The Comic Cowboys are under fire again for a controversial float satirizing Taser-related deaths that critics call “totally unacceptable,” and which one Mobile city councilman compared to joking about lynching.

A group of residents on Tuesday called on city council members to denounce the 140-year-old Mardi Gras parading group’s display during the Feb. 13, Fat Tuesday parade. The focus of the concern was the organization’s float that depicted an image of someone being stunned with the inscription, “MPD finally releases BODY CAM footage with SHOCKING RESULTS.”

Two council members vowed to sign a letter to the secretive Mardi Gras organization raising concerns about the float.

“I’ve seen several floats they’ve done in the past (that were controversial), but this one really cuts deeply,” said Pat Law, a Mobile resident who was flanked by Christine Dallas, the mother of the late 36-year-old Jawan Dallas, a Black man who died following an altercation with two Mobile police officers that included him being stunned by a police Taser and whose death spurred protests and rallies late last year.

“This is a mother’s pain,” Law said. “You don’t make fun of that. In order for the family to have some kind of healing, they don’t need to be reminded of it and embarrassed in front of hundreds of thousands of people when this city is benefitting from the people gathering at the time.”

Law said she hoped the city would consider changing its parade permitting guidelines so “they don’t continue to allow this type of messaging to go out.” She also hinted at starting up a separate parade featuring floats “with our own comments on them.”

“We are not going to settle for this,” she said. “Time is up, and we stand bold on that.”

Councilmen speak

Two of the council’s three Black members – William Carroll and Cory Penn — spoke up against the displays, and vowed to sign a letter that will be forwarded to the Comic Cowboys condemning the float.

Council President C.J. Small was not in attendance. The council’s four white members did not speak.

“It hasn’t been 90 years since there was a rope and a tree and a fire where bodies were burned and citizens were made to look at it and kids were made to look at it and laugh at it as a joke,” Carroll said, calling the circumstances behind Dallas’ death a modern-day version of lynching.

“The memories it brought back are to a different time period when people who looked like me were burned,” Carroll said. “Instead of being burned, they are electrocuted. They are shocked to death.”

He added, “If that is the same atmosphere we want to bring to the city, then we have a problem.”

Carroll said the entire display was not funny, but was “inappropriate” and “uncalled for in this city.”

Penn agreed, saying he doesn’t attend the Mardi Gras parades involving the Comic Cowboys because of the group’s reputation of producing biting satire on display placards and rolling them through the city streets during what are often the largest annual crowds to descend to downtown Mobile.

Some of the past displays have been criticized for being racist, including in 2017 when the fallout from that year’s parade led to several public officials – including Mayor Sandy Stimpson and Councilman Joel Daves – to resign from the organization.

“As a community, and as a city, if we want to move forward, we have to stand against things like that,” Penn said. “That as an awful statement. No one wants to see something like that.”

First Amendment protection

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City Attorney Ricardo Woods said the First Amendment protects the content of the Comic Cowboys display and prevents any government from censuring their parade. Council members admit they have few options in restricting the parading group.

Stimpson, who was not at the council meeting, sent out a statement calling the Comic Cowboys display in “poor taste,” but agreed that they have First Amendment protections.

“Making jokes about any loss of life is always in poor taste, but regardless of my or anyone else’s personal opinion, all citizens have a right to peaceably assemble and exercise their right to free speech under the First Amendment,” Stimpson said in a statement.

Since the 2017 parade, the Comic Cowboys have come under criticism for lampooning deaths and creating an uncomfortable situation for city leaders and businesses.

The Comic Cowboys, whose membership is anonymous, has not released a statement addressing the concern first raised by AL.com on Monday. The group has a long tradition of parading controversial placards aimed at political figures and public issues on national, state, and local levels. Its motto has long been, “Without Malice.”

Past controversies

Four years ago, in 2020, signage displayed by the group targeted Boeing and the company’s struggles with the 737 Max airline following tragic plane crashes in 2018 and 2019. The signage drew outrage on social media and prompted Airbus – Boeing’s chief rival, with its largest North American manufacturing operation in Mobile – to release a statement claiming that the Comic Cowboys have no affiliation with the company, and their messaging did not reflect Airbus’ values.

The 2017 parade drew the most critics after the Comic Cowboys had placards displayed which were overtly disparaging toward Blacks and women and belittling to the city of Prichard.

The group apologized in a letter to Councilman Fred Richardson, vowing it would cease “from comments which may be hurtful to our citizens” while taking “everyone’s feelings into consideration.”

Richardson, at the time, had hoped the group would consider laying off two specific topics: portraying gun violence and the victims of gun violence to humorous effect, and depicting women being assaulted.

Law said she felt there were other floats in last month’s parade that were also condescending.

“There are a lot of racist jokes going on,” she said. “This has been going on far too long. We decided, the group of us, to stand up for the Dallas family and other families throughout the state of Alabama suffering so many injustices. This is the 21st century, and we will not continue to sit in the shadows and allow these atrocities continue in our communities.”

Jawan Dallas

It was the first time that Christine Dallas, who wore a T-shirt honoring her late son, had been at Government Plaza since the announcement in December that her legal team was filing a federal lawsuit against the city over the handling of Jawan Dallas’ death.

Christine Dallas did not comment, citing the pending lawsuit.

Jawan Dallas, during a police stop in Theodore, was hit with a Taser stun gun by two police officers. Attorneys for the Dallas family claim the Taser incident led to his death, but authorities have since said that “underlying medical conditions,” and not Tasing, was the direct cause.

For months, the Dallas family and community activists protested at Mobile City Council meetings and elsewhere over the lack of releasing police-worn body camera footage of the altercation with police. The family and their attorneys were able to eventually review the footage, which has never been released publicly.

Civil rights attorneys, in December, accused police of misusing the Taser “that is supposed to be non-lethal,” while labeling its use on Dallas as “murder.” The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office said in November that it is not pursuing legal charges against the officers involved in the altercation.

The Dallas family’s attorneys have compared Jawan Dallas’ death to George Floyd, the Black man whose killing in 2020 while in police custody in Minneapolis ignited protests across the country over police brutality and racial injustice.

“There are a lot of good folks in this community who are working for racial conciliation,” said the Rev. Tonny Algood, a community activist and former director with United Methodist Inner City Mission in Mobile. “What kind of message does such a float send to those who seek it? How would any of us feel if it was our son and daughter that had been tased to death, and then view something like that? It brings up a lot of wounds.”