{"id":122500,"date":"2025-08-31T07:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/122500\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T07:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:58:08","slug":"judge-dismisses-florida-arrest-over-chalk-art-near-pulse-nightclub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/122500\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Dismisses Florida Arrest Over Chalk Art Near Pulse Nightclub"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA judge tossed a case, finding no probable cause on Saturday after Florida<\/a> police arrested a man as part of an ongoing standoff over art at a crosswalk memorializing the 2016 mass shooting<\/a> at the LGBTQ<\/a> Pulse nightclub<\/a> in Orlando, WESH reported<\/a>. The man has been released from jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFlorida Highway Patrol arrested<\/a> Sebastian Suarez during a protest<\/a> Friday night outside the nightclub. He colored the bottom of his shoe with chalk and then left footprints as he crossed the street. He was facing a charge of defacing a traffic device.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo come here and do something like this, and to be threatened with something so extreme as a felony charge for protesting and showing love to your fellow human, it\u2019s just insane in my opinion,\u201d Suarez told WESH<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe came out here yesterday just to show our support, to come out and help with the chalking,\u201d he said. He and his fianc\u00e9e are visiting from Georgia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe put some chalk down on the ground, and before we knew it, an officer was approaching us, saying, \u2018We wanna talk to you,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI identified myself, tried to do everything the correct way, and before I knew it, I was in the back of a squad car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the Pulse nightclub, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. at the time. The crosswalk was created in 2017 to memorialize the victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe memorial<\/a> has since become an issue for Republicans amid Donald Trump<\/a> and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a>\u2019 ongoing culture war against LGBTQ Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, Trump\u2019s administration directed governors<\/a> to remove \u201cdistracting\u201d art in the road. \u201cTaxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,\u201d Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media. \u201cPolitical banners have no place on public roads.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), controlled by DeSantis, painted over the Pulse rainbow sidewalk, months after it issued new guidance banning \u201cnon-standard surface markings, signage, and signals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes,\u201d DeSantis posted<\/a> on X on Aug. 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tProtesters have been coloring the rainbow back in with chalk, and FDOT has been painting over it in black and white.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, there are signs on the sidewalk that say, \u201cDEFACING ROADWAY PROHIBITED.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnything previously permitted or installed you can bring up from [the] past is irrelevant now\u201d under FDOT\u2019s new rules the department\u2019s secretary, Jared Perdue, said<\/a> earlier this week, adding that it\u2019s \u201cremoving everything that\u2019s not compliant with state [or] federal standards.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tSuarez \u201cwas the first person to take a fall in this political fight against the LGBTQ community, which I am an active part of,\u201d his attorney, Blake Simons, told reporters. \u201cThis is a community I belong to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re not injuring or damaging property using water-soluble chalk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge tossed a case, finding no probable cause on Saturday after Florida police arrested a man as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,2808,3026,46355,3,27363,78476,2819,2079,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-122500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-lgbtq","12":"tag-memorial","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-protest","15":"tag-pulse-nightclub","16":"tag-ron-desantis","17":"tag-shooting","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}