Sex offender caught masturbating in King County Sheriff's Office He was in the sheriff's office Seattle lobby registering ... as a sex offender

King County Sheriff's Office patrol car, pictured in a file photo. King County Sheriff's Office patrol car, pictured in a file photo. Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Sex offender caught masturbating in King County Sheriff's Office 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A 50-year-old man indulged his impulse to stimulate himself in possibly the worst location last month.

Prosecutors say Anthony Hardison was in the lobby of the King County Sheriff's Office in downtown Seattle last month registering as a sex offender when a sheriff's office employee found him masturbating.

The incident occurred Aug. 12, a week after Hardison was sentenced on two counts of indecent exposure with sexual motivation for showing his genitals to bus drivers.

Hardison went to the office in the King County Administration Building on Fourth Avenue that morning to turn in some documents, according to Detective Wendy Billingsley's report. There in the lobby, the detective said, an employee caught him "intentionally mak(ing) an open and obscene exposure of his penis."

The employee reported she was "shocked, angered and disgusted" by the display.

The act was also caught on security footage, which Billingsley says shows that Hardison masturbated in the lobby.

The employee checked Hardison's identification through the documents he turned in to her and the identification he showed her.

In addition to the bus masturbation for which he was most recently sentenced, Hardison has exposed himself to Metro bus drivers on at least two previous occasions.

"Mr. Hardison presents a pattern of publicly exposing himself and masturbating to adult women in positions of authority," Billingsley wrote.

His most recent sentence was six months, but received credit for time served. Billingsley reported that the conviction required him to obtain a sexual deviancy evaluation. As of late August, Hardison did not appear to have received an evaluation or enroll in court-ordered sexual deviancy treatment, records indicate.

Hardison was also charged for a cocaine possession incident that also occurred in August and awaits trial on an unrelated third-degree assault case from a February incident.

He remains jailed on $100,000 bail.

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