Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Thomas Rossi, a cop with New Jersey's Palisades Interstate Park Police, is a real piece of work. Dawn came to know of him after reading a New Jersey Star-Ledger report recounting the happy news that Mr. Rossi's arrest of Joseph Mamone on "lewdness" charges was overturned by a state appeals court. "An abiding sense of wrongness pervades this conviction," Appellate Division Judges Clarkson S. Fisher Jr. and Christine Miniman wrote in their joint opinion.

That's putting it mildly.

According to court records, says the Star-Ledger, Rossi arrested Mamone for lewdness at about 2:30pm on June 9, 2004; Rossi testified they had walked down a trail about 25 to 30 feet when Mamone exposed himself and "with his right hand took out his penis and began to masturbate."

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amone testified he is gay, had gone to the park to eat lunch, and noticed Rossi, who "obviously was interested in something to do with me." He testified it was Rossi who suggested they walk into a shady area of the woods, asked him "what are you into," and told him to "take it out." In a twist worthy of a dime-store detective novel, the fact that Mamone is left-handed was a key discrepancy that the court seized upon to indict Rossi's version of the events-- how many guys masturbate with their "wrong" hand, after all!

The appellate judges also noted that Rossi had told "virtually identical" stories in at least 26 other cases. And given that Rossi has arrested more than 100 men for lewdness and has claimed that 99 percent of them masturbated in front of him, the judges were right to question whether it was "believable" for that to happen "without any enticement by the officer at all." They also said it was "difficult to credit" Rossi's claim that he was "shocked." Indeed; Rossi was obviously an adept cruiser used to getting what he was looking for.

The only downbeat in this otherwise inspiring story were comments from some clown named Steven Goldstein with some organization called "Garden State Equality" (presumably a homo organization that for some inexplicable reason aspires to "equality" with straights). Says Goldstein, "The issue is not lewd behavior, which we positively do not condone. The issue here is disparate treatment." Retch. As though "equal" tightassed harassment would be okay. And Dawn can only wonder why any gay group opposes lewd behavior....