The Columbia County Sheriff’s office suspended two police officers who arrested a legally blind man in Florida after one of the officers mistook the walking cane in the man’s back pocket for a gun.
Deputy Jayme Gohde and Sergeant Randy Harrison arrested James Hodges on Monday, October 31, and he filed a formal complaint against the Columbia County Sheriff’s office on November 3.
Mark Hunter, the Columbia County Sheriff, released a statement about the incident on Monday, and he said that he had been troubled by what he saw on the body cam footage.
The Sheriff’s office released another statement on Tuesday, and Sheriff Hunter said they would suspend Deputy Gohde for two days without pay. However, they would demote her supervisor, Sgt. Harrison, with immediate effect, and suspend him for a week without pay. The sergeant would also not be eligible for a favorable action for the next 24 months.
The body camera footage of Deputy Gohde quickly went viral after its release on social media. The incident happened around 8 am October 31, in Lake City, Florida, and the body cam footage shows officer Gohde quickly getting out of the patrol car and approaching a man who had just walked past the car. Gohde asked the man, identified as James Hodges, what he was carrying in his back pocket. Hodges, seemingly surprised, told her that it was a navigational aid and asked her why she was asking.
Officer Gohde asked him for his name and birth date, to which Hodges refused to answer. The deputy told him she thought he was carrying a weapon, and she had stopped him to ensure he was carrying it properly.
Hodges then pulled a cane out of his pocket and showed it to the officer, but she still asked him for his identification.
Sergeant Harrison, the deputy’s supervisor, approached Hodges and told him the officer stopped him because she thought he was carrying a gun.
Hodges, visibly agitated by this, told the sergeant that she was asking him for his ID, but there was no reason for him to provide identification unless the officer had a suspicion that he had committed a crime or he was about to commit one.
Even though Hodges told the officers that he was legally blind and kept the cane to help him walk, the officers handcuffed him and obtained his identification. Sergeant Harrison then told Deputy Gohde to arrest Hodges for resisting arrest.
The Sheriff’s office started investigating the incident on November 3, and investigations ended on November 7. In his statement, Sheriff Hunter said that Hodges had written a formal complaint against the officers and requested body cam footage of the incident, which they gave to him on the same day.
During their investigations, the Sheriff’s office found that the two officers had violated several policies. Sheriff Hunter apologized on their behalf and said that the officers’ actions were not ill-intended and that they had failed to rely on their police training.
He said that the officers would undergo compulsory civil rights training to fix their behavior before reporting back to work.
