July 22, 2004
Pigs will be pigs
So, at lunch time today I was driving the Pig Mobile through Ybor City when a police car jumped on my curly, slow moving tail. I didn’t think much of it - just kept rolling down 7th Avenue, Piggies a gruntin’, pedestrians smiling and laughing. Then the cop hit his siren. He was pulling the Pig Mobile over!
Actually, I kinda figured he just wanted a closer look, but what he wanted was a closer listen. See, the Piggies emit their grunts through 4 marine grade speakers mounted under the van. They’re not earth shattering, but they do the job. And today, 2 speakers were out of commission, so the grunts were not all that loud at all.
Anyway, after considering and rejecting the absolutely massive free publicity that would result from a police chase followed by a fiery crash and impressive explosion, I pulled into a nearby parking lot and jumped out of the Pigs to see what the TPD wanted with me.
I smiled and approached the officer with a hearty “How ya doin’,” or some other equally innocuous greeting. He was out of his car and talking before I could catch a breath.
“You’re gonna have to turn those noises off,” sez officer friendly.
“Huh?!?”
“There’s a state ordinance that makes it illegal to emit a loud noise from a car.”
“Hmmmm. Is this statute based on a certain decibel level? Do you have a noise meter? Have you measured the decibel level coming from my vehicle?”
“85 decibels is considered excessive, and you are way over that. If I can hear you from a car length away, you’re too loud.”
“So, you’re gonna write me a ticket?”
“I’ll let you off with a warning. This time.”
“!?!”
“You have a right to express yourself and all, but...”
“Thank you officer. Have a nice day.”
Now, most cars, idling, can be heard form a car’s length away. This seems like a rather arbitrary enforcement of an ordinance that is probably aimed at teenage boys and their boom box automobiles - earth shaking bass that can rattle houses from blocks away.
I returned to the Pig Mobile and watched the cop turn around and exit the parking lot and leave the area. I thought about the situation, and my right of free speech, and the fact that the cop obviously had no way to scientifically measure the sound output of the piggies.
I decided that he was a typical fascist bully who decided to silence a message he didn’t agree with. I mean, he was like the first person all day who hadn’t smiled at the his first glimpse of the Pig Mobile. He’d probably seen us around town earlier this week, knew exactly what our message was, and, like most unimaginative people in a position of power, he decided that the best way to deal with a threatening truth was to squash it through intimidation and violence.
I turned the Pig’s grunts up as loud as they would go, and cruised Ybor for another 2 hours, hoping to run into the cop with the hatred of free speech. He never came back out of the hole he must’ve crawled into, because I had no other problems.
I passed cops on foot, on horseback, and in cruisers, with windows down and up, in Ybor and other parts of Tampa. None of them so much as batted an eye, and plenty of them had ample opportunity to approach me about my volume. Instead, most of them laughed. The rest just ignored me.
Officer K. A. Howell of the Tampa Police Department apparently doesn’t like our message. That’s his right, but he shouldn’t use his badge to suppress our right fo free expression.
I’m gonna go and get those broken speakers fixed tomorrow :~)
Posted by Norwood at July 22, 2004 11:42 PM