r/AmIFreeToGo

LI A was charged with third degree trespass [§ 140.10(a)] which reads:

{§ 140.10 Criminal trespass in the third degree.

A person is guilty of criminal trespass in the third degree when he knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a building or upon real property

(a) which is fenced or otherwise enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders; or}

The first part is the same as the base level charge of the trespass violation. The 3rd degree charge adds “which is fenced or otherwise enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders…”. (a) is what makes it a third degree charge…and New York courts have held that one of the two conditions is present as a necessary element of 3rd degree trespass.

The building wasn’t fenced and it wasn’t enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders. The woman who was also trying to get in got as far as he did when the gentlemen emerged from the building to trespass him.

Some cases:

From People v. Moore, 833 NE 2d 192 - NY: Court of Appeals 2005

The Penal Law provides that "[a] person is guilty of criminal trespass in the third degree when he knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a building or upon real property (a) which is fenced or otherwise enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders" (Penal Law § 140.10 [a]). Although previous versions of the statute contained nearly identical language, the "fenced or otherwise enclosed" requirement was not contained in a separate subdivision until the statute was amended in 1987 (L 1987, ch 192). Prior to the amendment, the statute had apparently been interpreted so that knowingly entering or remaining unlawfully in any building—fenced or unfenced—constituted criminal trespass in the third degree, as did knowingly entering or remaining unlawfully upon real property which was fenced or otherwise enclosed in a manner to exclude intruders. Under the prior statute, "the building was not required to be fenced or otherwise enclosed" (Donnino, Practice Commentary, McKinney's Cons Laws of NY, Book 39, Penal Law art 140, at 13). The plain language of the statute as amended, however, clearly requires that both buildings and real property be fenced or otherwise enclosed in order to increase the level of culpability from trespass (see Penal Law § 140.05) to criminal trespass *727 in the third degree. The 1987 amendment thus narrowed the definition of criminal trespass in the third degree to require one of several enumerated conditions to be present.
This reading is consistent with the general scheme of article 140 of the Penal Law. Starting with the violation of trespass (see Penal Law § 140.05), the crimes become progressively more serious as they approach criminal trespass in the first degree (see Penal Law § 140.17). Since the violation of trespass requires only that a person "knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in or upon premises" (Penal Law § 140.05), which includes buildings (see Penal Law § 140.00 [1]), section 140.10 (a) is properly interpreted as requiring the additional aggravating element that the building or area entered be fenced or otherwise enclosed in order to exclude intruders to elevate the crime from a violation to a class B misdemeanor.

In People v. Casatelli, 204 AD 3d 1092 - NY: Appellate Div., 3rd Dept. 2022, Casatelli lost his appeals on his conviction for criminal trespass in the 3rd degree for following behind a student who had a swipe card without being invited to follow her in.

It’s possible that LIA could be convicted for leaving too slowly…but I’m not certain about that. What I am certain about is that he didn’t commit what he was charged for, trespass in the third degree.

If you follow Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, you know that police need Reasonable Articulable Suspicion (RAS) for a Terry stop and Probable Cause (PC) for an arrest. But the state of Florida is currently building an intelligence dragnet designed to sidestep those requirements entirely by weaponizing administrative labels.

The legislature recently passed HB 429, which quietly lowered the evidentiary bar for classifying a citizen as a gang "associate" and entering them into state law enforcement databases. Previously, it required four documented "interactions." Now, it only requires two.

Here is why this is a massive Fourth Amendment issue: you do not need to be suspected of a crime for this label to be applied.

The Mechanics of the Dragnet The state is combining ubiquitous surveillance (like automated FLOCK license-plate readers) with incredibly vague statutory language.

The law allows police to classify you as an associate if you are observed "in the company of" or "associating with" known individuals twice. But the statute never actually defines those terms. There is no measurable standard for what constitutes an "observation."

• Is it standing next to someone at a public park?
• Is it your car being photographed by a FLOCK camera driving down the same street?

Because the standard is entirely subjective, it allows police to build a database on citizens who are merely exercising their First Amendment right to exist in public spaces, completely bypassing the need to establish RAS of a crime. Once you are in that database, that administrative label will be used as pretext to manufacture RAS for future stops.

The Public Records Trap Vague laws allow for arbitrary detentions. To fight this, I built an autonomous system that scrapes public photos of the politicians who wrote this law and scores them against the exact same vague criteria the cameras apply to us.

Simultaneously, I am filing constraint-based public records requests with 30 Florida Sheriff's Offices. I am asking for their administrative instruction manuals:

1. What is the written, procedural definition of "associates with"?
2. How close in a photograph counts as an "observation"?
3. Is there a written policy exempting off-duty officers or elected officials from being entered into the database based on these same observational criteria?

The Goal Law enforcement will have to make a choice on the record.

Either they provide the objective criteria—which I will then run against their own public appearances—or they admit in writing that no objective standard exists. If 30 sheriff's departments admit on paper that applying the gang label relies entirely on subjective officer discretion, it hands every defense attorney in the state documented proof that the database is arbitrary, and stops based upon it are fruit of the poisonous tree.

(I’ve documented the architecture of the system and the actual public records request templates over on my Substack. Feel free to use them if your state is trying to pull a similar end-run around the Fourth Amendment. You can learn more on my Reddit profile page.)

Ultimately, a heartwarming article but the unreasonable stops do feature:

>"They always find a reason to pull me over," Braithwaite said.

"For the first eight or nine years I was the most pulled-over man in America," he said. "It was constant."

The banana jokes, he said, are "never-ending."