GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Despite the best efforts from a group who tried to spin the Clay County Sheriff’s Office’s driver’s license checkpoint into something other than a tool to manage traffic in a problematic area of the county, the agency still called the Friday, Oct. 24, operation a success. 

CCSO Community Affairs Chief Domenic Paniccia said the attention paid to checking licenses was surprising to the agency. 

"Twenty-eight years in law enforcement, this is my first press conference on a driver's license checkpoint,” he said. “But hey, transparency is what we're all about. If you guys get concerned about why we're doing something, my job here is to explain why we're doing something.” 

The Jacksonville Immigrants’ Rights Alliance condemned the license checkpoint, calling it a “dangerous incentive for racial profiling.” 

Paniccia said checkpoints have been used before, and they will be used in the future. And to prove they weren’t used to profile anyone on Oct. 24, he said the agency directed every fifth vehicle traveling westbound on S.R. 16 to pull into Helm-Gallagher Funeral Home and Cremation Services. 

Drivers were then asked to show their license, registration and proof of insurance. Of the 110 that were randomly selected, only two couldn’t produce a license, but one eventually found hers, Paniccia said. 

Also, the sheriff’s office announced it would conduct the checkpoint two days in advance. 

“Let me just say that we live in a community where I am happy that the No. 1 complaint we have is traffic,” he said. “It's distracting driving. It's speeding. It's people not paying attention, people on the phone. 

“Unfortunately, on a serious note, less than two [days] ago, we had a tragic fatality about a mile from where the DL checkpoint was conducted today. So, what we did, we set up an operation that ran for two hours today, Green Cove Springs. We don't pick who we're stopping based on any kind of characteristics or patterns. This is a predetermined number of vehicles. An example, every fifth vehicle is pulled into our driver's license checkpoint, and we're just making sure that the motorists that are on the Clay County roadways have everything they're supposed to have, like a valid driver's license.” 

The average stop was about 45 seconds, Paniccia said. 

The announcement of the checkpoint came within hours of the death of 18-year-old David Nicholas McLaren Jr., who was killed in a head-on collision in front of Clay High on Wednesday, Oct. 22, minutes before classes started. 

Paniccia said deputies were prepared to react to any other violation that may have presented itself at the checkpoint, like drugs, alcohol, missing children, weapons, fugitives, people with warrants and illegal migrants. However, Paniccia said nobody from Immigration and Customs Enforcement participated in the checkpoint. 

“Kudos to our Clay County community and our residents,” Paniccia said. “They're doing the right thing. Two citations are very good, zero arrests. And you know what? You're going to see more of these. When traffic is your No. 1 complaint in the community, and as a Chief with a responsibility for the traffic unit, you're going to see more DL checkpoints. You're going to see more saturation controls for those distracted drivers, the aggressive drivers, the DUI checkpoints.” 

Data and science will determine locations of future checkpoints, Paniccia said. 

“I don’t want to spend all my resources and time in an area where we don’t have violators, and we don’t have traffic crashes, and we don’t have fatalities,” he said. “This is nothing new to law enforcement.”