Brown, J.
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Officer Nieves told Jordan why he stopped her and asked for her license and registration. Jordan gave him her license but did not have the registration or the title in the vehicle. He then asked her if she had any weapons in the car which was standard procedure for him, and Jordan immediately became belligerent. Jordan asked “very belligerently” why he asked her if she had a weapon, and Officer Nieves told her it was standard procedure. [Record citations omitted throughout.] Jordan started yelling at him and told him he “was just asking because she was Black. Why would she have a weapon, so on and so forth.” Officer Nieves asked her to lower her voice or stop yelling, but she continued to yell.
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When Officer Nieves returned to Jordan’s vehicle to give her the citations and inform her that she could retrieve anything out of the vehicle because he was going to impound it, Jordan was “very angry,” yelled at him, and was “talking over [him] to the point where [he] could not even describe the citation to her, what [he] was giving her, etc.” Officer Nieves and Officer Aurs asked Jordan to stop yelling multiple times. Jordan continued to yell, yelled expletives, screamed over Officer Nieves, and called him a motherf—– on several occasions. She cursed at the officers, used vulgarities, and said the officers “just stopped her because she was Black, and [they] needed religion,” and that they “couldn’t handle a Black woman.” Jordan said: “Ya’ll think you run this place, and you’re giving me a citation because I’m Black.” …
There was a liquor store in the vicinity and a convenience store on the corner directly west of the location and it was “mostly residential right there.” “People in the liquor store lot and across the street came out to see what the commotion was.” Jordan was “being very loud and causing a scene there.”
Officer Nieves asked Jordan if she had everything out of the vehicle, and Jordan said that she did. She stood five or ten feet from the wrecker driver trying to hook up her vehicle and continued to scream and yell expletives at Officer Nieves and Officer Aurs. Officer Nieves kept telling her to stop, that she was free to leave, that she needed to go, and to be quiet, and Jordan said that she did not need to go.
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Jordan challenges whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain her conviction for disorderly conduct, with particular emphasis on whether her speech constituted free speech under the Indiana Constitution.…
… Jordan argues that her speech was “objectively political.” She contends that her speech focused on race and the officers’ treatment of her as an African-American woman, that using profanity does not vitiate otherwise political expression, and that she criticized police conduct…. She argues that her expression did not cause actual discomfort to persons of ordinary sensibilities or interfere with anyone’s comfortable enjoyment of privacy, and that her speech did not prevent the officers from performing their duties.
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The State asserts that Jordan’s statements asking why would she have a weapon, that the officers needed religion, and that they “couldn’t handle a Black woman,” did not constitute political speech. However, we cannot say that these statements focused on her conduct as opposed to the officers’ conduct. Officer Nieves testified that he kept telling Jordan that she needed to go and that Jordan told him that she did not need to go. We view this statement as a comment on police authority. … Under the circumstances, we conclude that Jordan’s overall complaint and the aim or focus of her statements was to criticize the actions of the police, and thus her speech was political. [String citation omitted.]
As noted, if the claimant demonstrates under an objective standard that the impaired expression was political speech, the impairment is unconstitutional unless the State demonstrates that the “magnitude of the impairment” is slight or that the speech amounted to a public nuisance such that it “inflict[ed] ‘particularized harm’ analogous to tortious injury on readily identifiable private interests.” [Citations omitted.] We cannot say that the State demonstrated that the magnitude of the impairment was slight. Nor can we say that the harm suffered by the people in the liquor store lot and across the street rose above the level of a fleeting annoyance or that the State demonstrated that the speech amounted to a public nuisance such that it inflicted particularized harm analogous to tortious injury on readily identifiable private interests. Accordingly, we conclude that Jordan may not be punished, consistent with the Indiana Constitution, for her particular speech. [Citation omitted.]
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Crone, J., and Pyle, J., concur.