Man with Saxophone Serenades at Stoplight

Last night coming home from Dr. Belinsky's we were serenaded by a tenor sax player in the median strip. Today I read all about him.

Street musician, threatened with arrest for playing music on Providence sidewalks, sues city


PROVIDENCE — The state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the city on behalf of a saxophone-playing street performer, charging that his civil rights are being violated by city police threats to arrest him for playing in public.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours day after city officials announced a new program to use art and music to promote the city’s economy, claims that the city has unconstitutionally harassed Manuel Pombo, a 62-year-old city resident who has been playing the saxophone at various locations throughout the city since the 1990s.

Evan England, spokesman for Mayor Jorge O. Elorza, said the city’s lawyers were reviewing the suit and for now had no comment, but he added the procedures for regulating street performing were being reviewed.

Though there is no city ordinance regulating public playing by musicians, the city’s Board of Licenses issues letters granting permission, “within the discretion of the local police authority.” The letters ban the soliciting of donations, though performers may accept money if offered.

Pombo obtained such a letter in 1991, the suit said. But since then, the suit said, city police have repeatedly ordered him to stop playing and on one occasion arrested him and held him in the city jail overnight.

The suit said the pace has picked up since last summer and into the past five months, when he has been shut down near the Dunkin' Donuts Center, on Orms Street and near the Providence Performing Arts Center.

Playing music is a form of free speech, Pombo’s lawyers argue, and the city’s permission-to-perform letter is a violation of his, and any other street performer’s, First Amendment free speech rights.

The ban on soliciting donations should be removed as well, said said Shannah Kurland, who, along with John W. Dineen, are the ACLU volunteer lawyers representing Pombo.

“Asking for money is a form of speech,” she said. “You can’t restrict anyone from asking for money.”

The city has the ability to impose reasonable limits on the time, place and manner of performing, she said, such as banning it at 3 a.m in a residential neighborhood.

But leaving that balancing “within the discretion of the local police authority” has led to enforcement so inconsistent that it violates Pombo’s 14th Amendment right to due process under law, according to the suit. Because there are no specific guidelines on how to enforce the permit, several officers have ordered Pombo to stop playing, and for fear of arrest, he usually did; while one officer, instead of arresting Pombo, put $5 in his saxophone case and still another arrested him.