ON the afternoon of April 25, 2016, Assistant State's Attorney Ben Rich, Jr., responding to defense attorney Thomas Elijah Cushman, rightly dismissed all charges relating to Jeff Gray's March 14, 2016 arrest and incarceration for peaceful picketing on a public sidewalk outside his son's school, which was part of ongoing retaliation by the School Board and Sheriff for First Amendment protected activity, including reporting on illegal failure to perform pre-trip inspections before school bus runs.
The "no information" was based on the First Amendment, documents from the State's Attorney's office establish, finding "no evidence" to support the illegal arrest by St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR at the behest of St. Johns County School Board.
On Sunday, May 22, 2016, The St. Augustine Record, 27 DAYS LATER, finally reported on dropping of the charges, after Mr. Gray and I repeatedly contacted the Record Editor.
But the mediocre St. Augustine Record buried the dropping of the chafes inside the newspaper, in the 23rd paragraph.
Journalistic malpractice?
Yes.
Why, the odd article even quotes Sheriff DAVID BERNERD SHOAR's brother-in-law, who is demurely identified as a "Commander" and his "spokesman," but not as his brother-in-law. Hick hacks.
One more time, barefoot -- bears repeating:
After a daily newspaper webpage alert and page one-headline in print on 3/15 on a "trespass" arrest at the behest of the St. Johns County School Board, all trespass charges dismissed against peaceful activist picketer 4/25.
Tatterdemalion St. Augustine Record finally covered the dismissal on May 22, 2016, 27 days late, buried in the 23rd paragraph of an article on Jeffrey Marcus Gray -- only one sentence
The rebarbative St. Augustine Record did not report Mr. Gray's providing the video coverage of the St. Johns County Budget Hearing May 18-20, 2016, which louche developer lackey, MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK, who refused to provide with the county's million dollar television cable station. Pitiful.
And The St. Augustine Record did not cover the three day budget hearing, at all. Pitiful.
Jeff Gray is suing the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office
Posted: May 21, 2016 - 11:01pm | Updated: May 21, 2016 - 11:33pm
By JARED KEEVER
jared.keever@staugustine.com
Amid an ongoing legal battle with the St. Johns County School Board and continuing what he calls activism and investigative journalism with his work through the website Photography Is Not a Crime, Jeff Gray has filed a federal lawsuit against the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and four of its deputies.
In the suit, filed on May 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida by attorney Andrew Bonderud, Gray alleges that four deputies, on 10 occasions, violated the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act — a law Gray says was passed to keep law enforcement officers from accessing people’s information for non-law enforcement purposes.
In a phone interview Monday, Gray said he learned that his information had been accessed by placing a public records request with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles asking for reports indicating how many times records attached to his driver’s license number and registrations for two of his cars had been looked at in the Driver and Vehicle Information Database, or DAVID.
“I was astonished to see that my information had been accessed over 200 times,” Gray said.
In the two reports, which Gray submitted to the Record, numerous officials from more than 30 agencies are shown to have accessed his records.
While a number of deputies from SJCSO are shown to have looked at his information, Gray said he singled out the four named in the lawsuit because, “To the best of my knowledge I had no contact with these officers.”
He acknowledged that his activism brings him in regular contact with law enforcement, but the DAVID system, he said, is “not for them to say, ‘Let’s see who this Jeff Gray guy is,’” while having a conversation about him not related to law enforcement activity.
“It’s supposed to be for law enforcement purposes only,” he added.
And, he said, he wants to bring them into compliance.
“They think they won’t get caught,” he said. “That’s why I’m filing this lawsuit.”
He has also filed a similar lawsuit against the city of Jacksonville and seven officers from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
SJCSO spokesman Cmdr. Chuck Mulligan said Monday that his department hadn’t been served with the actual lawsuit and couldn’t comment on specifics but he was aware of it.
Mulligan said he didn’t know whether the deputies named in the suit had been asked why they accessed Gray’s records.
“He brings attention to himself by openly carrying firearms in public spaces by using a little known loophole in Florida’s hunting statutes,” Mulligan said, adding that Gray also has a history showing up outside schools filming students coming and going and “entering public buildings for public records requests.”
“All of those things are legal,” Mulligan said. “But that creates concerns for those charged with protecting the general public.”
Gray was featured in a 2014 story from Record news partner First Coast News when he, along with members of a group called Florida Carry, staged a demonstration in which they openly carried firearms while fishing on the Jacksonville Beach pier under the protection of a state law that allows one to carry a firearm while fishing or hunting.
And police reports from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office place Gray within the 500-foot School Safety Zones of three district schools shortly after two mass shootings.
According to one report, Gray was videotaping students leaving school under increased law enforcement presence at Mill Creek Elementary on Dec. 14, 2012, the same day a school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, left 20 students and six school employees dead.
Another report said Gray was at Hickory Creek Elementary and Switzerland Point Middle schools on Dec. 3 — the day after the San Bernardino mass shooting — taking photographs and asking a school district maintenance employee standing near the gate of the two schools whether a park behind the schools was maintained by the school district or the county.
On Dec. 7, superintendent Joe Joyner sent a trespass warning, notifying Gray he is not authorized, licensed or invited to enter any structure or property of the school board, or any School Safety Zone, except to attend school board meetings or other public meetings; to submit public records requests to the Community Relations Department at 40 Orange St.; or to drop off and pick up his children from their schools.
That same day the St. Johns County School Board filed a lawsuit against Gray, alleging, among other things, that Gray’s “refusal to follow District procedures is antagonistic and disruptive to the lawful, orderly and safe operation of District schools and offices.”
The trespass warning culminated in Gray being arrested by the Sheriff’s Office on March 14 for trespassing within the School Safety Zone. In the video showing his arrest — and posted to the PINAC website — Gray can be heard telling the deputies that he is not violating the School Safety Zone statute because he is “peacefully assembling and peacefully protesting” as allowed by the statute.
The trespassing charge was dropped in April when the 7th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office filed an announcement of no information in the case.
In fact, Gray said that he has been arrested four other times by other agencies, and all charges related to those arrests were also dropped.
But some still question his motives. Gray’s self-styled activism has also led to a number of other lawsuits related to his public records requests.
When he filed a public records suit against Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida, which had a contract with the state, Circuit Judge Harry (sic) Schemer noted Gray had filed 18 lawsuits in Duval County in 2014, according to a February story from the Times-Union.
Schemer wrote that Gray had a financial interest in making public records requests so he could get money from court settlements. The Sunshine Law “was not designed to create a cottage industry for so-called ‘civil rights activists’ or others who seek to abuse the act for financial gain,” Schemer said in ruling against Gray.
But Gray said Monday he remains undeterred by his detractors.
Whether videotaping officers or schools, or making public records requests, Gray said, he always remains cordial and doesn’t understand why some are made to feel uncomfortable when he isn’t breaking the law.
“My main goal is to educate the public and public officials about our constitutional rights,” he said.
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P.S. Ed's note: The Jacksonville judge's name really was "Schemer," and he really blasted "so-called civil rights activists." His name is apparently not "Harry" but John Marvin Schemer, who graduated with a B.S.B.A. (1974) and J.D. (1977) from University of Florida. No record if he ever took civil rights courses there, or where his ancestors were on Ax Handle Saturday.
It figures that the right-wing Record -- once owned by KKK-supporting A.H. TEBEAULT, Jr. a/k/a "HOPPY TEBEAULT," later a Flagler College VP who got local business cooperation and supervised and censored a young student editor named JAMES SUTTON, now Record Opinion Editor -- would fail to honor a civil rights activist like Jeffrey Marcus Gray and would continue to besmirch him.
Enough goofy gooberishness from MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS, failing to appreciate, preserve, protect and defend First Amendment values in our town.
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