Man Jailed For T-Shirt Over Face

By DEBORAH ZIFF The Tampa Tribune
Aug. 09, 2006

TAMPA - Watch out, costume partygoers, stage actors and pranksters: Wearing a mask in public is a crime.

Arthur Eugene Hesler Richardson, 21, learned this fact the hard way when he was charged with a misdemeanor for sporting a ninja-style mask on the street. He was arrested and booked at Orient Road Jail early Tuesday.

Police were called to 24th Avenue and 10th Street to investigate loud music from a boom box. Someone who police described as a "concerned citizen" told officers that a "possibly armed" masked man was walking down 10th Street.

Officers found Richardson with a brown T-shirt wound around his head and face, leaving only his eyes uncovered, "like a ninja mask," police reports said.

He was unarmed, police said.

Richardson, of 1005 E. Columbus Drive, was released Tuesday afternoon.

Police spokesman Larry McKinnon, who recently retired after 25 years as a patrol officer, said the charge is very rarely used.

The law exists because of the close association between mask-wearing and troublemaking, he said.

"It prevents pranksters and jokesters from creating panic among merchants," he said. "Predominantly, people who wear masks in a place of business are there to commit armed robbery."

The Florida statute that criminalizes mask-wearing dates to 1951, enacted with a bill outlawing the burning of crosses in an effort to prevent Ku Klux Klan symbols, according to a Tampa Morning Tribune article from April of that year. Other states have similar laws.

There is one day of the year when this rule is quietly dropped from police manuals, McKinnon said: Halloween.
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Researcher Buddy Jaudon contributed to this report. Reporter Deborah Ziff can be reached at (813) 259-7203 or [email protected].