Rapper Randy Ross from jail: 'Whatever happened to the First Amendment?'

I had barely launched into the litany of questions I had for Randy Ross, the rapper from Greece charged with making a “terroristic threat” in his music video “School Shooter,” when he posed one to me: “Whatever happened to the First Amendment?”

We spoke Wednesday at the Monroe County Jail, where Ross was being held in lieu of $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 property bond. He was scheduled to appear Friday in Greece Town Court.

Ross, 23, didn’t look as menacing in his beige jail-issued jumpsuit as he did in the video he posted to YouTube five days after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. He was articulate and wore the expression of a frightened young man, which he admitted he was.

“I’m scared to death,” he said.

More: Hip-hop artist accused of threatening Greece schools in YouTube music video

Greece police and county prosecutors want you to believe that Ross threatened to terrorize our community with his lyrics that included lines like, “I lay ‘em down like a school shooter” and “I’ll show up at your lunch, here (n-word) eat this, four clip let it rip.”

The only things Ross is guilty of are making offensive music and executing a bad idea, or at least an insensitive one.

Ross explained that he recorded the song six months ago and rushed to film the video the weekend after the Florida school shooting to capitalize on the national conversation about the tragedy.

He said he paid a friend $80 to shoot the video, which included backdrops of Greece Arcadia High School, which Ross graduated from, and a convenience store in his neighborhood.

The title, he said, was inspired by a friend who flirted with the idea of using the name “School Shooter” for his handle as a player in the video game "Call of Duty."

“Now they’re calling me a terrorist,” Ross said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

When asked what he meant by his song’s refrain, “I lay ‘em down like a school shooter,” Ross offered a grammar lesson.

“It’s a simile, you know, a comparison using the word ‘like’ or ‘as,’” he replied.

“I know what a simile is,” I answered, “but what does it mean to lay down something like a school shooter?”

“Anything,” Ross said. “You can lay down anything. I’m laying down my music.”

We spoke for the allotted 30 minutes, sitting across from each other in seats marked “C-11” on either side of a shallow glass partition in the jail’s inmate visitation center. Jail deputies wouldn't allow any cameras or recording devices.

Inmates are permitted one “social visit” from a relative or friend within the first 72 hours of their incarceration.

Deputies said Ross hadn’t had any such visits since his arrest on Monday but warned that my visit might prevent a family member from seeing him.

When we met, Ross told me not to worry about using his one social visit. He said he’s been in regular touch with his family and that he’d asked them to stay away from the jail. “I don’t want them seeing me like this,” he said.

Ross went into detail about his life, explaining that his rapper persona, which could be described as that of a put-upon thug angry at the world, is an act. “That’s rap,” he said.

Not that everything came up roses for Ross.

He told of being raised by his grandmother in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He said his mother battled drug addiction and his father was on the road working in the magazine industry.

Ross said he relocated to Greece in 2008 with his mother, who was by then sober and came for a job. Today, Ross said, he lives with both his parents in Greece.

Along the way, he had brushes with the law.

He recounted how a petit larceny conviction when he was 15 got him five years of probation that eventually became seven when he violated his sentence by smoking marijuana. Last year, he said, he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge.

Ross has a girlfriend and a 5-month-old daughter he said they named Harmony as a tribute to how much music means to him. He wants to make it big in music, but for the last eight months has been detailing cars in the doll-up shop at a local auto dealership.

“I’ve never had a job this long,” Ross said. “But I got a daughter now and I’ve got to take care of her.”

It was at the auto dealership that Greece police officers visited Ross on Monday. He said they asked him if he knew why they were there. When he replied that he didn’t, he said an officer asked, “Why don’t you take a wild guess?”

Ross said he understood why police might question him, but was flabbergasted when officers returned on his lunch hour to arrest him.

He said he was embarrassed — not by his actions related to his music, but by the consequences — and that he hoped his employer would take him back if he ever got out of jail.

Making a “terroristic threat” is a Class D felony under state penal law, which is punishable by up to 7 years in prison.

In justifying Ross’s arrest, Greece police Sgt. Jared Rene said that while “School Shooter” didn’t mention a location, the images of Ross on video hanging out in the parking lots of Greece schools “was alarming to us.”

“I will tell you that there is clear content, clear language in this specific case that we felt met the threshold for a criminal charge,” Rene said. “Nobody’s interested in violating anybody’s civil rights or the right to free speech. That’s not what this is.”

Yes, it is.

The statute under which Ross was charged states a person is “guilty of making a terroristic threat when…he or she threatens to commit or cause to be committed a specified offense and thereby causes a reasonable expectation or fear of the imminent commission of such offense.”

It goes on to state it doesn’t matter “that the defendant did not have the intent or capability of committing the specified offense…”

The Constitution suggests otherwise.

While there are limits to free speech when it comes to advocating force that incites imminent lawless action and is likely to incite such action, context is everything.

Ross’s “School Shooter,” although crass in its use of lyrics like “bullets in the spine” and “f--- Greece police, yeah I said that,” hasn’t incited violence nor appears likely to.

Rap music has a long history of grotesque and hyperbolic lyrics.

It was in 1988 that N.W.A. caused a stir with its lyrics of, “A young (n-word) on the warpath, and when I’m finished it’s gonna be a bloodbath of cops, dying in L.A.” Consider Ice-T’s 1992 hit “Cop Killer” with its lyrics of, “I’m ‘bout to bust some shots off, I’m ‘bout to dust some cops off.”

No one arrested the members of the band Foster the People for their catchy 2011 song “Pumped Up Kicks” about a high school student envisioning a massacre who warns, “You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun.”

It can be argued there's no place for such lyrics in a decent society, but not that they're criminal.

“For the police to arrest an artist based exclusively on his lyrics presents serious First Amendment concerns,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“Whatever the words of (the New York) statute, they cannot trump the First Amendment,” she said. “You cannot criminalize free speech when that speech, no matter how offensive, is not a true threat and does not incite imminent lawless action.”

Ross’s arms were covered in tattoos. One on his left forearm read, “Ambition.” The one on his right read, “I got you if you got me.”

I don’t need Ross to have my back. But in this case, I’ve got his.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.