MOUNT DORA, Fla. – A police officer on “routine patrol” in an area where “property crimes and multiple narcotics arrests” took place arrested a man who’d been to the county jail several times before.
It turned out to be Shawn Matthew Briggs’s seventh arrest that began with a traffic stop, and he has been in jail ever since.
The meetup happened outside a motel on the night of Jan. 14 in Florida.
“I approached the vehicle, which was parked in a parking spot,” the officer wrote, “and the driver opened the driver door. At that time, a strong odor of marijuana began emitting from within the vehicle.”
The cop called it “immediately noticeable,” and wrote, “Briggs admitted to having smoked marijuana earlier in the day. Due to the plain odor of marijuana emitting from within the vehicle, a probable cause search of the vehicle was conducted.”
The officer wrote about finding three items.
“I located half of a pill which was later confirmed to be alprazolam,” the arrest report said, “one white oblong pill inscribed with M523 later confirmed … as 10 mg oxycodone, and a white crystal-like substance which field-tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine, packaged in a plastic bag with the end of it burnt closed, all inside the glove compartment.”
Briggs reportedly told the officer “he provides rides for several people on a regular basis for money, and that he was unaware where the oxycodone pill came from.
“However, Briggs did confirm that he had knowledge that the Xanax pill was in his vehicle, and that he had previously consumed the missing half.
“Additionally, Briggs advised that his girlfriend does frequently consume methamphetamine, and that the recovered methamphetamine from his vehicle likely belonged to her.”
Briggs, 57, was arrested on three counts of possession of a controlled substance: for alprazolam, oxycodone, and for methamphetamine, and he was booked after midnight. The charges are all felonies, and Briggs pleaded not guilty to them.
Unfortunately for him, he was out on bail at the time of his arrest.
Briggs was facing charges of attempted destruction of evidence and possession of drug paraphernalia from Dec. 24, plus failure to appear on a previous drug equipment charge.
“The license plate was facing the sky and unreadable,” his arrest report said, describing that traffic stop. The reason: His trunk was open, and there was “large miscellaneous scrap metal strapped in the trunk opening.”

Briggs had an active arrest warrant and reportedly denied the officer’s request to search, so the cop called for a K9 officer and the rest is history.

Since then, prosecutors decided not to pursue the attempted destruction and paraphernalia charges from that arrest, and Briggs pleaded not guilty to the paraphernalia charge from November.
K9 officers were also involved in that situation, plus others from June 2023, December 2021, February 2021, and October 2020.
This time, his bond was set at $10,500 and sheriff’s office online records show he only paid $1,000.
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