nonconforming people into the Port Authority Bus Terminal bathrooms in a cynical and biased attempt to boost quality-of-life arrest numbers.

Some Port Authority Police Department cops would stare over the privacy stalls at men they believed to be gay while they’re using the urinal, and even expose themselves to try and get a lewd reaction from their targets, according to lawsuit. Once the men left the bathroom, they’d be arrested by a team of PAPD officers.

“This kind of blatant homophobia has no place in policing, and the reforms achieved in this lawsuit aim to safeguard against future abuses,” said Molly Griffard, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society, which filed the lawsuit with Winston & Strawn LLP.

Griffard called the PAPD’s bathroom patrols “discriminatory and, frankly, downright creepy.”

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Cornell Holden, overheard PAPD officers congratulating his arresting officer and referring to him as “the gay whisperer.” He was arrested after a police officer stepped back to look around the privacy wall between urinals to look at his hands and genitals, the lawsuit said.

“No one should have to go through what I went through, and I hope that the PAPD will change as a result of this lawsuit and settlement,” Holden said in a statement Wednesday.

Holden will receive $15,000, while another plaintiff, Miguel Mejia, will get $25,000.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Port Authority has agreed to stop any plainclothes patrols for public lewdness in the bus terminal’s public bathrooms. Single-stall restrooms will now have signs reading that they can be used “by any person regardless of gender identity or expression.”

Port Authority police will also undertake several other reform measures, including LGBTQ+ sensitivity training for all its new recruits.

In a statement, the Port Authority said its police department “has not for years conducted plainclothes operations in the bus terminal’s bathrooms targeting public lewdness, the kind of operations that formed the basis for this now-resolved lawsuit.”