JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A Jacksonville man says a JEA security guard patted him down when he went to the utility\u2019s Pearl Street office to change the billing address on his account.<\/p>\n
Michael Rodney said a guard asked him to enter another room, walk through a metal detector and then submit to a search.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I walked through the metal detector, he started patting me down, searching me, asking me if I had any weapons on me,\u201d Rodney said. \u201cAnd I asked him, \u2018What was this for, for just transferring lights?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodney said he was told the screening was to help employees in the financial department feel safe.<\/p>\n
Rodney contacted an attorney, who reached out to News4JAX. Rodney said he learned the address had a \u201cservice risk flag\u201d because the people who previously lived there had been deported to Venezuela, and JEA believed he was associated with them.<\/p>\n
JEA said the flag is lifted once the utility determines a customer is a new owner or tenant, allowing that person to activate service.<\/p>\n
In a statement, JEA said customers meeting with its Revenue Assurance team must be screened by a security officer when a service risk flag is present. The utility said the meetings take place in a private room requiring JEA badge access.<\/p>\n
\u201cJEA\u2019s security team does not detain, frisk or touch customers in any way during screenings,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A Jacksonville man says a JEA security guard patted him down when he went to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,501],"class_list":["post-420879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420879","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=420879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}