White police officer threatens black man with jail time for jaywalking in Jacksonville.

Florida Cop Cites Imaginary ID Law While Threatening 21-Year-Old Black Man With Jail for Jaywalking

Florida Cop Cites Imaginary ID Law While Threatening 21-Year-Old Black Man With Jail for Jaywalking

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The Slatest
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June 28 2017 11:43 AM

Florida Cop Cites Imaginary ID Law While Threatening 21-Year-Old Black Man With Jail for Jaywalking

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Above: Video taken by a (black) 21-year-old Jacksonville, Florida, resident named Devonte Shipman in which a (white) police officer threatens to take him to jail after stopping him for (allegedly) jaywalking. (Technically, the officer says he will jail Shipman for "disobeying a direct order" and resisting arrest, but he raises the possibility of doing so within 22 seconds of Shipman turning on his camera, which from context seems like it happened fairly soon after their interaction began.)

The Florida Times-Union* has a write-up, from which we learn that Shipman fortunately did not end up being sentenced to a lengthy term in a maximum-security prison for doing something that literally everyone always does all the time when crossing the street. He was, however, given two citations, one for failing to obey a walk signal and one for not having a driver's license with him. But as the article notes, laws about carrying a driver's license apply to drivers, not pedestrians. It seems like that will be news to the officer, who tells Shipman during the video that "in the state of Florida you have to have an ID card on you identifying who you are." Florida does have a stop-and-frisk law that allows officers to detain individuals under criminal suspicion in order to identify them—but 1) Shipman told the officer his name and date of birth when asked, 2) the stop-and-frisk law is not the statute the police department told the Times-Union that Shipman had violated, and 3) jaywalking is identified as a "noncriminal offense" in Florida code.

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*Correction, June 30, 2017: This post originally referred in error to the Florida Times-Union as the Jacksonville Times-Union.