RALEIGH, N.C. — People who participate in a riot in any form in North Carolina could soon be susceptible to felony charges.
On Monday, state Sen. Danny Britt, a Lumberton Republican, filed Senate Bill 300, labeled the Criminal Justice Reform bill. The 12-page bill includes a provision that would increase the punishment for anyone participating in a riot from a Class 1 misdemeanor to a Class H felony.
“We want folks to know that it is our opinion that these crimes are serious,” Britt told The News & Observer on Tuesday. “We hope that this will convey to them the need to actually prosecute crimes at a serious level.”
But North Carolina laws on rioting are vague. Britt’s bill leaves open to interpretation how someone could face felony charges for rioting and opens the door to further racial discrimination, said Ann Webb, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.
Britt said Tuesday morning that his bill is in direct response to riots that broke out in North Carolina over the summer in protest of the May 25, 2020, in-custody death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Minneapolis man. Fired Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin is on trial this week, charged with Floyd’s murder after videos showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck while Floyd was pinned to the ground.
Floyd told Chauvin more than 20 times before his death that he couldn’t breathe.
When video surfaced of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, people planned protests around the United States and internationally.
In Charlotte, people broke into businesses, slashed the tires on a police vehicle and threw water bottles at officers.
Windows on Greensboro’s International Civil Rights Center and Museum were broken.
Two people pleaded guilty to setting a fire at the historic Market House in Fayetteville, which has drawn protests over its ties to slavery.
But downtown Raleigh sustained the worst of the damage.
Rioters broke windows, looted businesses and sent fireworks toward the courthouse. They knocked over planters, threw bricks and assaulted officers. Law enforcement in full riot gear ignited smoke bombs, sprayed tear gas and fired rubber bullets. More than 100 people were arrested between May 30 and June 7. Only four people faced felony riot charges, which means under current law they were involved in a riot that led to severe bodily injury or at least $1,500 in property damage.
It all took place blocks from the Legislative Building where lawmakers meet. Lawmakers said in early January that they had more concerns for their safety as they returned to Raleigh just days following the U.S. Capitol riot in support of Donald Trump in Washington.
They said then that they worried about a repeat of what happened there and what happened locally over the summer.
“They had thousands and thousands of dollars in damage,” Britt said of Raleigh’s downtown businesses. “You know you couldn’t ride through downtown without seeing boarded-up windows, or busted-up windows that hadn’t been boarded up.
“What act of brutality did any of those property owners cause?”
After the riots in Raleigh, House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger spoke out at a press conference against the violence.
Moore said then that both chambers support people’s rights to protest, but called the lawlessness of riots and directions to law enforcement to stand down unacceptable.
Britt echoed Moore’s words Tuesday and said he is “all about people exercising their rights” but doing so respectfully of people’s property.
Kerwin Pittman, a social justice activist who serves on the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, helped plan protests in Raleigh following Floyd’s death.
Pittman said the protests he participated in and helped organize were “peaceful” marches in the streets.
But Pittman said people labeled those protests as riots and they were shot with canisters of tear gas.
“It’s extremely concerning when a bill is introduced, particularly upping the charge from a misdemeanor to a felony when it comes to rioting,” Pittman said, “especially in the current climate of racial injustice taking place and law enforcement discrimination.”
Being charged with a class H felony could result in up to 25 months in prison, per charge.
Webb said it is not unusual to see people receive active jail sentences of five to 17 months for class H felonies. And that’s if a person only faces one charge.
A felony also follows people through life in a different way than a misdemeanor would. It affects employment and finding a place to live.
Webb said Britt’s bill does not further define rioting in North Carolina.
A riot is classified in North Carolina as involving three or more people, Webb said, and a person does not have to engage in violent activity to be charged with rioting.
“Your activity can be described as disorderly, which is a really broad term that we know is used to criminalize very mild behavior,” Webb said. “And there also doesn’t have to be any actual damage or harm to a person. There could just be danger of injury to property, which again, is it leaves a lot of discretion to law enforcement to basically decide that they just don’t like behavior and then charge this very serious charge.”
Webb said the bill is written in a way that a protester could be charged with rioting, despite peacefully marching when someone else escalates the situation and breaks a window.
Webb said the protests made it clear that people are charged differently depending on their race.
“We’ve seen numerous incidents where people of color are targeted with charges like riots or disorderly conduct when the exact same actions by white protesters result in no arrests,” Webb said.
Pittman, a Black man, said he witnessed over the summer that level of discrimination. He said the bill is another way to subdue protesters and undermine democracy.
Webb said she can already imagine these new penalties being used to discriminate.
“A much more productive approach to the outrage that we’re seeing — the very appropriate outrage that we’re seeing in communities of color — is to come together and find ways to actually address the needs of the community,” Webb said.
She said some of those topics are providing better access to education, health care and reducing the school-to-prison pipeline.
“These are the things that we can do to make our communities safer and this is where we should be putting our attention, rather than increasing criminal penalties which we know has never fixed any problem in our in our society,” Webb said.
Britt’s bill is part of a larger conversation about policing and criminal justice reform.
The bill includes creating databases to track when officers have citizen complaints filed against them or use force.
It creates new training opportunities for officers dealing with civil unrest or people with mental illness.
Britt said none of his bill should be “read as gospel” yet. He said part of the reason he filed the bill Monday was to force conversations with the state’s various law enforcement and prosecutorial organizations.
Britt said he expects the bill to change as he receives feedback.
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