A Superior Court judge Friday made sweeping statements about the Long Beach Police Department’s treatment of gay men in the community, saying in a ruling over a lewd conduct case that the department intentionally targets gay men, and that the prosecutor’s office portrays them as “sexual deviants and pedophiles.”

In his ruling, Long Beach Superior Court Judge Halim Dhanidina dismissed the case against Rory Moroney, 50, of Long Beach, who was arrested Oct. 15, 2014, at Recreation Park and charged with one count of misdemeanor indecent exposure and one count of lewd conduct. If Moroney would have been convicted of indecent exposure, he would have been required to register as a sex offender for life.

Detective Raymond Arcala, an undercover decoy in the vice unit, said Moroney was masturbating in one of the park restrooms. Moroney, however, said Arcala’s eye contact and posturing indicated he wanted to have sex and wasn’t offended by the advances.

In dismissing the case, Dhanidina granted a defense motion that the case was based on discriminatory enforcement and prosecution because the Police Department’s vice unit only uses undercover male decoys in its lewd conduct sting operations and targets gay men.

Outside the courtroom, neither prosecutor Arlene Anderson nor Arcala responded to requests for comment.

In an email, City Prosecutor Doug Haubert said: “Until we review the judge’s ruling we cannot know whether there is any basis for believing the police did anything wrong. After we review the transcript we will make a decision and possibly comment.”

The Long Beach Police Department released a statement late Friday saying that it is “taking this court ruling seriously, and will evaluate how we respond to these kinds of complaints.”

In a statement, Police Chief Robert Luna said the department is “100 percent committed to civil rights and equality for all people, including the LGBTQ community.”

‘Powerful message’

Defense attorneys Bruce Nickerson and Stephanie Loftin argued Moroney’s arrest was invalid because, according to jury instructions from a 1979 California case, lewd conduct is only a crime if, among other things, the defendant was in a public place and reasonably knew that his conduct would offend another person present.

Nickerson, in an interview from his office in the Bay Area, said Friday’s ruling sent a powerful message.

“This judge knows discrimination when he sees it,” said Nickerson, who won a unanimous decision in 1996 from the California Supreme Court, which ruled that the Mountain View police discriminated against gay men when the department targeted them for lewd conduct arrests. “His ruling is powerful because it sends a message far beyond this case. It sends a message to police departments throughout the state who do these decoy operations for lewd conduct cases.”

Loftin said she has been trying lewd conduct cases for 25 years, and Dhanidina’s ruling was the first time in Long Beach court history that a judge has granted a motion for dismissal based on discriminatory enforcement, known as a Murgia motion.

Judge’s ruling

In his 17-page ruling, Dhanidina commented not only on the Moroney case, but also the Police Department’s overall tactics for investigations and sting operations of alleged lewd conduct. In its discovery request, the defense received 10 police reports dating to 2013 and also called Arcala, Sgt. Eric Hooker, Officer Eduardo De la Torre and Detective Kevin Ong as witnesses.

During their testimony, Hooker, De la Torre and Ong said they had arrested about 55 men for lewd conduct in the past two years.

In its statement, police officials said the vice unit investigates lewd conduct based on reported locations, not based on individuals, and only conducts investigations when it receives citizen complaints.

“Sexual activity in a public place is illegal and the department will continue to educate the community regarding this issue, and enforce the law,” the department said, adding that all officers are trained to police without bias.

Dhanidina, however, said that the Police Department’s claim that lewd conduct cases are driven by complaints “is not supported by the evidence” and that the prosecution’s claim that the “discriminatory practices” in targeting the gay community are in the best interest of the community are without merit.

Although the officers testified and wrote in their reports that they only acted as a neutral observers, “the facts suggest otherwise,” the judge wrote. They engaged in repeated nonverbal communication with their “targets, including head nodding, smiling, exchanging glances, and prolonged eye contact, all of which would be highly unusual for a person intending to use the restroom for normal purposes,” Dhanidina said.

The evidence in this case led the judge to believe that the Long Beach Police Department “harbored animus toward homosexuals in its undercover investigations of lewd conduct.”

Prosecutor criticized

Regarding the Moroney case, Dhanidina criticized Anderson for her legal strategy.

“The only other way the prosecution could justify the discriminatory prosecution in this case would be to show that the singled out group, men who engage in homosexual sex, constitute a ‘criminal organization’ or ‘gang of lawbreakers’ with certain ‘criminal proclivities,’ ” he said. “This position only finds support in the rhetoric of homophobia that seeks to portray homosexual men as sexual deviants and pedophiles.”

In his closing remarks, Dhanidina said, “The arbitrary enforcement of the law as seen in this case undermines the credibility of our legal system, eroding public confidence in our ability to achieve just results. This court is determined to do its part to prevent this from occurring.”