Man arrested near Trump’s reflecting pool plans to fight obscenity charge

<p>Miles, a freelance video editor and former US navy submariner, has made it a personal project in recent months to “document the creeping police state” since Trump’s federal takeover of policing in Washington DC by filming himself <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ParkyPark202/videos" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">confronting, and often berating</a>, federal troops and officer<strong>s</strong> around the city.</p>

<p>He told the Guardian that he planned to contest the administrative law charge that he violated <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/36/2.34" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">section 2.34 (a) (2)</a> of the Code of Federal Regulations, which prohibits disorderly conduct by someone who uses “language, an utterance, or gesture, or engages in a display or act that is obscene, physically threatening or menacing, or done in a manner that is likely to inflict injury or incite an immediate breach of the peace.”</p>

<p>Miles posted <a href="https://youtu.be/WPqX9TkiIRU?si=2gVW-FeYE_y5lnYA" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an edited video</a> of his encounter with the Oklahoma troopers on YouTube, which seems to be similar in nature to his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tk6QXp5j9s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">previous encounters</a> over the past 10 months with other officers and troops. The only difference, it appears, is that this run-in took place after the president started to claim that vandals, not shoddy work by his hand-picked contractors, was to blame for the rapidly deteriorating condition of the renovated reflecting pool.</p>

<p>In an email to the Guardian, Miles noted the irony that one of the Oklahoma state troopers he argued with before his arrest told him that the US was obviously a free society “because you can be out here and you can video all you want to … Go to China, they’d run over you in a tank in Red Square.”</p>

<p>According to Miles, he was arrested seven minutes later for using obscene language as he protested against the security crackdown at the reflecting pool.</p>

Guardian Sport · Jun 24

Guardian Sport · Jun 24

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