Fargo Police pressured Spring Jam venues

For the second year in a row, the Fargo police department talked to venues who had agreed to host the annual Spring Jam hip hop concert hosted by rapper J-Sauce aka Jason Grant and tried to convince them not to hold the event. They brought up the incident at last year’s Spring Jam at the Days Inn in Moorhead which was shut down early and involved concerns about gang activity. Last year, the police mentioned concerning one of the performers was involved in gang activity.

Cambria Suites in West Fargo had agreed to host Spring Jam 19 on March 26th but then cancelled the event. Grant then went to other venues and asked them to host, unsuccessfully until he approached the Red Raven Espresso Parlor, which hosted the event this past Saturday. Before the concert, the police came and brought up their concerns with Red Raven co-owner Joe Curry. HPR interviewed Curry about how the event went, his meetings with the police department before the event and how they reacted to their decision to go ahead with it.

HPR: How did everything go on Saturday?

Joe Curry: The show went extremely well. The audience turnout was fantastic. The Raven was able to sell tons of drinks and we made a special meal for the evening so people could get a bite to eat, too. The musicians and performers did a fantastic job. So, yeah, it went well. It was a great Raven show.

HPR: The police had met you a couple days before the event and tried to dissuade from hosting it, is that correct?

JC: A sergeant and another officer came in one evening. I was not there so I was not able to talk to them. They scared the bejesus out of the girl that was working behind the counter because she didn’t know much about the show and here these cops were coming in, talking about gang activity, and they needed to talk to someone about maybe pushing the show aside or whatever.

The next day they came and I had a meeting with them at 9:30 in the morning. They sat me down first. I was the first one there and they wanted to know if I knew why they were there, if I knew of the history of last year that happened at Spring Jam 18. I was pretty aware of it. I told them I had seen some of the videos last year. I watched some of the news clips and, even knowing that, I went ahead and booked the show with Jason. Then they offered to plug in a thumb drive and sit down with me and watch some of the dash cam footage of the kids being escorted out of the venue that had shut down during half of the show. I told them I didn’t need to see it, I already know what it is and it’s just kids being kids. I knew that there was no property damage. I already knew what happened so I told them that we didn’t need to watch it together.

Then the conversation went on a little bit. I asked some key questions about what makes them think that the show here is going to be an issue. They were very vague with a lot of their answers when it came to any of the specifics. They kept repeating that they can’t talk about individuals that are (under) investigation or individuals that might have some affiliation because it could ruin any sort of investigation that (they) have going on, which is totally understandable. I get that.

Then, at some point, the conversation turned to our maximum capacity, which is pretty small, it's 48. He made it very clear if we continue with the show that they will do a walkthrough and after that walk through, if they deem that the place is over capacity, they will contact the Fargo Fire Department and they would give them the information that the show was over capacity. And it wasn’t a complete threat but he said that, at that point the police department has no more control over what could happen with the business license, that would be up to the fire department and the city or your food license, kind of making these slightly veiled threats that if something goes wrong, we could lose our business license, which felt like a very strong, muscular tactic to use to try to not have the show.

HPR: So you had told me before they had made a comment about if you went ahead with the show, they would do a walk through to make sure you were up to code, was that just about the capacity then or ?

JC: His main concern was that if we were to continue with the show, that he would be checking on capacity. So they ended up doing that later on. Also, during this conversation with the police officers, Jason ended up showing up and the one veiled threat -- I don’t know if threat is the right terminology to use -- but he also asked if I had been in communication with the landlord, the person that owns the building. They asked me, is he aware that you are going to be putting on this event? My response was he knows that we have shows, I don’t need to talk to him about it. He kind of hinted that, well, if he does know, how is he going to react? So he kind of made some suggestion that pushes towards the idea that we might contact your landlord. Thankfully he didn’t. I don’t know if he did.

So Jason showed up. We had more dialogue about what’s the real issue here? We went back and forth about what happened last year. We talked about how there was going to be no alcohol at this show. We have more of (an) all-ages show, we’re serving coffee, kids are having fun. We talked about how the Raven has been a space where it’s important for us to have a space where people can express themselves without fear of being laughed (at) or some fear of oppression. The biggest thing I got out of the conversation, other than the uncomfortableness of it and the strong arm of the officers was, towards the end, the conversation became more and more positive. They did talk about how this could be an excellent event where maybe some youth at risk people could come, express themselves and it would keep them out of trouble for the night. They were excited about that. Jason was talking about how as a promoter and me as a venue operator, how can we collaborate and make sure that that spaces like this continue. They did say that they were willing to in the future work with different venues and with Jason to try to create a positive hip hop environment, so that was cool. And that’s kind of the gist of the conversation with the police for the most part.

HPR: So, I guess their main issue was the problems they had last year at the event and not having a repeat of them?

JC: It seemed to me that was the initial reason why they were there, that they wanted to make sure that a situation like that didn’t happen again. Later on in the conversation, it was less focused on the kids when the show got cancelled halfway through and the supposed nearby incident happened where one of the performers who got his music cut ended up putting his music on in a car and continued the show in the parking lot and the kids didn’t disperse. It went less from that angle to more of an angle of, eventually they told us, that they have no issues with anybody on the set list, they had no specific issue with Jason, or with the Raven or anything else. They were just worried that there could be a possibility of perhaps 10 percent of the crowd being gang affiliated and they were worried, and they repeated a couple times, well what happens if one person from one gang is there and another person from another gang is there, is it going to escalate and if it does then a lot of this could be on you guys, meaning the Raven and Jason. So their method of persuasion sort of shifted during the conversation. After the conversation, the Raven had a staff meeting for about a half an hour and we all decided that we still wanted to go ahead with the event. We thought it was important to us -- as (a) business and as a place that creates a safe and unique spot for people to perform and be themselves -- to go ahead with it.

HPR: Were there any stipulations that you put on Jason to go ahead with the event? Did you make any changes to what Jason wanted?

JC: We made no changes. It was just a normal Raven show other than the fear of the police doing a walk through and they did. They did multiple times.

HPR: And they didn’t find anything?

JC: I don’t know for sure. They did three walkthroughs that I saw and the three walkthroughs were officers in uniform, kind of walking with one hand on the gun and slowly going through the crowd. For me at least and probably a few others like Jason, when they came in, it totally dripped of intimidation and just like we are watching you guys, don’t mess up. So they did their walkthroughs. The weirdest thing -- and I have been to shows in my life and I have been to shows where police have done a walkthrough and that’s totally fine -- but never three walkthroughs and never have I seen police vehicles pretty much cutting off every access to the building, so there (were) two squad cars at Mexican Village, there (were) two squad cars in the church parking lot, there was a squad car over at one of the bars, AmVets I think it is, and then they had unmarked cars and then they had officers on foot that were going through the parking lots and when a group of three or four people or even two went to their car to smoke a cigarette or do whatever they do, they approached those cars and talked to them just about the evening they had. As people were coming and going and to make sure that they knew drive safe, there’s police all over this neighborhood. So when a car left, we could visibly see the marked vehicles following them. But I do know that two of my regular customers and of them being a studio renter from the basement, they ended up, because we were having a show they decided not to hang out, they didn’t want to pay the $10 so they got in their car and drove over to their house and the police ended up following all the way to their house.

HPR: From your perspective, would you host Spring Jam again?

JC: Yeah, there’s absolutely no reason in my mind why there had to have been any sort of police presence. It was a really cool show, the kids were energetic. I shouldn’t say kids, they were awesome performers. I was impressed by a lot of the energy and passion that went into them being on stage and absolutely we would do it again. I am very sad that the show itself and maybe hip-hop in general has this weird stigma attached to it of criminal activity and gang activity but I am hoping that because this show went really well that other venues will think twice about saying no right away if the police do approach them.

HPR: And the police didn’t find anything wrong that you are aware of?

JC: Yup, nothing that I am aware of. I heard no reports of anybody actually getting citations after leaving. There was no property damage. In fact, several of the performers ended up staying afterwards and helping us clean up. It was a very mindful, community-orientated event. I gotta give Jason mad props for continuing with it, instead of feeling like he’s being pushed out of the community. I hope he feels that the Raven was very welcoming to him and the hip hop community.