San Diego Police Officers Are Using An Old Sedition Law To Punish People For Swearing Around Cops

It's pretty well established that offensive hand gestures are covered by the First Amendment, even when it's a cop receiving the finger. This free speech has resulted in "contempt of cop" arrests and citations, but there hasn't been a federal court yet willing to recognize a police officer's "right" to remain unoffended. And if the First Amendment is violated by cops in retaliation for flipping the bird, there's going to be some Fourth Amendment violations as well.

Somehow the Constitution hasn't gotten around to removing a terrible law from the books in San Diego, California. In this city, it's still a criminal act to say rude things within hearing distance of a cop. (It's actually illegal if anyone can overhear it, but only police officers have the power to turn something mildly offensive into a criminal citation.)

On the morning of July 15, 2019, Jawanza Watson and a coworker were walking to the coworker’s car after finishing their shifts at Firehouse Bar in downtown San Diego. It was close to 2 a.m.

“I was drunk, you know. I was having a good time. I know that I was feeling myself,” Watson, who now lives in Minneapolis, told VOSD. “And I was rapping a song, but it had cursing in it.”

Watson remembers a police car rolling up slowly beside him and his coworker, windows down. An officer got out and stopped Watson, he said, claiming that the lyrics he’d been singing had been directed at the police.

[...]

The officer wound up giving Watson a ticket for violating section 56.30 of the city code, which reads: “(It) is declared to be unlawful for any person within the said City of San Diego to utter or use within the hearing of one or more persons any seditious language, words or epithets.”

Yes, this law -- which has been in effect since 1918 (the same year the federal government passed its Sedition Act, which led directly to the "fire in a crowded theater" trope) -- is still being used by cops in San Diego to punish people for saying things the cops don't like.

The enforcement of this law appears to be an SDPD crime of opportunity. Records obtained by the Voice of San Diego show the PD has handed out "seditious language" citations 83 times since 2013. The only records containing any information about citizens cited show that 8 of 11 recipients of seditious language tickets in 2018 were Black.

Is it seditious to sing rap lyrics out loud? Is it seditious to direct those lyrics at a cop, as was claimed by the officer citing Jawanza Watson? Of course not. It can only be criminal if it's linked to an "imminent crime" against the government. Being drunk and boisterous in public can be its own criminal violation, but rapping out loud is just free speech. Unfortunately, no one in San Diego has raised a Constitutional challenge yet, allowing the outdated law to live on.

There's been no Constitutional challenge because the cops abusing the law are somewhat smart about it. They downgrade the charge to a criminal infraction, ensuring no misdemeanor paperwork will be filed and make its way to the prosecutor's office. Anything along those lines might result in someone lawyering up and getting this tool of official harassment struck down. Local prosecutors seemed to be about as surprised by the law's existence as the recipients of these tickets.

Hilary Nemchik, a spokeswoman for the San Diego city attorney’s office, which prosecutes misdemeanors, said her office hadn’t been aware police were enforcing a section of the municipal code prohibiting seditious language. She called it “antiquated” and said deputy city attorneys would not prosecute anyone for it.

It's not just one cop's personal toy. The tickets examined by VOSD showed nine different officers had issued seditious language citations in 2018. This includes one citation that sounds like the SDPD considers itself more of a KGB.

Each of the 11 most recent seditious language tickets were written in downtown San Diego — except one, which the defendant received in his own home in southeastern San Diego.

There are a lot of things that define America and swearing in your own home without fear of retaliation from the government is one of them. But not when the SDPD is running things. The law, which was supposed to protect the government from being overthrown, is being used to inflict monetary pain on people who say things cops don't like.