Ice Cube, ACLU Blast Tucson Law Targeting Free Speech 'Auditors'

TUCSON, AZ — An ordinance first passed by the Tucson City Council in response to footage of a "First Amendment auditor" berating a female Tucson cop with profanities and slurs is now under review in the midst of nationwide protests over police abuse.

On Tuesday, in the face criticism from both the Arizona chapter of the ACLU and rapper Ice Cube, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero asked the City Council to "review what actions this ordinance prohibits and, just as important, what it does not prohibit."

Initially, the ordinance, which created the misdemeanor "Interfering with Police Investigations or Enforcement Activity," passed with little fanfare on April 21 — but much has changed in the weeks since.

On May 25, protests exploded in light of the bystander video that captured the moments George Floyd spent suffocating beneath the knee of then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Meanwhile, the police response to ongoing protests nationwide have themselves produced volumes of smartphone videos showing police misconduct.

In this case, it was within recent context of the protests that Tucson’s new anti-interference ordinance has come under fire. Over the weekend, two Twitter accounts referenced the law while claiming Tucson had made it "illegal" to film police. Both tweets soon went viral, racking up more than 200,000 retweets combined.

Among the retweets was rapper Ice Cube.

"Tucson just lost me," he wrote on Saturday, adding he would not return to the city until the ordinance was changed. "The public has a right to know."

Ice Cube followed up by sharing a tweet from Romero, writing, "Please make sure its pro-people and not pro-Law Enforcement." He also called for "an emergency meeting to make sure you’re satisfying the great citizens of Tucson and surrounding areas."

In contrast, the April 21 hearing on the ordinance did not feature discussion of protests or police shootings. Instead, multiple city council members, as well as Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus, focused their comments on a video first uploaded in February by "First Amendment Auditor" who runs a YouTube channel called Clash With Bao.

First Amendment "auditing" is a practice that is not connected to the Black Lives Matter movement or the current large-scale protests over police brutality. Instead, its practitioners seek to form online followings on monetized video platforms; there they post the results of "audits" conducted on police officers, postal workers and court employees.

In this case, the video had been uploaded to YouTube after a previous livestream; the clip shows commentors gleefully cheering-on "Bao" as the host confronts Tucson officers during a traffic stop.

"Bao," who was identified by the Arizona Daily Star as 36-year-old Baoquoc Tran Nguyen, can be heard in the video refusing officers' requests leave the scene. He eventually spends minutes shouting a seemingly uninterrupted stream of gendered insults at a female officer.

His profanity-laced tirade against the female officer can be heard on the video.

During the April 21 hearing, Magnus, the Tucson police chief, explained that the traffic stop featured in the video involved a car full of robbery suspects.

"That’s the type of conduct we're trying to address here," he said. "It's conduct that materially interferes with police activity, not just someone videotaping or asking questions of a police officer trying to do this or her job."

However, while the ordinance states that "the public has a clear right to free speech and to record police activities that take place in public," it also provides officers with a potentially broad justification for arresting people trying to observe police actions.

According to the ordinance text, officers can designate a restricted area around the crime scene, within which "it shall be unlawful for any person to interfere with enforcement activity, investigations, and other police-related activities by knowingly engaging in conduct that materially inhibits, obstructs, hinders, or delays" an officer in their official duties.

The ordinance also includes a provision on recording police: "The acts of recording police activity or engaging in constitutionally protected speech alone shall not be considered prohibited conduct under this section."

According to ACLU of Arizona, these provisions are "problematic and raises constitutional questions since it creates restrictions that could impede the public's ability to record police."

According to Monday’s statement by Romero, Tucson police have made no arrests related to violations of the ordinance.

"The fear that our black brothers and sisters feel during their interactions with law enforcement is very real," Romero’s statement continued. "The ability to record members of our Police Department is a critical mechanism for public accountability, and in many instances, the only way injustices and abuses have been exposed across the country."