JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — WARNING: The above video contains strong language and subject matter some my find offensive.
A sheriff’s officer was issued a no-contact order after a Jacksonville couple complained he’d been “harassing” and “stalking” them.
The couple sought the injunction in September after the officer repeatedly ticketed them for illegal tint. They claimed he acted in a manner that was “aggressive” and caused them to experience “fear” and “stress.”
In addition to obtaining the protective order, the couple called 911 twice on the officer and filed an internal affairs complaint.
The officer denied the allegations in a court filing, and the internal investigation found his conduct "lawful, proper and in accordance with his duties" and "in no way appeared unnecessary or excessive." The injunction itself was dissolved just a few days later. But the circumstance was unique.
“That’s really unusual,” said First Coast News Crime Analyst Mark Baughman about the restraining order. “I've never heard that happen.”
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer Justin Peppers was served the restraining order at JSO headquarters, while on duty. It not only prohibited contact with the couple; it effectively ended his secondary employment, since he worked off duty security at their Main Street apartment complex.
The restraining order was rescinded by the same judge who issued it. In his order dissolving the injunction, Circuit Judge Bruce Anderson, persuaded by Peppers' motion to dismiss, said since the officer's actions served “a legitimate purpose” they could not qualify as stalking.
As for the officer's conduct toward the "innocent passerby," the judge said, "Whether [Peppers] was aggressive to someone other than the Petitioner has no bearing on whether he stalked the Petitioner."
Peppers didn’t respond to interview requests from First Coast News, but in a sworn affidavit, he said, “I did not threaten Jones in any way.”
Steve Zona, former president of the Jacksonville police union, and now president of the state FOP, considers the injunction an egregious mistake. “Judge Anderson clearly says he's a police officer [in the original order of protection]," he noted. "He didn't take the time necessary that a judge should before he issued an injunction.”
The couple who obtained the injunction is also upset – for different reasons. Glenn Jones and LaShada Harris contend Peppers deliberately harassed them, and continued to do so after the stalking injunction was rescinded.
One month to the day after the protective order was lifted, Peppers showed up on their doorstep – at a different apartment in a different neighborhood -- to issue them their third tint ticket in two months.
“We actually called the police on Peppers,” Jones told First Coast News. “I’ve been pulled over by plenty officers and never had a problem. This officer is a problem.”
The "Innocent Passerby"
The couple’s first encounter with Peppers was an Aug. 27 traffic stop. He followed them out of their parking lot at Capri Villas apartments and stopped them a few blocks away.
“I’m stopping your vehicle because your tint’s too dark,” he tells them on his recorded body cam.
Peppers then says he smells marijuana. The video shows he asks Jones to step out of the car, pats him down and quickly handcuffs him. He ultimately cites both Jones and Harris for possession (charges later dropped). Peppers also tickets Jones for illegal tint.
But as Peppers is searching the vehicle, another car pulls up. A woman in a Dodge Charger is trying to get through, but the road is blocked by the traffic stop.
“Can you please go to a different road?” Peppers asks the young Black woman driving. She asks if there is another way, and he responds, “there are several ways... Please back up."
The exchange begins to smolder. “Back up” he tells her, repeating the phrase 11 times. The driver grows increasingly agitated. “Listen, don’t talk to me like that,” she says. “I make way more money than you, sweetie.” When Peppers ask for her license, she refuses. “I ain’t giving you sh*t," she says.
Another officer who responded to the scene yells, "Are you high right now? Is that what it is?!"
"I don't do drugs," she retorts. "I have my own business."
"Get out," Peppers demands. “You’re about to go to jail for resisting."
As she steps out and Peppers begins handcuffing her, he spots a gun on her passenger seat. He quickly slams her on the hood of Jones’ vehicle. “You have a fucking gun right next to you, how about that, you f*cking retard. Are you crazy?”
The woman tells Peppers she’s licensed to carry (which he later confirms). She says the gun was on her seat because she’d emptied her purse looking for an AirPod. She's placed, handcuffed, in his squad car where she remains for an hour and a half. She's ultimately released without charges.
Jones’ mother, Helen Jones, who went to the scene when her son called and witnessed the encounter, said the incident gave all of them pause. “As a Black mother, that's fearful,” she said. “The officer aggression was over the top. He literally threw an innocent bystander up against my son's truck.”
The second ticket
By the time Peppers uncuffed the passerby, Jones and Harris had left. But Peppers returned to Capri Villas, and began trying to determine if Jones actually lived there. By coincidence, he stopped Jones’ brother and asked him. Upset by what she perceived as harassment of both her sons, Helen Jones called 911. A police sergeant came out and said if the family had concerns, they should file an internal affairs complaint.
On Sept. 14, they did.
On Sept. 15, Peppers pulled the vehicle over, again, this time in the parking lot of Capri Villa apartments with Harris behind the wheel. Again, he said the window tint was illegal.
“It’s the same thing I just went through with you two weeks ago,” she says, exasperated, on his body cam. “You did it again! You’ve just been waiting.”
Because it had been less than a month since the first ticket, Baughman takes issue with the second one. “When you issue a citation for tint violations … they generally have 30 days to correct it,” he says. “It's a stretch, no doubt about it. Definitely a stretch. And I'm not sure why the officer did what he did.”
Jones’ brother, who witnessed the stop, begins recording, and shouting for other neighbors to come outside. Peppers calls for backup.
“I got one loudmouth trying to start a crowd around me,” he tells dispatch. Three more squad cars arrive, lights flashing. With those officers surrounding the scene, Peppers gives Harris a ticket for illegal tint. He also gives her a verbal warning for parking too far from the curb.
“You didn’t even let me back up and park!” she exclaims. “You pulled me over right when I got in!”
After taking the ticket, Harris goes inside. Peppers resumes his security patrol – parked outside. And the family calls 911.
“He has been outside ... sitting directly in front of my brother’s residence,” Jones’ brother tells dispatch. “We are literally in fear that he is going to try to come up some way to take my brother to jail on some fraudulent charges. Which is just as wrong as you can get!"
JSO Sgt. Ryan Walker responds. He speaks to the family for over an hour. They tell him what’s transpired, and show him the video of the initial stop, when the passerby was handcuffed.
“Clearly it doesn't look good,” he says after watching it. “It's not a good look. But I don't know the entire story here.”
Walker agrees to mediate the dispute. “I understand what you're saying. I understand your fear. … I’ll talk to him and try to get him to relax for a while. … I'm gonna do my best to rein it in.”
In the meantime, he advises Jones to get rid of the tint. “We're not gonna stop enforcing the law," he says. "But there's no reason for us to continue to follow the same person around and give them repeated tickets about something.”
The injunction
Two days later, on Sept. 17, Harris and Jones asked for a court order of protection from Peppers. On Sept. 20, Judge Anderson granted it.
“It’s just odd,” says Baughman. “I can't imagine a judge issuing it. Maybe the judge didn't have all the facts of the restraining order. But here's an officer lawfully carrying out his business.”
Anderson did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did JSO.
Peppers’ attorney challenged the injunction, saying Florida’s stalking statute doesn’t apply to behavior that serves a “legitimate purpose.” Since Peppers wrote the couple tickets for illegal tint and marijuana possession, the attorney said, his actions “cannot serve as ‘harassment’ to support [a claim of] stalking.”
Peppers himself wrote an affidavit denying Jones’ allegations. “I did not threaten Jones in any way,” he wrote. As for sitting outside the couple’s unit, Pepper said it was his job to patrol the complex, and “much of that time is spent stationary in my patrol car.”
In his order Judge Anderson noted the couple “inexplicably” failed to tell him they’d been ticketed by the officer. Because they were ticketed, the traffic stops could not constitute harassment, “regardless of whether the Petitioner perceived [Peppers] as aggressive.”
He dissolved the injunction he’d approved just seven days earlier.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
On Oct. 24, one month to the day after the judge's order, Peppers ticketed Jones again for illegal tint. This time the vehicle was parked. Peppers showed up at night at Jones’ apartment – no longer in Capri Villas, and in a different part of town. He explained he needed to re-issue the tint ticket from Aug. 27.
“You got a ticket number that had already been issued to someone else,” he explained in a cell phone recording taken by Jones that night. “So what I need to do is re-issue the citation for the same date, the same time, the same exact violation.”
“They’re obviously thinking they're still being what they call ‘harassed, stalked,'" Baughman says. “And I can see why they may think that. Especially when they're living in another part of town, and the same officer’s showing up to administratively reissue those citations.”
Helen Jones considers the officer’s conduct extreme and concerning. “A tint ticket should not have gone this far,” she says. “There's no way it should have escalated to this point. And the escalation did not come on our behalf. It was all initiated by him.”
Baughman believes the situation "could have been handled differently on both ends, quite frankly." Going forward, he thinks it would be smart for the officer and JSO officials to limit contact when possible.
“I think I would have found a way to get those citations reissued to them without him actually having any interaction with them," he said. "That may have went a little far."