A Tampa convenience store has removed adult products from its shelves after community members raised concerns that the items were visible to children, prompting a broader conversation at the Tampa City Council about what local g overnment can do to address the issue.WATCH: Community and store owner concerned with adult products displayed at Tampa convenience store Tampa store pulls adult products after community pushbackRobert Sherman, chairman of the Black Panthers of Florida, said he went to city council to push for an ordinance targeting the display and sale of sex toys and drug paraphernalia in convenience stores in the community."We're here demanding that the law be enforced, not what we assume, not what we personally feel, but what we assume is the law," Sherman said. "If you want a sex toy, you go to a sex store where it's 18 and older."Sherman said the issue is about more than one store. "I bet you can't go on Davis Islands to find it. So why can we go in my community and find it in every corner store," Sherman said. "If we really care about our youth and about our future, we need to effectively target this ASAP."Days later, Tampa Bay 28 reporter Jada Williams met up with Sherman at the Silver Dollar Foods store on N. 40th in East Tampa."When I first saw it, I was thinking about, what would my daughter see? What would my son see? And so, as a parent, I felt discomfort," Sherman told Williams.Sherman used an analogy to explain his approach to community problems."My favorite analogy is pennies. Everybody overlooks a penny, but every penny adds up to a dollar and if we keep overlooking these pennies, sooner or later, ain't gonna have no dollars," Sherman said. "If we don't pick up your penny and deal with the problem, it accumulates to a bigger problem."At the city council, City Attorney Dana Crosby-Collier responded to a motion from Councilmember Naya Young to explore options for addressing community concerns. The attorney explained that while state law regulates the retail display of materials deemed harmful to minors under Chapter 847, sex toys as an item do not fall under the legal definition of something that is either obscene or harmful to minors under Florida law.Crosby-Collier said state law does require that retail establishments not display books, magazines, or other printed materials whose covers depict content harmful to minors in a way that is on open display or within convenient reach of minors."If there is something like this that is not screened from the minors reach or consumption, then that is a violation of state law," she said. "So there's nothing more that city council needs to do, because it is already in state law."Councilman Guido Maniscalco pressed for options beyond what state law already addresses."Can we, at the very minimum, require retailers, because they're paying for a city of Tampa business license, to say if you have these products, whether they're smoking paraphernalia or adult paraphernalia, that you'd be required to put a sign, block it, put a curtain, put it in the back of the store," he questioned.The attorney said the city's ability to go beyond state statute is limited."We really can't go beyond this, because then the stores are going to say they have a First Amendment protection to display the items unless they fall under the definition of something that is harmful to minors," she said.After the council meeting, where Sherman didn't hear a possible solution from the city, he decided to visit Silver Dollar.He spoke directly with store manager Sam Saeed."I came in the store, not dressed as a panther, as you can say undercover, and questioned," Sherman said. "And once me and him started talking, and I expressed to him our standpoint, he also expressed to me his standpoint."Saeed said the concerns were something he had never considered before."We thought it was a store we could sell what we like, but then how they came by; it's a community. Kids come here, families come here," Saeed said. "That's how we thought, oh, we should think about it. Let's take it out. Let's make it more community-friendly."Saeed said no one had raised the issue before the community group came forward."We've sold it for, you know, countless years, and no one ever said, people come here, don't sell this," Saeed said. "No one brought it to our attention. How they brought it to our attention? Everyone said, oh, y'all sell it, let me buy it. No one really said, oh, we have kids that come here. So when they came in as a group, we're like, oh, they really mean something the kids are more important."Sherman said when he returned to the store after giving Saeed a few days, the changes were visible."He's upgraded. He's clean. He's gotten rid of all the sex toys. He's gotten rid of the paraphernalia, at least what you may assume to be paraphernalia or sex toys, is out of the visible sights of minors and kids," Sherman said. "I said to myself, that's it. This is the unity in the community."Saeed confirmed the products are gone."It's no longer in the store, no longer in the store at all. So we got rid of it," Saeed said.Saeed said the store's relationship with the surrounding neighborhood goes back generations."It's generation after generation before Silver Dollar. It was Mangoes. So even people that used to go to Mango still come to Silver Dollar. So it's just like the grandparents, the kids, the kids' kids," Saeed said. "We can't be nowhere without them."Sherman said the resolution at Silver Dollar is only the beginning and issued a direct challenge to the city."I'm calling out the city of Tampa now. City of Tampa need to step up, open up these parks and recreations, put back the free lunch programs in these parks instead of allowing them to be occupied by drug dealers," Sherman said. "Let's bring imagination and dreaming back to our children."He said the goal is bigger than one neighborhood."It's not just East Tampa. It's Tampa. I want to take this global. It's all our kids. We're all responsible for our kids," Sherman said.Saeed said the store is committed to working alongside the community going forward."We're here with the community, whatever they want to do. We're with them. Where they got our back, we got their back," Saeed said. ...read more read less