JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – We are now seeing new video of the police response to the car takeover of the Ikea store on the Southside. This happened not long after midnight early Sunday morning when cars had been doing doughnuts in the parking lot.
Earlier Saturday evening, a mass of motorcycles, cars and people had taken over the intersection at Baymeadows and Southside Boulevard.
The News4JAX I-TEAM requested numbers from JSO and have learned there have only been 11 citations written so far this year by JSO for street racing.
But at the same time we’re seeing video from IKEA that shows a massive JSO response.
MORE: Florida lawmakers crackdown on parking lot takeovers, street racing | I-TEAM: Instagram video shows ambulance doing doughnuts in parking lot | Legitimate, legal car clubs denounce illegal racing, donuts | Video shows car club meet-up in same area where 17-year-old was shot | 2 street racing crashes in 2 weeks | Empire Point, Englewood and St. Nicholas residents said their area is turning into an ongoing weekend racetrack
Video shot by the News4JAX drone showed clean up of the Ikea parking lot Monday following the huge takeover of the lot by drivers.
On Tuesday, we obtained video shot by a person who lives nearby and heard the chaos. When he arrived he got video of a JSO helicopter with a spotlight overhead.
When the chopper arrived, “About a third of the cars start hauling -- getting out of the parking lot,” said Trey Felder who recorded the video of the police response. “They still had cars doing doughnuts and still hanging out of the cars. About 5 minutes later the cop cars started pulling in.”
Trey Felder is a pilot and has an app on his phone that alerted him the JSO chopper was overhead. The I-TEAM reached out to former JSO Detective James Brown about this police response, and he noted that police did not chase after the cars.
“There’s always a liability because if that person’s trying to get away you have to weigh the act of apprehension versus the amount of damage that could be caused,” Brown said.
Brown suspects JSO is trying to identify as many cars as possible with tags and likely has some sort of task force focusing on this issue.
He says right now detectives are likely trying to identify who’s driving the cars and working with the state attorney’s office to see if they can legally go after the car owners.
Brown said officers are looking for a type of car. “Once you identify car, driver -- then you’ve got the perpetrators who are committing this crime.”
Brown continues, “Tearing up a parking lot or paveway can get kind of costly. Now you’re talking about cost in excess of 500 or a thousand dollars. Now you’re talking about felony criminal mischief.”
The I-TEAM also talked to managers at Ikea who had to repaint much of their lot this week. They sent this statement: All events held in IKEA stores and parking lots must be authorized, which includes legal permits. With regard to the reported incident in our IKEA Jacksonville store parking lot on April 24, we are working in close coordination with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office as they conduct their investigation.