THIS. IS. FLORIDA!!!!

Jul 24, 2009

By Ken White.

Law, WTF?

Florida does not merely transcend satire. Florida takes satire out behind the bleachers and kicks the everloving shit out of it.

Case in point: Clearwater, Florida made playing catch on the beach or at the park illegal.

Cretekos said the idea behind the law was to give police the authority to stop a game on the beach or in a park that could possibly hurt someone else. He said he'd like to see the city narrow the law to more careless activities that could actually hurt someone.

But, see, the geniuses on the City Council didn't draft the law to restrict violent, dangerous games. It did this instead:

No person or persons shall engage in rough or potentially dangerous activity such as football, baseball, softball, horseshoes, tennis, volleyball, badminton, or any other organized activity involving thrown or otherwise propelled objects such as balls, stones, arrows, javelins, shuttlecocks, Frisbees, model aircraft or roller skates on any public bathing beach or park property except in areas set aside for that purpose.

Cretekos is now trying to change the law, and says he has been doing so for "months."

Now, to be fair to the Clearwater City Council, since they passed this law, badminton-related deaths have dropped dramatically. But still, it seems a little excessive. I find it difficult to imagine that a person of average intelligence reading this law would not realize that it sweeps up a vast amount of innocent, safe public activity that the government has no business regulating. This suggests one or more of the following conclusions: (1) The Clearwater City Council is made up of persons of less than average intelligence, (2) the members of the Clearwater City Council passed the bill without reading it, or at least without reading it carefully, or (3) the members of the Clearwater City Council have an officious and nannyish view of the role of the government in micro-managing public behavior of citizens.

The story here is not that a city council banned playing catch. The story here is that across the country, in every jurisdiction, from federal to village, the law is choked with stupid, poorly drafted, micro-managing laws pushed upon us by the sort of people who aspire to be "officials." This encrustation has consequences — it makes it vastly more expensive and inconvenient to do business or otherwise conduct oneself in compliance with the law, and it gives government agents vast discretion to make our lives miserable if they choose to enforce some obscure, strangely-drafted rule.

And yet this phenomenon gets little attention except when the law is funny, as in this case. Maybe all laws need automatic sunset dates. Or maybe towns like Clearwater, as well as Congress, need Patrick's "House of Repeal."

Hat tip to Chris.

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17 Comments

Florida, Nanny State

14 Comments

Jag • Jul 24, 2009 @12:42 pm

Actually the article says that the City Council is trying to CHANGE the law which was passed several years ago.

"Clearwater city officials are working to change a law that makes it illegal to play catch in public.

The city staff is working on changing the ordinance. The city council should look at the amended law for a vote sometime next month."

This suggests one or more of the following conclusions: (1) Our very well respected Blogger didn't take his own advice and read the article, (2) I should have better things to do than point out mistakes in a blog written by people significantly smarter than me, or (3) We should appreciate when a City Council actually recognizes its own stupidity and acts to correct it.
Ken • Jul 24, 2009 @12:44 pm

Right. But they passed it in the first place, which was my point. Plus, the quoted city official said he has been trying, unsuccessfully, for several months to do it. But I'll change it a bit to make that clearer.
BP • Jul 24, 2009 @2:38 pm

I'm not saying I support laws like this, but they didn't pass the law to outlaw catch. They passed the law to give the police another tool in reigning in dangerous behavior. "The idea behind the law was to give police the authority to stop a game on the beach or in a park that could possibly hurt someone else." The idea wasn't to stop safe games, but only unsafe games. Yes, the text of the law reaches all games, but it's pretty clear by conspicuous absence in the article that the law is being reviewed for its own sake, not because anybody was improperly threatened, arrested, or prosecuted under it.

All too often, legislative bodies (city councils included) pass laws not because they intend that the law be strictly and equally applied at all, but because they want to provide to the police a discretionary tool to use in micromanaging the safety of the citizenry. The problem of course, comes when the police or some DA gets overzealous and actually uses the law in ways the legislative body never intended. Prosecutorial immunity coupled with a requirement of favorable termination shield the idiots from liability, and the legislators sit back and scratch their heads wondering why or how this could have happened.

This is really just a simple case of a legislative body being extremely trusting of its enforcement body. This is especially common at the municipal level, where the legislators have a great degree of direct control over a relatively small police department, and so feel that the police will enforce the law only when the legislators intended that it would be enforced. If the municipality also has a city attorney that prosecutes violations of city ordinances (rather than delegating prosecution of those violations to the county), the assumption that the law will be "selectively yet properly enforced" might actually be a pretty good one. Unfortunately, the legislative purpose may be an improper one. I suspect that perhaps this law was passed not only to ban "dangerous" activities, but "annoying" ones as well.

Personally, I think tort liability should be plenty to deter dangerous games of catch. There's no reason to criminalize this sort of thing. If it happens that a serious injury occurs because somebody is truly wanton and reckless in the way they are playing catch (or throwing javelins…), well, that's already criminal.
carlos • Jul 24, 2009 @2:55 pm

first of all to have a law like this is stupid in every aspect. first of all i played tackle football when i was young in a playground with friends and people got hurt we all did but that was part of the game sometimes. we all knew the risks. but to make it illegal wow what a waste of time and taxpayers money. its a game that fathers play with their sons and daughters everyday. i think these people need to get off the short yellow bus take theie helmets off and sign some laws to help stop rapes, killings, poverty, abuse you know real crimes that are hurting people everyday. whats next arrest anybody that sits on a wooden park bench cause you might get a splinter in your behind. and i agree their brains must be the size of a pea. this law is so stupid….
Robert • Jul 24, 2009 @4:32 pm

You do realize that the City of Clearwater is run by the Scientologists? http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/18/Tampabay/Scientology_s_town.shtml
St • Jul 24, 2009 @8:16 pm

Everyone knows Scientologists hate frisbee
PatrickKelley • Jul 24, 2009 @8:27 pm

Badminton?WTF? How could anybody get hurt playing that? You'd think they would want people to do anything that might keep them on the beaches and out of the water and away from the damn sharks.
BTB • Jul 24, 2009 @9:53 pm

PatrickKelley:

You never saw this Vitamin Water commercial, I suspect.
Ansley • Jul 24, 2009 @11:00 pm

Water balloon fight, anyone?
Legally UnBound • Jul 25, 2009 @10:53 am

This is more interesting to me because I know people in Clearwater. I've vacationed on Clearwater Beach and this kind of a law would be funny, like you said, if it weren't so damn oppressive. That is Florida, though. "This is our town."

This reminds me of a Florida band from the 80's called Maggot Sandwich that wrote a song "My Florida":

On a 100 mile stetch of sand along the Gulf of Mexico.
A 100 days of the year, this is where the tourists go.
They look good in their bathing suits, they must keep slim & trim.
No matter that their giving themselves cancer of the skin.

This ain't no promised land.
This ain't no Disney World.
This ain't no heaven on earth.
This is the Sunshine State, MY FLORIDA!!

And on and on…
Point being, the Clearwater City Council should not be so regulatory. My friends in Clearwater say the Council has been hijacked by Northerners. You'd think the civil war was over, but I guess in Clearwater, it is Southern to play 'shuttlecock' on the beach and Northern to restrict frolicking in public parks. Maybe the South will rise again!?! MY FLORIDA!!
Linus • Jul 25, 2009 @7:35 pm

It seems to me that "giving the police a discretionary tool" that is broad enough to turn almost anyone into a criminal is totally anti-thetical to our American system. They're not our benevolent masters, who intervene in our lives, for our own good. How naïve do you have to be to think this is a good idea? When in human history has discretion to exercise power over other people NOT been abused?
Marc J. Randazza • Jul 25, 2009 @11:32 pm

I'm so happy that I moved out of that festering shithole. I can't wait for global warming to flood the entire rectal canal of a state.
Noncenx • Aug 7, 2009 @9:49 am

I don't know what bothers me the most: 1) that someone thinks its a good idea to ban "football, baseball, softball, horseshoes, tennis, volleyball, badminton, or any other organized activity involving thrown or otherwise propelled objects such as balls" 2) that someone thinks throwing "stones, arrows, javelins…and roller skates" are sports similar to throwing balls, shuttlecocks or Frisbees". or 3) someone thinks its a good idea to "give police the authority" (read pretense) to arrest someone for playing catch. Yeah, that'll be a mug shot I'd like to see on the Smoking Gun – arrested for tossing a frisbee.
Charles Platt • Aug 8, 2009 @11:40 am

The Missing Process of Law Elimination

The suggested solution of an automatic sunset feature on all laws does not seem to be the best answer, to me. What is needed (and will never be created now) is the missing branch of government, which would be tasked with eliminating laws. It is hopelessly one-sided to have only legislators creating them, police enforcing them, and courts adjudicating. Under this system, the total number of laws will continue to grow indefinitely. It's puzzling that our Founding Fathers didn't foresee this problem on the federal level, and even more important on the local level.