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Saturday, March 27, 2021

It's Spring Break! I'm Being Arrested For Playing My Music Loud!

Miami Beach Police arrest rapper for violating curfew.

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YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID!

You notice that Black people are being treated with lengthy bids in the iron college for minor crimes while white insurrectionists are begging to be released to go on vacation in Mexico. 

Let's use that Midland, Texas flower shop worker who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection which lead to five people killed, hundreds of people injured and millions of dollars of damages. These folks were treated with respect and dignity whereas Black people celebrating spring break in Florida are being arrested and threatened with lengthy bids in the iron college. 

It fucking annoys me that white people are treated much differently than Blacks when they're arrested.

An Indiana man who recently moved to Florida is facing a five year bid for playing his music too loud.

The city of Miami Beach issued a curfew to curb the unruly behavior and the possibility of spreading the coronavirus. The coronavirus has been out of control in Florida and many expect the state to spark another outbreak.

The issues in South Beach include people jumping on vehicles, others shattering glass, vandalizing property, trespassing, blocking roadways and smoking weed (marijuana) in public.

Yet the few arrest reports from Sunday night show the law singled out one black man for the whole ordeal. They decided to charge Javon Washington, 30 known as Jae Murder for inciting a riot.

Washington who lived in Hammond. Indiana is a Chicago-based entertainer found the arrest to be pretty petty to say at least.

They confiscated his 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. The inciting a riot is a third degree felony which could place him in the iron college for five years.

He said it was a small speaker, a $20 dollar flea market used device.

Miami Beach issued a mandatory off the streets curfew the second night of an unruly spring break.

"Literally, he was playing music and they arrested him," the man, who would only give his first name of Kevin, said.

Asked to explain what Washington did to urge people to jump on cars, trespass and fuel the mayhem, Miami Beach Police spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez said the arrest form speaks for itself. The closest Washington's arrest form comes to an explanation is when police say that "officers observed the defendant enticing the crowd with music from speakers."

Miami Beach police have made more than 1,000 arrests since spring break throngs began spilling into the city in early February, a reaction from law enforcement and city political leadership that some Black leaders have criticized as excessive. But Washington's music-driven charges stand out in the dozens of rolling street parties and clashes in the city over the last few months.

It came on the second night of the curfew and only a few hours after city commissioners gathered for an emergency meeting following a Saturday night of chaos on South Beach that again put one of the world's most popular tourist meccas under an unwanted international spotlight.

In early February, the city already had implemented an emergency order that criminalizes some items that most other times are part of the typical tourist kit: backpacks, coolers and speakers. They're all banned on the beach east of Ocean Drive. It's an order that is usually enforced only during "high impact" weekends like spring break and Memorial Day and that draw mostly young, mostly Black crowds.

Only one other person was charged with inciting a riot on Sunday night. That arrest came an hour later and several blocks east inside the Entertainment District, which had been placed under the curfew. According to the arrest report, it had nothing to do with police concerns about music and a large crowd was not involved.

Quamier Nantambu Johnson, 25, was charged after police said he and two friends became abusive and aggressive towards two Miami Gardens police officers helping Beach police enforce the curfew near Collins Avenue and Ninth Street just before 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

According to his arrest report, as Johnson and two friends passed by, he cursed and insulted an officer. When the officer told him to tamp it down and to leave the area because it was after curfew, police said Johnson threatened to harm the officer. Johnson was eventually taken into custody and charged with threatening the officer, resisting without violence, weed possession and inciting a riot.

Johnson, who as of Friday had been released from jail, could not be reached for comment.

Both incitement arrests came as police were pressed into more hands-on action by city leaders who viewed videotape of the bedlam that broke out Saturday, a night earlier, with cops firing pepper balls into crowds that had overturned tables at restaurants and damaged cars and had fights. Even the iconic Clevelander South Beach bar and hotel was forced to shut down.

This year's spring break has generated plenty of controversy and finger-pointing about what or who is to blame for crowd-control problems — from cheap airfare and pandemic boredom bringing a flood of tourists, to police tactics and city policies that some critics see as biased against Black visitors, to the come-on-down-to-Florida message of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Earlier this week, Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber — who has called for a total reform of the city's Entertainment District — said the measures were necessary for public safety.

Florida is open for business.

"There has been gun play, open brawling and other hazards. And all that in the midst of a pandemic where mask usage and physical distancing seems like an afterthought, if that," Gelber said in a video message. "So we have to implement measures we would prefer not to deploy, but must."

Stephen Hunter Johnson, chair of Miami-Dade County's Black Affairs Advisory Board, believes one group is getting too much of the blame.

"There's an undertone in that somehow all Black people are responsible for the actions of a few people who happen to be Black," Johnson said. "I just don't want the unnecessary scapegoating of Black people."

For others, like Washington, the concern is personal — that the pressure on police to do something about wild weekends produced excessive charges that could cost them work or even wind up putting them in prison.

Washington, for one thing, was charged with breaking curfew — even though the street corner where police took him into custody was west of the Entertainment District boundaries where curfew was imposed. Interim city manager Raul J. Aguila admitted as much but said it was up to the Miami-Dade State Attorney "to determine the prosecution of those charges."

Washington said he moved to Miami from Indiana to further his music career and had gone to South Beach to promote himself and hand out fliers. He acknowledged a past criminal record, saying he had two previous felonies, one a robbery when he was 17 in Chicago.

But now, he said he is scrambling to make a living while pursuing a rap career. He posts his music on SoundCloud like many hopeful artists but said he made his first Miami appearance on stage in December. For now, he said he works multiple jobs, including running food at a Miami restaurant and house painting. An incitement charge, he said, could derail all that. He's already spent several nights in jail from the arrest.

"I don't want the charge on my record," he said. "It would really hurt me a lot."

There was an incident where two men were arrested for drugging and raping a woman. 

There was an incident where a man was accused of groping an older woman.

Each of these incidents were reported in the junk food media.

All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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