Florida resident Jason Arrington was driving near the intersection of 27th Street and Main Street in Jacksonville's Brentwood neighborhood on Dec. 13 when he did something we've all probably been guilty of at one time or another: he ran a red light. An officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO) witnessed this action and pulled him over, but the traffic stop didn't exactly go as planned.
Arrington, who thought he was doing everything correctly, informed the officer that he had a gun on his person — a gun that he owned legally — and he was asked to step out of his vehicle and put his hands on his truck. Back-up arrived on the scene, and, according to Arrington, the back-up officer began to search him and attempted to remove the gun.
"She tugged on the gun the first time, then she tugged again," Arrington said in a statement on Friday. "That's when I told her, 'Hey, let me unloosen my belt because it's tight.' I don't know, she might have got nervous or whatever and she pulled harder two more times and that's when it discharged and it shot me in my upper thigh, hip and came out on my right side."
Arrington also said that didn't even understand why the officers wanted to remove the gun anyway. He said he posed no threat, and did everything they asked him to do, even keeping his hands on his vehicle after getting shot. While a request has been made to release the bodycam footage, the JSO said it could take six to eight months.
On Friday, the organization announced on X that it is conducting an "active internal affairs investigation." Typically, when an officer is involved in a shooting, it would conduct what it calls an "administrative review of a critical incident." The sheriff's office added, "As is customary in these types of investigations, the officer under investigation may have his or her law enforcement authority rescinded. That authority has been rescinded for this officer and the officer was reassigned to an administrative position until the active internal affairs investigation is complete."
JSO also reportedly released an internal memo on December 18, just five days after the shooting, reminding officers how to handle a person who is carrying a gun.
"The burden of proving an individual is not eligible to carry a concealed firearm falls on the investigating officer and is not an automatic presumption. Unless an officer has articulable suspicion that the detained person presents a threat to the safety of citizens or officers or has knowledge that the detained person is ineligible to carry a concealed firearm, officers should not seize a firearm (i.e. remove it from holster, vehicle, pocket, bag, etc.) from someone lawfully carrying it," the memo stated, according to First Coast News.
"Reaching for someone’s handgun is a huge problem because you don’t know how they have it secured, if they secured it properly, if they know anything about gun safety," former FBI agent and law enforcement expert Dale Carson told WJAX-TV, Jacksonville's CBS affiliate.
Arrington, who works as a crane operator, said the incident has interfered with his job, making it harder to perform his physical duties. "It damaged me pretty good," he said on Friday. He also announced on Friday that he is filing a lawsuit against the JSO. He said, "I just hope they do a lot better and we don’t run into this again," adding, "I look at them a lot different."
"Gun owners in this state should be able to carry their firearms, without the fear of an officer pulling them over on the side of the road," his attorney, Kay Harper Williams of the Witherspoon Law Group, said, adding that Arrington's civil rights were violated.
You can watch Arrington's entire press conference here:
Join the conversation as a VIP Member