A CVS worker arrested by Edgewater Police officer Daniel Rippeon at the point of a taser outside the CVS where he had just gotten off work will not be prosecuted on a charge of resisting an officer without violence, according to a State Attorney’s Office court filing.
On June 3, the grandfather of Paul Wert, 22, told The News-Journal that his grandson was arrested for no apparent reason but for wearing a hoodie.
Wert was arrested May 10 at 10:05 p.m. as he sat on a bench outside the CVS at 1806 S. Ridgewood Ave. in Edgewater waiting for a Lyft to give him a ride home. Officer Rippeon, on patrol, stopped at the drugstore after seeing Wert sitting on a bench outside the closed store.
In a body camera video, Rippeon can be seen and heard threatening to tase Wert and telling him he would have his police dog bite him if he didn’t stop moving.
The arrest, which Wert’s grandparents said was illegal, outraged the family, who asked Edgewater City Council members to contact the State Attorney’s Office to have the charge dropped.
At 9:10 a.m. Wednesday, June 4, prosecutors filed a “no information” document with the court in Wert’s case, saying they would not prosecute him on the charge of “resisting an officer without violence.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Prosecutors drop Edgewater Police officer Rippeon’s charge against CVS employee
Reporting by Patricio G. Balona, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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