JUNE 28, 2017 9:48 AM
A man stopped by a North Florida cop and cited for walking without an ID and threatened with jail said this week he would like to see the officer kicked off the force.
Devonte Shipman, 21, of Jacksonville said this Sheriff’s Officer J.S. Bolen deserves to be disciplined with suspension or firing after Bolen threatened to put him in jail after a jaywalking stop.
And for not having his drivers license on him even though the 21-year-old wasn’t driving.
Shipman didn’t expect the video of his encounter with Bolen, posted last week to his Facebook account, to go viral Monday just as he didn’t expect anything when he crossed Arlington Road about a half-mile from his listed address.
“I never knew anybody who got stopped for jaywalking,” Shipman said. “I didn’t know you could be stopped for jaywalking. I thought, ‘How can it be a crime if you see it done so often?’”
When he got across the road, Bolen was waiting. Police encounters aren’t quite as mundane as crossing the street to Shipman, but he said he’d been harassed before by law enforcement in off-camera situations.
“Just from everything that’s been going on nowadays with police and civilians, I wanted to make sure I was recorded,” he said. “There’s no telling what he would’ve done if I wasn’t recording.”
As Bolen accuses Shipman of jaywalking, orders him to the police car, threatens to arrest him for resisting arrest without violence and tells Shipman (incorrectly) Florida law states he must have identification on him at all times, Shipman said, “I was unsure of the whole situation. I didn’t know why he stopped me. I’m thinking, what did I do? You can’t take me to jail just because you feel like it.”
Bolen eventually gave Shipman tickets for jaywalking and not carrying his drivers’ license and exhibiting it on demand. On the ticket for the latter, Bolen wrote the statute applied as 322.15. That statute applies only to those driving.
While a group called the Jacksonville Community Action Committee asked its Facebook followers to call the JSO to demand Bolen’s firing, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Florida chapter took a broader look.
Asked what he’d like to see happen to Bolen, Shipman said, “Either he gets suspended from the force, so he has to go to another county and we don’t have to deal with him in our community. Or he just has to get fired, period.”
In answer to a voice mail inquiring if Shipman’s video was under review or if Bolen was under investigation, JSO Officer Melissa J. Bujeda e-mailed the Miami Herald, “It violates the law for us to identify any officer under investigation. It is confidential per state statute 112.533 until the investigation is concluded.”
David J. Neal: 305-376-3559, @DavidJNeal
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Officer J.S. Bolen in a frame grab from Devonte Shipman’s Facebook video.
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