New 'Anti-Mob' law, is it unconstitutional?

[Zac T]

Police are supposed to prepare for negative outcomes. The last festival in Tybee island resulted in 80 arrests. It was a festival combining large groups of college-aged adults with drinking and partying. You keep harping on clearing the jail, but isn't it more telling that there were only 5 arrests ( and those aren't even clearly tied to the festival)? Doesn't exactly sound like the evil JSO stormtroopers were doing a good job trumping up charges to fill the jail.

If you'll recall, interviews with Jax Beach officers revealed they were treating the event like July 4th. I guess they must hate Independence Day, too, if preparing for large crowds mixed with alcohol is racist.

Except they don't clear the jail prior to Independence Day or any other event/festival. The jail was also 500 inmates under capacity the week approaching the festival so even if Jax approached 80 arrests similar to the previous festival (which isn't a lot out of thousands of people) the jail wouldn't have come anywhere near capacity.

[jaxoNOLE]

And again, our fears of a racist purge were confirmed when they filled their cleared-out jail with innocent festival attendees, right?

Since I'm too lazy, can someone provide the list of civil rights violations perpetrated by law enforcement on Orange Crush attendees in Jacksonville? How many BLM protesters have been arrested for blocking roadways under the new anti-riot law?

I'm just trying to understand the scope of how many people have been harmed by these specific evil plans by DeSantis, the GOP, and JSO. The point recently being argued in this thread has essentially been, "Law enforcement will use the anti-riot law to unfairly target black people, as evidenced locally by their previous bias in handling the Orange Crush festival." Thousands of black people came to our city for a festival with a history of some organizational issues, but had a good time, peacefully, and very few arrests resulted. I think that's great. It also doesn't scream, "GESTAPO!" about our local law enforcement.

As I've posted previously, the anti-riot law isn't necessary and was written as a pure political tool. But I just don't see any "there" there, yet, in the controversy surrounding it. And with so many watchful eyes on its implementation, hopefully we never will.

[Charles Hunter]

DeSantis wants to skip the usual mediation phase in the lawsuit filed against the Anti-Mob Law.

A lawsuit filed by a coalition of groups, including the Dream Defenders and the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, contends that the law will have a "chilling" effect on protected speech and violates equal-protection and due-process rights.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ordered mediation in the case to begin by Nov. 12 and be completed by Nov. 26.

But in a motion filed Tuesday, lawyers for Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Governor Ron DeSantis said that mediation, commonly ordered by judges, won't be productive.

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/07/14/florida-desantis-mediation-legal-challenge-anti-riot-law-hb1/?fbclid=IwAR1InsnxcC_CNEUS9zrY-sHbOwkuZbXmw-bovTskIWLE_UV4AiBsm2vTHFw#.YPEdCUFUsjE.facebook

Could it be that mediation sessions are private, where a courtroom can have TV cameras?

[BridgeTroll]

Good. Get the lawsuit going... DeSantis wants a yea or nay so we can move forward.  We do however now have good examples of what constitutes a peaceful protest and a "mostly " peaceful protest...

[Adam White]

I don't get why so many appear to have such a hard-on for authoritarianism.

[Snaketoz]

There are many instances in US history where the police/hired goons started riots, that before their actions were peaceful.

[BridgeTroll]

I don't get why so many appear to have such a hard-on for authoritarianism.

I don't get why so many people have such a desire to embrace riots...

[Snaketoz]

Are all protests riots?

[BridgeTroll]

Are all protests riots?

Of course not... are all riots protests?

[JeffreyS]

Police are supposed to prepare for negative outcomes. The last festival in Tybee island resulted in 80 arrests. It was a festival combining large groups of college-aged adults with drinking and partying. You keep harping on clearing the jail, but isn't it more telling that there were only 5 arrests ( and those aren't even clearly tied to the festival)? Doesn't exactly sound like the evil JSO stormtroopers were doing a good job trumping up charges to fill the jail.

If you'll recall, interviews with Jax Beach officers revealed they were treating the event like July 4th. I guess they must hate Independence Day, too, if preparing for large crowds mixed with alcohol is racist.

Their racist rant and doom predicting by publicly stating it was going to be a problem and they were clearing the jail scared businesses into shutting down. It was intentional signaling meant to
Make the festival look bad.

I'll credit the good people attending for the lack of arrests.

[jaxoNOLE]

Can you point me to the racist rant? I don't recall seeing that and would welcome the chance to be informed.

As far as the lack of arrests, yes, the attendees were great and I hope they come back next year. My point is we didn't have trumped up BS charges against them.

[JeffreyS]

If you think "rant" is a dramatic use of alliteration by me to describe the statements of clearing the jail and potential problems of the Orange Crush weekend I could concede that. However I won't concede that the purpose was racist fear mongering. A relatively small festival that Jacksonville could easily handle made into an embarrassment of frightened businesses closing in the face of our visitors.

And in the context of this thread's discussion definitely not the actions of a police force that I want to manage overreaching laws with the idea that they will have the discretion to not enforce the law as written.

If you need me to congratulate JSO for not "Trumping up" charges on law biding citizens ok, kudos. However to me that seems like a low bar.

[bl8jaxnative]

The officials I saw said it _may be_ a problem and specifically pointed to previous events.

Those are reasonable fact based concerns.

I'd be curious who attended past events and who attended this one.  The location may have helped changed things.   Tybee may have attracted a crowd - maybe younger - that was willing to travel to party.  Heck, because they were going to travel they were going to make sure to P A R T Y.

Whereas moving it down into Jacksonville / Jacksonville Beach may have lead to a less attractive travel-for-partying location.  Maybe it caused more locals to attend.   Or maybe both.

If y'll got your complaints off your chest, we may have the potential for fun local event to hold annually.     Potential for some annual events downtown, at that.   Something good can come of this.

[JeffreyS]

Well the stated official's concerns leading up to the event factually scared several Businesses into panicking and closing for the small event. So perhaps they didn't all get the same feel for what was being said as you. I don't really have a problem with them being prepared so much as acting like an event about the third of the size of a Jag game spread out over downtown and the beaches was ever going to be a issue for JSO. Particularly the clearing out the jail line was intended to vilify IMO.   It reminded me of the  Clay county sheriff pretending he may need to deputize people to handle the BLM protesters who as it turns out ignored Clay county. This type of posturing makes me feel like  writing extensive laws just in case the locals want to use them or ignore them when it suits is bad policy.

[jaxoNOLE]

I'll happily agree that the law seems like bad policy. I'm just not sold it's intended to be racist bad policy. Much like you crediting the attendees of Orange Crush for their civil behavior, I attribute businesses closing to the biases of their ownership. Regarding my comment about trumping up charges, I'm not suggesting we give out trophies. I'm pointing out that the fear of potential abuse against festival-goers, citing the actions of emptying the jail and pre-event messaging, never materialized, and maybe we should refrain from drawing similar conclusions about the anti-riot law until the evidence is in.

The concerns have been floated, loudly. There are enough watchdogs on this issue that abusing the application of the law at this point could be quite expensive. With precedent in the use of discretion now being set via the handling of the Cuba protests, law enforcement will have to justify why situation B merited a more aggressive approach than situation A. I personally will withhold my judgment until we see it play out in the real world (assuming the law isn't pre-emptively canned in litigation).