Stephen Montoya
For over a year now, Duante Newton says he has been inspired by God to spread his divine message everywhere, including in the middle of the bustling Fort Worth Stockyards.
It was in Fort Worth’s historic district, however, that instead of sharing with others why he chose to follow the Lord, Newton and his group of fellow evangelists found themselves on the radar of Fort Worth police on two occasions one evening last September.
The group was first questioned near Joe T. Garcia’s, Newton says. A little over an hour later, the group, representatives of the evangelical organization Christ for All Nations, were approached again outside of several shops on the south side of Exchange Avenue just east of Mule Alley.
“A policeman asked who had the microphone last because they would be getting a ticket,” Newton says. “I was the last person, so, I raised my hand.”
Newton received a citation, alleging he was in violation of a city noise ordinance. The ticket came with a $400 fine.
In July, Newton was acquitted by a jury in the Fort Worth Municipal Court, exonerating him while also strengthening his belief in spreading the word of God.
“I thought that I was in a good position [in life], but it just came to a point where I was like, ‘What is this? What is life? What truly does it mean to be here on this earth?’ And Jesus came and met me where I was at, so, I just wanted to go out and show people that Jesus is the way,” Newton says while peering down the very street where the incident took place.
Newton, 19, moved from Atlanta to North Richland Hills to live with his father and step-mom about a year before the incident, having felt a calling to move close to Texas.
It was his brother who kick-started his Road to Damascus. Their family was not religious, but his brother invited him to his church.
“At this time, I'm not religious at all. I'm not trying to follow Jesus or anything like that,” he says. “So, I'm going to church on this Sunday morning, not expecting to feel or see anything, and I'm there not really paying attention to the message or anything. But when the worship starts, that's when I start to feel what's described in the Bible as the Holy Spirit being poured out upon you. I felt him literally come upon me, and I started crying and weeping and just apologizing for things that I was doing that I knew were wrong against him.”
That was the start of a sequence of events that led to his conversion, Sept. 1 — his birthday.
“I gave my life to Jesus that day, right then and there. I remember when I got home, I told my mom that I was giving my life to Jesus. She was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what do you mean?’”
Being so new to the area, Newton had never stepped foot in the Stockyards before that day in September.
Stephen Montoya
The Case
The week before his run-in with the police, Newton was finishing up a weeklong evangelical training course with Florida-based Christ for All Nations, which he had met through his church. According to its website, the global organization, known for missionary work in Africa, claims to have converted over 90 million people to Christianity.
“We actually started out at Joe T. Garcia’s,” Newton says, pointing to the bricks of Exchange Avenue. Newton says the group had asked to enter Joe T.’s to evangelize to diners. Restaurant management politely declined the request, he says.
“It wasn’t until we walked a few more blocks that the police stopped our group leader to discuss something with them,” he says. Although he couldn’t recall the conversation, Newton says the encounter made police aware of the group’s presence.
After moving further down the sidewalk while still using a megaphone that topped out at 50 decibel levels, Newton says he began to tell everyone around him why he chose to follow Jesus.
“There wasn't a set of rules,” Newton said regarding the group outing. “The training was to go out and tell people about Jesus. It doesn't matter how you tell them about him, just be respectful.”
The tour, which was supposed to last two hours from beginning to end, seemed to encounter obstacles from the get-go, Newton says.
Given the number of people that frequent the Stockyards over the weekend, Newton says his group thought it would be a great place to tell people about the message of Christ. The plan, he says, was for the group witness outside around the businesses. However, once they passed Mule Alley, things took a turn for the worse.
“The police showed back up,” Newton says. He was detained and given a $400 fine for violating a city noise ordinance that limits the maximum decibel level to 70.
“It was only a Class C misdemeanor, but to me the reason the case was so important is they just didn't want street preachers down there,” says Jonathan Hullihan, one of Newton’s attorneys. “This was just a way to get them off the street or anybody down there preaching.”
Political activists also use the Stockyards platform and its sidewalks teeming with visitors to preach. For example, Stophavingkids.org was down there in May. The group didn’t use voice enhancers, like a megaphone. Rather, they carried signs declaring messages, such as “Join The Vasectomy Club” and “Let’s Stop Dumping Our Problems Onto Future Generations.” The group, by all appearances, had a permit for an outside event. They had outdoor fencing of several feet around them.
Hullihan was one of three attorneys in the courtroom last month when Newton went before a jury. Joining Hullihan was Rosalie Escobedo, the executive director of the Tarrant County branch of Citizens Defending Freedom, and attorney Martin Etwop.
According to Hullihan, one of the officers on scene of Newton’s incident said in court that this is how the police are dealing with street preachers in that area now.
“That really piqued my interest — that it was almost a targeted attempt at these individuals,” he says.
A quick Google search brings up several similar incidents in which the police cited “street preachers” or otherwise detained or arrested them outright. One specific instance from over a year ago was the case of Michael Cody Torres, who was cited while preaching at an LGBTQ event in January 2023. After being warned to leave, he was arrested on the allegation of violating the noise ordinance. Torres has sued the city of Fort Worth, alleging violations to the First and 14th Amendments under the U.S. Constitution.
The case is ongoing.
With Newton’s case going before a jury, Hullihan says the process his client went through was overkill.
“One of the officers on scene said during the court proceeding that they know the street preachers in this area have been a problem, so once they get a complaint from a local business, all they do is remove them from the area,” Hullihan verified.
Stephen Montoya
A Nuisance?
Tracy Uranga, sales director at the Double D Ranch retail shop on East Exchange, says street preachers in the Stockyards have been a nuisance to local businesses for years.
“Their noise level carries across the street and permeates our store,” she says. “We can hear them in our store because it is so loud, and it just disrupts our establishment and the customer flow. And then we report them to the police.”
Uranga says she knows of several businesses in the Stockyards that have had to go to court to assist in enforcing the noise violation by being a witness to a noise disruption.
“They don’t have to be in front of the storefront,” she says. “They could be half a block away, but they'll get on a megaphone and it's so loud, they might as well be directly across the street.”
Uranga says most of the businesses in this area of the Stockyards usually keep their doors open, which makes it more inviting for would-be customers. However, if there is a loud street preacher nearby, she says most, if not all, of the businesses close their doors.
“We hate to close the doors,” she says. “But there have been instances where we've had to close the doors because the noise across the street is so loud with them preaching. And we’re not alone, there are four other businesses near us that have the same opinion of this.”
Hullihan says that the speakers for the twice a day cattle drive and music from various adjoining saloons and live music venues pose a greater noise violation than Newton’s testimony of faith.
“Duante was at the same audible level or even less than the audible level of everything else that was going on around there, whether it was the speakers that were on the lamppost, or it was across the street,” Hullihan says. “I really just tried to show the hypocrisy of that all, and really tried to show that it wasn't how loud the volume was, but it was the content of the speech that people found offensive.”
The city of Fort Worth noise ordinance states that volume may be in violation of section 23-8 when it is disturbing to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities, or it exceeds certain decibel level restrictions. Also, this section of city code states that a noise ordinance violation doesn’t require a decibel level for enforcement of the ordinance.
For example, one subsection states that no person shall make, cause, suffer, allow, or permit, unreasonable noise in such a manner or with such volume that it disturbs a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities.
“Who is a reasonable person?” Hullihan asks. “This ordinance is left to interpretation and the street preachers are the ones paying for it. This code needs to be fleshed out more.”
As for Newton, the incident and subsequent legal wrangling thus far has been the biggest test of his newfound Christian faith.
“Not to be cocky or arrogant or anything like that, but I know what God told me,” Newton says. “I know that he said, ‘If I am for you, then who can be against you?’ So, I kind of knew in my heart that this would be settled and that I wouldn't really have to suffer anything from it, and that God will use this for his glory.”