The Town Council in tiny Kittery, Maine unanimously passed a new ordinance restricting private video booths at local porn shops after police said they discovered some men are meeting to have sex in the booths and bathroom of Amazing.net video.
Amazing.net is part of a chain of East Coast stores owned by the Capital Store Chain of New England.
"It came to my attention about a year ago that there were activities there that could be illegal or detrimental to the public health of the patrons," Police Chief Ed Strong told the council Monday night.
A recent story in the Portsmouth Herald reported that Chief Strong was asked to speak to the council about the sex shop after a number of people living nearby complained of finding used condoms, trash and even sex toys along the side of the road. Strong told the council police have also found questionable litter within 100 yards of the store.
To curb the trash and suspicious activity, Beth LaMontagne’s story reported, Strong and Town Attorney Duncan McEachern drafted an ordinance that would restrict the store from having doors on its video viewing booths.
Currently, the store has 16 video viewing booths at the back of the store in a separate room. These booths all have doors that lock from the inside, and the only light is from the television screen in each stall, Strong said.
The story said that to let the council know how serious this health concern is, he described his investigation, which included talking to a former manager of Kittery’s Amazing.net.
Strong said he conducted an undercover inspection of the store in January, sending two plain-clothes officers to look inside the booths with a special light that detects bodily fluid residue.
"They observed what they believed to be large splatters of bodily fluid," on the walls and floor of the booths, said Strong. The officers took samples and sent them to the Maine state lab and on Feb. 13, they reported all the samples contained semen, said Strong.
In addition, the story reported that Strong said the former employee was required to clean these bodily fluids, but was given no instruction on how to properly do so without causing a health risk to himself or future patrons.
McEachern told the council the ordinance was to license and regulate the booths, not eliminate viewing booths. The ordinance also includes a permitting fee of $20, rules requiring the materials used to build the booths are easily washable and fines for noncompliance.
Amazing.net now has 90 days to comply with the ordinance.
