Florida law to let cops ticket drivers for blasting music too loud

By Brett Clarkson, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
<p>Cars and pedestrians crowd a street in Delray Beach, Florida, on June 7, 2022.</p>

John McCall

Cars and pedestrians crowd a street in Delray Beach, Florida, on June 7, 2022.

Police in the Sunshine State will be able to ticket drivers for playing music too loud from their cars starting on Friday.

A new law going into effect on July 1 makes it a noncriminal traffic violation for any driver’s music to to be plainly “audible at a distance of 25 feet or more from the motor vehicle,” according to the legislation.

Drivers will be dinged a fee of up to $114, according to nbcmiami.com.

Some think the law makes sense, saying they hope it will cut down on obnoxious noise levels in the public sphere.

“Living in the area where there’s a lot of downtown activity, there are cars that come through at 12 or 1 o’clock in the morning with their blaring music bumping through the neighborhood,” Orange County resident Lamonte Gwynn said. “If (the law) is really to cut down on the noise, then I think it would help in some respect.”

Others decry the new rule as just another way for the state to make money at residents’ expense.

“To me, it looks like a money grab,” Jerome Douglas told WFLA.

Yet others complained that the loud music crackdown will give police a way to target racial minorities and serve as a trigger for warrantless searches.

“It’s a pretext to pull people over for other reasons,” St. Petersburg lawyer Richard Catalano, 61, told Palm Peach Post columnist Frank Cerabino.

“The law uses radio noise as a way not only for officers to do unwarranted drug searches, but it includes a provision to impound the cars for up to three days for non-criminal traffic infractions if they happen during unsanctioned beach parties, which are typically attended by young Black people,” Cerabino wrote in a column criticizing the law.

“If they have reason to pull somebody over that they’re kind of targeting because of music, and then they find weed or you get a subjective resisting arrest, we’re violating civil rights left and right,” lawyer John Phillips said to Action News Jax.

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