© Marcus Yam for The New York TimesThe Insane Clown Posse during a 2011 performance at Gramercy Theater in New York.
The lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Detroit by lawyers for the band and for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. Plaintiffs include the Insane Clown Posse founders Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler, who perform as Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, and whose fans call themselves Juggalos.
Also listed as plaintiffs are four Juggalos from Nevada, California, North Carolina and Iowa, who offered details of incidents in which they said they had been subjected to police harassment or other punishments for identifying with Insane Clown Posse.
Brandon Bradley, from Citrus Heights, Calif., and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said at a news conference in Detroit on Wednesday that he had been stopped and questioned by police on several occasions because he wore Juggalo tattoos and clothing. He said that after a lifetime of feeling like an outsider, the music of Insane Clown Posse "told me I wasn't alone."
Comment: This is crazy to define a group of musical fans as a criminal gang. It's a classic example of expanding the scope of a law that at first glance seems reasonable: "Gangs are bad, there should be a law that helps police crack down on gangs," etc. For gangs, you could substitute "terrorists" and the same process applies. Now they're going after people who follow a band. Of course, to test this, they picked an easy target. The Insane Clown Posse's lyrics are deliberately offensive and frightening, albeit in a kind of silly way, and the working class white kids who follow them (Juggalos) will look unsavory to the public. But given the broad definition applied here, what's next? People who follow Phish? Even Jimmy Buffet? No doubt some laws are broken by those fans, too.
He added that he was standing up "for people like me who are being discriminated against, just because of the music we listen to."
"I'm a peaceful person and I try to live my life right," he said.
The suit said, "Among the supporters of almost any group - whether it be a band, sports team, university, political organization or religion - there will be some people who violate the law."
It added: "However, it is wrong to designate the entire group of supporters as a criminal gang based on the acts of a few. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened here."
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment on the suit.
The seeds of this lawsuit were sown in 2011, when the F.B.I.'s National Gang Intelligence Center published a report that described Juggalos as "a loosely organized hybrid gang" whose members were "expanding into many U.S. communities."
The report, titled "National Gang Threat Assessment: Emerging Trends," cited a 2011 incident in which "two suspected Juggalo associates were charged with beating and robbing an elderly homeless man," and another in 2010 in which "a suspected Juggalo member" shot and wounded two other people.
The report also included a photograph of a woman described as a "Juggalo member," wearing face paint similar to the kind used by Insane Clown Posse and pointing a gun at the camera.
In its lawsuit, Insane Clown Posse said that, even more than other hip-hop artists whose music "uses very harsh language to tell nightmarelike stories with an underlying message that horrible things happen to people who choose evil over good," the band's own songs offered "hopeful, life-affirming themes about the wonders of life and the support that Juggalos give to one another."
The lawsuit asks the court to set aside the findings of the 2011 F.B.I. gang assessment, order the elimination of "criminal intelligence information" on Juggalos from government and law-enforcement databases and prohibit the gathering of further information without "sufficient facts" of a "definable criminal activity or enterprise."
Mark Parsons, a Juggalo from Las Vegas and one of the plaintiffs listed in the suit, said in the complaint that he had been detained in July by state troopers outside Knoxville, Tenn., for displaying Insane Clown Posse's insignia, known as "the hatchet man," on his semi truck.
Another plaintiff, Scott Gandy, from Concord, N.C., said that he was told at an Army recruitment office in 2012 that he could not join the military without removing his Juggalo tattoos, which a recruiter told him were "gang-related." Mr. Gandy said he spent "hundreds of dollars to undergo a painful procedure in which his Juggalo tattoos were covered with other tattoos," but his application to the Army was still denied.
Mr. Bruce and Mr. Utsler said that they had had an Insane Clown Posse concert canceled in 2012 at the Royal Oak Music Theater in Michigan. They said the police had requested the show's cancellation, citing "the federal Juggalo gang designation."
Jeff Engstrom, a lawyer and blogger who writes at Abovethelaw.com under the pseudonym Juggalo Law, said in an email that the government's actions were "laughably off base" and "the equivalent of placing Phish fans on a terrorist watch list." He added, "It elevates an Internet punch line into something even more absurd."
Insane Clown Posse filed an earlier lawsuit against the F.B.I. in 2012, seeking the documents that the bureau had used to reach its determination that Juggalos should be classified as a gang. Federal authorities filed a motion to dismiss this suit in August, saying that they had already shared much of this material.
Mr. Bruce said at the news conference that Insane Clown Posse was a band that had spent its whole career struggling to be taken seriously.
The actions of the government, he said, were "punishing our fans for representing us."
"When was the last time that's happened in this country?" he asked.
Mr. Utsler said: "We're not a gang, we're a family. We're a diverse group of men and women, united by our love of music and nothing more. We're not a threat, a public menace or a danger to society."
Reader Comments
They ooze disrespect. Their songs are full of hate and willful ignorance. It's part of their gimmick. I can barely even quote their lyrics here on this site to make a point about how much they glorify violence and not giving a #@$% about anything and being egotistical jerks, since they are so full of swearing.
"It ain't yo bidness how I act" They exclaim in the same song talking about pulling ppl into the street and beating them cause of, well who knows why?
I'm sorry, I used to listen to Nine Inch Nails. That was violent music which didn't glorify going out and being a total lunatic to others. ICP is music which caters to dumbed-down and riled up youth and encourages them to just not give a #*$# and do whatever they feel like. Sure, part of it is satire, and the whole thing's an act, but please read the lyrics to half a dozen of their songs, the way they try to be flippantly philosophical while writing songs like "I Stab People" before defending them and their fans. Their music *is* incitement to violent thought. I don't agree with terrorism laws or designations for groups like these, but law enforcement keeping tabs on people who actually listen to these "ideas" and enjoy having these images in their minds? Not a bad idea.
To all you god damned mother fucking cunt shitters and cock suckers who only deserve to die (slowly and painfully in the most gruesome manner conceivable):
I am somewhat 'heartened' to find Sott (its agents) less hypocritical when it comes to freedom issues than a great many other sites of this nature.
ned
@$kepticle:
Mind if I and my many paid (and completely loyal to their $alary) goon$ -er- agent$ track you and perhap$ hara$$ and impri$on you on my 'deciding'? I'm not $ure I like what you ju$t wrote....
....and I have a lot of money.
p.s. (sarcasm over); I never listened to Nine Inch Nails, have only barely heard of Isane Clown Posse (never heard their songs/filthy talk) and I still listen to Metallica, one of my all-time favorite bands. I am 57. ned
The whole crazy story of ICP is recounted in Joseph Bruce's autobiography. Having read their lyrics, I know ICP aren't inwardly like what they rap about. They grew up in Detroit, so they saw crime and gang warfare and rapped about it, just like hundreds of other people. Why have they been singled out? They were so hated (They earned many mentions on top worst band lists) and ridiculed because they were very successful on their own. They promoted themselves 24/7 for years to get the following they have today, no hand-outs or free rides. Outwardly, their lyrics are violent, dark, full of metaphors and center around the mythos of the Dark Carnival that they created. The persistent theme across their 6 Jokers Card albums is that if you're a good person, you'll go to "Shangri-La", and if you're a mean SOB you'll burn in hell. They also welcomed people of all ages and walks of life as family, and gave a home to a lot of people who felt like outcasts because they were different.
In the final track on their last Joker's card album, The Unveiling, they revealed that they follow God, always have, and the Dark Carnival is God. This is an inversion of the usual masquerade of the dark posing as the light. These guys are the light posing as the dark. When they revealed this, they lost half their fanbase, the half that truly believed they advocate violence and wicked stuff. The whole time they were just clowning around, and they fooled a lot of people. They weren't sorry for their ruse, weren't sorry they lost half their fans. These guys are not your average gangster rappers.