Daytona Beach Disorderly Conduct Attorney - Florida Disorderly Conduct Law, Defenses and Information Florida Statute 877.03

The First amendment protects a significant amount of verbal challenge and criticism directed at police officers. "Speech is often provocative and challenging but it is never the less protected against censorship and punishment unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. Terminiello v. Chicago 337 U.S. 1, 4, 69 S.Ct. 894, 895. In a concurring opinion Justice Powell in Lewis v. New Orleans suggested that even the fighting words exception might require a narrower application in words addressed at police officers because a properly trained officer may reasonably be expected to show a higher degree of restraint than the average citizen and thus be less likely to respond belligerently to fighting words. Lewis v. New Orleans, 415 U.S.130 at 135.

In the face of verbal challenge to police action, officers and municipalities must respond with restraint. The First Amendment recognizes, wisely we think, that a certain amount of expressive disorder not only is inevitable in a society committed to individual freedom, but must itself be protected for that freedom to survive. City of Houston v. Hill, 107 S.Ct. 2502 at 471-472. The state's evidence was insufficient to support defendant's conviction for disorderly conduct; defendant's behavior of yelling into his cell phone and using profanity, while standing in bank's doorway, did not constitute "fighting words" or incite the crowd to action, people were coming out of the bank and, as they did, they stopped to watch defendant, and there was no evidence that the crowd gathered out of any purpose other than curiosity or to observe defendant's behavior. Fields v. State, 24 So. 3d 646 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2009).