[Miami Herald] Miami spring break visitor charged with inciting a riot. His crime was playing music

"Miami Beach charged spring break visitor with inciting a riot. His crime was playing music":

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article250150104.html

Surely, these are trumped up charges.

excerpt:

On the second evening Miami Beach imposed its 8 p.m. curfew as part of a crackdown on spring breakers, an elite police unit crashed one pulsating street party packed with 400 or more people. Police reports describe an out-of-control scene after curfew in a residential area of South Beach — some people jumping on cars, others shattering glass, vandalizing property, trespassing, blocking roadways and smoking weed.

Yet the few arrest reports from that Sunday night incident show police singled out one person as a chief instigator, charging him with inciting a riot — Javon Washington, a 30-year-old from Indiana who recently moved to Miami.

His arrest report, summed up: He was playing music.

Washington, Beach police charge, was “observed playing music from a speaker, enticing those around to engage in unruly behavior.” The report blames him, and his music, for “enticing people to wreck vehicles” and “causing subjects to make obscene gestures toward officers and taunt officers.”

Police confiscated Washington’s speaker, handcuffed him, hauled him away and hit him with a handful of charges: violating a noise ordinance but also four felonies — resisting arrest without violence, breaching the peace, violating curfew and inciting a riot. That last one is a serious crime, a third-degree felony that could carry up to five years in prison on conviction.
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Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article250150104.html#storylink=cpy

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Turley has picked up on this story:

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/03/...i-police-charge-rapper-with-rioting-offenses/

excerpts:

There was rioting in Miami Beach over the last week as spring breakers vandalized property, blocked streets, and attacked police. At least five officers were injured. One of those charged was Javon Washington, 30, faces an array of charges due to his role in playing music and encouraging defiance of the police. I have serious reservations about some of those charges, including resisting arrest without violence (which I have criticized in the past as dangerously ill-defined as a criminal provision).

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Resisting or opposing without violence is incredibly vague and allows for prosecutors to stack on additional charges (which add pressure for defendants to accept plea agreements). What constitutes resisting can apparently be as little as tensing an arm or moving as restraints are being applied. That creates a dangerously fluid and subjective basis for criminal charge, even a misdemeanor.

The most serious charge is the third-degree felony which can lead to up to five years in prison. Yet, the police charges refer ambiguously to “officers observed the defendant enticing the crowd with music from speakers.”

Enticing with music? That seems a pretty dangerous foundation for a serious criminal offense of rioting. Washington made this point, though he seemed to admit to breaking he curfew in an interview where he declared “I’m sorry for breaking curfew. I didn’t start no riot. At the end, I feel like somebody had to get in trouble and since I had the speaker and the big problems were gone, they locked me up.”

I have to agree with Washington on the basis of the riot charges. If the police have evidence of Washington’s rioting, they should produce that evidence. Playing music certainly can breach the peace and gather a crowd. It is not an element to the crime of rioting in my view.
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more at the link