Busy park bench sends four men on trail to jail

Deputies stake out a state park in Port Richey for six hours and arrest four in a sex sting.

By THOMAS LAKE, Times Staff Writer
Published September 26, 2007

This bench in Werner-Boyce Salt Springs State Park in Port Richey was the focal point of the sex sting.
	[BRENDAN FITTERER | Times]

PORT RICHEY -- The salt springs run 320 feet deep. To the east is the movie theater, and to the west is the Gulf of Mexico, and all around are gray fox and manatee, and on the north trail by the still water there is a weathered wooden bench.

The county's vice commander calls it the Hot Bench, and he calls it the Action Bench, and there was at least one time Tuesday when he called it the Bench of Debauchery.

He calls it these names because, for one reason or another, this quiet corner of Werner-Boyce Salt Springs State Park has become one of the county's leading locations to engage in -- or stumble upon -- an open-air sexual encounter.

"I'd say 80 percent of the business in that park during the daytime is the search for gay sex," the vice commander, Lt. Robert Sullivan of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, said Tuesday afternoon.

Naturally, the other 20 percent has some objection. Transactions have been interrupted. Zippers have been zipped with great speed. Complaints have been filed. And so, on Tuesday, Sullivan and his crew launched Operation Mangrove, a sting operation that would put the exhibitionists to shame.

Deputies spent more than six hours staking out the park. They watched as cars pulled into the parking lot, as middle-aged men got out, sat at picnic tables, made eye contact with other middle-aged men, followed each other down the path to the Action Bench.

They made four arrests in the first 90 minutes.

Charged with exposure of sexual organs and unnatural and lascivious acts were Michael Lee Daughtery, 59, of 8213 Reynolds Drive, Hudson; Emmit Coney, 55, of 9810 Kent St., Hudson; Dale W. Oehring, 46, of 9234 Binnacle Drive, Port Richey; and John M. Bell, 42, of 10638 Hibiscus Drive, Port Richey.

Each was held at the Land O'Lakes jail in lieu of $1,000 bail.

The deputies watched dozens of other men walk through the state park, apparently looking for sex, but they could not catch them in the act.

One man of about 60 sat on the Action Bench for quite a long while, holding a suggestive pose. About five other men passed him by. There were no takers.

Around 4:15 p.m., at the end of the operation, Sullivan walked out to the Action Bench. It was surrounded by fan-shaped palmettos and inscribed with a message:

IN MEMORY OF LAWRENCE J. FLEISCHMANN

"Poor Larry," Sullivan said. "His memory is being seriously defiled."

Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified September 25, 2007, 22:18:33]