The clips showed people doing everyday activities like shopping or eating, captioned with inappropriate or sexualized comments. <\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office is investigating reports of TikTok accounts that posted videos of women and children being secretly recorded in public places across the First Coast.<\/p>\n
Several of the videos, which have since been deleted, showed women and girls shopping or eating at businesses, unaware they were being filmed. Some posts were accompanied by captions describing the subjects in sexualized or suggestive terms.<\/p>\n
One caption reading, “Jacksonville Florida sexy white teenage girls shopping inside Five Below.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally have not seen it, but my 18-year-old daughter has,\u201d said Jacksonville mother Dawn Pattishall. \u201cIt\u2019s disgusting. It\u2019s a total invasion of privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of the accounts associated with the videos have been banned, but screenshots continue circulating online.<\/p>\n
One viewer even commented that someone had recorded his stepdaughter, asking others what he could do about it.<\/p>\n
While Florida law makes it a crime to secretly record someone in private areas such as bathrooms or changing rooms, the law offers less protection in public spaces.<\/p>\n
Former federal chief assistant prosecutor Curtis Fallgatter said the behavior could still amount to a criminal offense under the state\u2019s stalking statute.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously perceived by those victims as a form of exploitation,\u201d Fallgatter said. \u201cThere’s a stalking statute that could possibly apply. In other words, the stalking statute says if you’re inflicting emotional distress for no legitimate purpose, that’s a crime. So I don’t know what the legitimate purpose would be and certainly young children walking around shouldn’t be sexualized, so there’s a fair argument there they would violate that stalking statute. That’s a crime. It also permits the victims to get an injunction.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office confirmed it has received screenshots from residents and is reviewing the allegations:<\/p>\n
We would always remind people while out and about in a public setting, the potential exists to be captured on video or in pictures being taken by others. \u00a0If the feeling is these pictures overstep into a privacy concern, or become construed as a potential criminal act \u2013 they can feel free to call JSO for a response and vetting of the scenario into a possible report writing and follow-up investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad truth,\u201d Pattishall said. \u201cNow more than ever, we have to be aware of where we are and what we\u2019re doing because anybody could be filming you at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The clips showed people doing everyday activities like shopping or eating, captioned with inappropriate or sexualized comments. JACKSONVILLE,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-163518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}