I have never told this story before. Not to the world anyway. A few years back I decided to take a sabbatical from everything and just take my guitar on the road. I worked my way from Austin Texas down to Miami Beach. I would play around Ocean Drive and Lincoln Road. It's a tough gig to play guitar on the street.
Technically at that time I guess I was considered as homeless but I prefer residentially challenged. I literally gave away all of my possessions when I left Texas and I don't know why. Maybe I just wanted to know what it would feel like to have nothing but the clothes on my back and my guitar. To this day I believe I was divinely inspired. A man learns something from having nothing. No one who has never been in that position can ever understand. I truly feel thankful today for what I have and empathize with anyone sleeping out doors today regardless of what situation may have put them there.
When in Miami Beach I would sleep sometimes behind buildings and even right on the beach. I always would chain my guitar to me along with my bag. In order to steal from me a thief would have to wake me up and most thieves are too darn sneaky to want to go through all of that. I would take my shower every morning outside at the public shower on the beach. Then play a few hours. Later I would sit outside the Starbucks and have coffee and make pleasant conversation with the super rich. It was almost like I was living the lifestyle of the rich and famous but on a budget.
Other people on the street who knew who I was felt a feeling of safety when I was around. Sometimes I would sleep on a life guard tower and I would notice a few of the same faces would sleep nearby. Bag ladies, male hustlers who had just gone crazy from a life of prostitution, illegals who were trying to keep a low profile, basically people who would not harm anyone and were tired of being harmed.
They knew that around me there was no drugs or alcohol, and we spoke little to each other but I could tell that a certain type of person would migrate near my presence. It's funny even when someone doesn't have a home they migrate to the same familiar spots. The same places to camp. Familiarity is good. These people live a daily life of isolation even though they are surrounded by many.
The drunks, drug dealers and mean people, I just stayed away from them. This period of time only lasted a few months. I had found a job and was actually working when the Police came upon me one morning. Imagine working hard but still unable to save enough for a residence. I wouldn't even carry the money on my person. I would only carry the money I made playing guitar and that was never more then say $75.00 to $100.00 on a good night.
I was sitting in front of the Starbucks on a bench away from their terrace on the street. A public bench not a bus stop. It was a Sunday morning, about 9am just after a rain, and there wasn't a soul on Ocean Drive. I had been through a hard night with the rain. I was really sitting on the bench waiting for the sun to come out and dry my bones. I opened my guitar case as it had become wet and I was quietly strumming and tuning my guitar when the police rolled up.
I did my best to just ignore them, but within a minute or two another car had arrived. I soon had three officers standing as tightly as they could around me. I went through the usual preliminary questions, showed my ID, and really was expecting them to leave. I guess it was my turn that morning. One of the officers grabbed my capo which was on the bench next to me and begin to toss it around in his hand.
"What's this", he asked?
I explained how it is used to change the pitch on my guitar, at least I was trying to explain when he interrupted me:
"It looks like a weapon to me", he said.
I started to explain but he cut me off again and this time told me that because it looked like a weapon that he was going to keep it. Too dangerous for me to be carrying around. I still remember him grinning at me holding my personal possession which had about a $12.00 value , not to mention the fact that I would not be able to find one without taking three busses to North Miami to find a music store. I knew all about that trip having made that all day trip once before to get some decent strings.
Well I had had just about enough so I made the big mistake, I stood up. After I was on my feet I held out my hand, palm up, and very politely asked the officer to please return my personal possession to me. I tried explaining again that I had already told him how this little harmless tool is used and that it was certainly not a weapon.
At this point they announced that they were going to arrest me for Violation of the Miami Beach Ordinance against street performers.
"No you're not. I'm sitting here on a Sunday Morning minding my own business and I haven't broken any laws, and I can play a guitar anywhere I want. Can you give me back by capo please?"
On the police report they wrote that I had, "lunged toward them", right about now. That was the moment when I held out my hand; palm up.
The officer behind me promptly grabbed me around my throat. The officer holding my capo took my left hand and begin to bend my fingers backward, and the other officer grabbed my right arm and began to try an arm bar. Now I guess that when the police are trained in all of these maneuvers, that they are not trained in what happens if three officers are applying three different methods simultaneously. Let me explain that the human body can't bend in that many directions at one time. So resolutely I began to scream for help at the top of my lungs and demand that they release me. I was in pain and couldn't cooperate because which ever direction I turned the other would think I was in defiance.
What followed is that the officer behind me applied deadly force with a choke hold and I could actually feel that my air passage was blocked and I was being strangled. I blacked out for a moment and hit the ground face first with my arms still being held by the other officers. First I hit my knees and then straight to my face. At this point the officer behind me who had applied the choke hold decided that despite the fact that I was face down on the pavement I was still struggling. What he did was grab me by my forehead and pull my head up and backward and sprayed mace directly into my eyes from a distance of one inch. They then cuffed me bleeding and battered and pulled me to my knees, and left me sitting for abut thirty minutes while they wrote their report. The whole time they taunted me about the snot and blood on my face and my overall condition. They asked me over and over while laughing,
"How does that mace feel?"
They even told me they were going to toss my guitar into the garbage.
They took me to the hospital for a check up, left me in the back of the cop car for an hour, brought me in and I remember speaking to someone who refused to address any of my wounds or acknowledge I had any, and finally processed me to a holding cell still in a state of blindness.
I refused to plead guilty to either charge and they would not release me until the trial because I had no legal residence. I spent a total of twenty-three days in the Miami-Dade County Jail. While I was in Jail I fell in with the Cubans who all seemed to like me. Probably because of their rich musical heritage. They couldn't understand what the heck a guy was doing in jail for playing guitar. I am sure they saw this as frightening, as they had all just fled Fidel. They gave me songs of freedom to play when I got out. One song in particular about the long raft trip someone makes when fleeing Cuba was called "Cancion del Balsero." I played that for weeks afterward. I always drew a crowd with that one. I found out later I had the timing and Spanish of the song all wrong, but people still liked it.
I was charged with resisting arrest and violation of the Miami Street performing ordinance. Later before a jury and with a wonderful team of public defenders who truly cared about the US Constitution, I was found to be Not-Guilty of both charges. I watched in the court room as all three Police Officers tried to tell their fabricated story but the Judge and Jury did not buy any of it.
Later after I walked from Jail I got my guitar back. I kept a copy of the trial transcript in my pocket just in case. From time to time I would have other street performers and artists thank me for overturning the Miami Beach ordinance. The city fought it all the way to the Florida Supreme Court and lost again and again. The ACLU represented my case at the state level.
People have asked me why I never sued the City. Why should I? Why would I want to take tax dollars from regular people just because of the corrupt laws of the City they live in? Why should I hold every day people accountable for a Police Force that doesn't know that it is wrong to threaten to kill a man for strumming a guitar on a quiet Sunday morning? Victory doesn't always have to be about personal gain, and sometimes victory comes with some pain.
Now I am far away from Miami Beach, but once in awhile the urge to take to the streets comes over me. All tied up now with business, sometimes I think about how it felt to be truly free for awhile with only the possessions I carried on my back.
Ron O'Daniels can always be reached at 770-910-7202 and raodaniels@yahoo.com
You can read the details of my case at this link:
http://www.aclufl.org/news_events/?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=1351