The holes in a women's restroom at Robert K. Rees Memorial Park led to an office used by park workers.
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET, Times Staff Writer
Published January 15, 2005
NEW PORT RICHEY - At first Melody Davis thought they were knots in the wood.
Then, after she stepped out of the bathroom stall with her 4-year-old daughter, Davis realized the two pits in the pale blue panels were not natural marks.
They were peepholes.
"They were carved," said Davis, who went back into the stall and stood on the toilet to get a closer look. "You could see the file marks."
Davis told her mother, Dorothy Meredith, who checked the empty men's room on the other side of the bath house at Robert K. Rees Memorial Park, known to locals as Green Key beach.
No holes.
Then the two women saw the locked door to the tiny park office between the bathrooms.
"That's when my heart sank," Davis said, "because I knew it was a county employee that had done it."
By noon Friday, a day after Davis' discovery, parks workers hung "CLOSED" signs across the bathroom doors so the Pasco County Sheriff's Office could investigate. A forensics team dusted for fingerprints in the closet-sized office and pipe chase, the narrow space for the water and sewer pipes between the men's and women's restrooms.
It appears the peeper stood on those pipes to look through the tiny holes, carved about 10 feet above the floor. It would be difficult to carve them any lower, because the rest of the wall is made of concrete block.
The perch provides a view of the women's restroom, which includes three bathroom stalls and a changing area with a bench.
"We have never, to my knowledge, had any incident approaching a situation like this," said Dan Johnson, the assistant county administrator for public services, which includes parks. "We are taking it very seriously. We are embarrassed by this situation."
The county will take action once the Sheriff's Office investigation is complete, Johnson said.
"We will do everything possible to correct the situation - not only to make sure it never happens again, but to identify who was responsible for it and take the appropriate action," he said Friday.
It took a day, however, for Davis and Meredith to get that response.
The women said they complained to a parks worker Thursday after discovering theholes.
"He said, "I don't usually work at this park,"' Davis said. "Not, "Oh, my God,' or "Where are they?' or "Let's go see.' He was not shocked at all."
Then Davis called the Sheriff's Office, but she said the dispatcher told her she had to complain to the parks department. That made her uneasy, Davis said, because she didn't know whether she might be complaining to the culprit.
Sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said the agency would have responded if Davis saw someone spying on her. But no one caught the peeper in the act.
That means deputies are looking at a case of criminal mischief: damaging the park bathroom wall. The county parks department is the victim, he said.
"At this point it is criminal mischief, unless we can discover more evidence of a different crime, such as voyeurism," Doll said.
The agency responded Friday after the parks department requested an investigation. By then, Davis had sent e-mails about the peepholes to Johnson and the County Commission.
Johnson declined to tell the Times how many employees have keys to the park office. The county tries to have someone there during park hours, from sunrise to sunset, but several workers share the duties, he said.
"We're not talking about a standard 40-hour week," Johnson said. "It's typically 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and that's why it takes more than one person to cover it."
Officials have no idea how long the holes have been there. County records show the beach house was built in 1989.
At one point the sandy beach had a seedy side. About a dozen men were arrested in a series of undercover stings at the park in 1997, after the Sheriff's Office received complaints of men engaging in sex at county parks.
The women who reported the peepholes hope the authorities find this culprit, too.
"That's a big deal, somebody for the county working there, watching people change and watching little kids," Meredith said.
Bridget Hall Grumet covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is bhall@sptimes.com
