Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters discusses the arrest of Officer Brian Housend on Thursday, Sept. 12. | News4Jax
Published on September 13, 2024 at 12:39 pm
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A 42-year-old Jacksonville police officer has been arrested on charges of kidnapping with a gun, aggravated stalking and written threats to kill in Nassau County, according to his arrest warrant.
The arrest of Officer Brian Roger Housend marks the 13th sheriff’s office employee arrested so far this year.
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Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters did not say anything about what led up to Housend’s Wednesday night arrest in Nassau County during his Thursday evening news conference. But he said the officer had some issues at the department.
“There’s been a few situations that he dealt with in internal affairs that didn’t rise to the level of termination at this point,” Waters said. “… But like I said, this is very unfortunate, very disturbing, and I am just glad we were able to take some action now, and that the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office was able to take action now, to make sure we got this person into custody and deal with the issues.”
Housend remains behind bars at the Nassau County Jail on $1.25 million bail on the three felony counts. The armed kidnapping charge alone is punishable by life in prison if he’s convicted, Waters said.
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The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office, which handled the investigation and arrest, released a heavily redacted arrest warrant for Housend that offers details on what happened.
The warrant refers to an “ongoing dispute” that includes a number of incidents that the alleged victim relayed to Nassau County Sheriff’s Office investigators.
One was on Tuesday, when the woman said she saw a green laser through her window that she believed was the type “that could be attached to a firearm.”
“She believed, based on an ongoing pattern of threats she had been receiving from Suspect, that it could have been him shining the laser into her home,” it said. “She knows that Suspect has a large collection of firearms that he owns for personal and professional use.”
The woman told investigators that she had been getting threatening emails from the suspect on Tuesday, when she was interviewed. She said she was “in fear that things would escalate” between them, offering up copies of some of the emails, including one she sent him.
In it, she said the only way they would now communicate was via email because “you have harassed, stalked, and threatened to harm me.”
Several times between May 10 and Aug. 13, the woman said, the suspect made statements “threatening bodily harm if she refuses to allow him back into her life,” the warrant states.
Excerpts of text messages between them include her May 11 response to him: “You threatened my life!…You scared (redacted) because he heard that!!! What the hell! I will never trust you.”
Another text she sent on June 6 said that he threatened to kill her, adding that she saw him “take the rifle out of the gun safe that night in February when you hurt me. You can’t undo that.” That incident left the woman with a bruised eye and lip, the arrest report said.
Housend’s arrest report also indicates that in July, the woman said he came to her home in his patrol car, in uniform, and threatened her.
“While suspect was threatening her, … he was snapping and unsnapping the holster carrying his service pistol in an overtly threatening manner. (She) states that she was in fear for her life and believed the suspect was going to kill her.”
Waters says that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office first hired the suspect in 2005, and then he worked for other agencies before returning. He also became a lawyer in 2015, his Florida Bar member profile showing no disciplinary issues in the past decade.
He is suspended and on leave without pay, and Waters says he will seek his termination from JSO.
