Last Friday\u2019s ‘Senior Skip Day’ at Jacksonville Beach ended with a law enforcement sweep that led to 13 arrests, nine guns seized, and more than 100 grams of marijuana recovered. Eight people are facing felony charges, including seven aged 19 and younger.<\/p>\n
First Coast News crime and safety expert Ken Jefferson explained what it means for the teenagers now facing consequences, and whether any of this could change behavior going forward.<\/p>\n
Jefferson wanted to address the idea that law enforcement scrambled when organizers tried to switch locations at the last minute. They didn’t.<\/p>\n
“In our eyes it was last minute, but it wasn’t last minute in JSO’s eyes,” Jefferson said. “They’re not going to disclose every move, every strategy to the public in advance. They had a location they knew they were supposed to conduct this event at, then all of a sudden, at the last minute, they switched it, but the sheriff’s office was prepared for that.”<\/p>\n
Jefferson said operations like this require serious advance work: surveillance, intelligence gathering, strategic positioning, and JSO did all of it before a single teenager showed up.<\/p>\n
“It takes planning. It takes time. They have to be strategic about it,” he said. “They have to have foresight and fore-vision as to what could happen. A lot of thought process goes into investigating these sorts of things.”<\/p>\n
Jefferson was direct about the minors, some as young as 16, who showed up to the beach gathering with guns.<\/p>\n
“When they’re that age, and they have deadly weapons, those weapons don’t know any better,” he said. “You pull the trigger, it’s going to respond like it’s supposed to respond.”<\/p>\n
But he pushed back on any notion that youth is a mitigating factor here.<\/p>\n
“No matter what their age is \u2014 15, 16, 17 \u2014 they know what they’re doing,” Jefferson said. “They know that if something bad happens, they’re going to have to face the consequences. There should be no leniency for a 15 or 16-year-old who has a deadly weapon, willingly and knowingly, and knows that it could severely injure or kill someone.”<\/p>\n
Unlike a misdemeanor, which can disappear from a juvenile record once someone turns 18, a felony doesn’t go away.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to affect them for the rest of their life, whether it be trying to apply for a job, whether it be to vote, or whether it be to just blend into society as a normal person,” Jefferson said. “You have that record on you.”<\/p>\n
He acknowledged that some people do turn it around. But the odds, he said, are not good, and the mindset that sometimes sets in after a first felony makes things worse, not better.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes they have the mindset: I already got a felony, so it won’t hurt if I do this,” Jefferson said. “And that’s the wrong mindset to have.”<\/p>\n
Teen takeovers and large gatherings that end in arrests have become a pattern in Jacksonville and across the country.<\/p>\n
Jefferson said the problem runs deeper than consequences; it’s about who’s in the crowd.<\/p>\n
“You always have that one or two that’s igniting the crowd and motivating them to do things they should not be doing,” he said. “A lot of juveniles who’ve never been in trouble find themselves getting into trouble because they’re persuaded or motivated by someone.”<\/p>\n
As for whether repeated crackdowns will eventually register, Jefferson thinks so, but not yet.<\/p>\n
“Over time, I think it will be a deterrent,” he said. “But as it stands right now, they feel they’re invincible. They feel they can do anything.”<\/p>\n
The message law enforcement is trying to send, he said, is simple, and the hope is that it eventually lands.<\/p>\n
“Law enforcement is trying to say to you: if you’re caught doing wrong in this type of setting, you’re going to go to jail. If you’re charged with a felony, it’s going to follow you for the rest of your life, and you don’t want that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Friday\u2019s ‘Senior Skip Day’ at Jacksonville Beach ended with a law enforcement sweep that led to 13…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3037,28387,116,2130,118,117,1872,97846,1598],"class_list":{"0":"post-214495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-felony-charges","9":"tag-first-coast-news","10":"tag-jacksonville","11":"tag-jacksonville-beach","12":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","13":"tag-jacksonville-news","14":"tag-jso","15":"tag-ken-jefferson","16":"tag-law-enforcement"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214495","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=214495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}