JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Responding to criticism that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office isn’t transparent about complaints of abusive behavior by its officers, the president of the local Fraternal Order of Police said JSO keeps detailed records of such complaints and is very transparent about how those are handled.
“I’ve yet to see any of these people saying that, that these issues are a big problem here in Jacksonville,” FOP president Steve Zona said. “Take those reports and look at them afterward to see exactly what was done to investigate those allegations.”
During an interview Monday on The Morning Show, Zona was asked about a letter Jacksonville NAACP President Isaiah Rumlin wrote to Sheriff Mike Williams saying in part that the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer is “Just one example of deliberate police brutality that exists all over this country including right here in Jacksonville.”
Among things Rumlin and others have called for over the years is a citizens review board to look into allegations against JSO in addition to the agency’s internal investigation.
Zona doesn’t set policy for the JSO, but does represent more than 1,000 officers who work there. He opposes a citizen’s board because “police should also be judged on facts and evidence, not politics and agendas.”
“What happened in Minneapolis was wrong. It doesn’t take somebody waiting for an autopsy or anything like that to acknowledge that it was wrong,” Zona said. “But what I will say about his accusations here in Jacksonville is, I’ve heard him and I’ve heard other people in the community say that there’s issues here in Jacksonville. What I’ve yet to hear is a single one of those individuals provide a case based on facts and evidence to support those allegations. And then, if that investigation based on facts and evidence supporting the fact that excessive force was used, that the sheriff didn’t take appropriate action.”
Zona agreed with criticism that investigations into police-involved shootings or other use-of-force incidents involving officers take two long -- often taking well over a year for both the JSO and State Attorney’s Office reviews to be completed.
“You know our officers are under that microscope for the entire time it takes,” Zona said. “And we said in the past, it’s not fair to them it’s not fair to the community. It’s not fair to the families. We understand that State Attorney Melissa Nelson has a huge organization to run and there’s a lot of things going on. We would agree that if there’s a way that she could find to speed up those investigations, and then the sheriff’s office will speed up their investigations. Once they’re done we 100% support the release of those body-worn camera videos. ... That’s the thing we can agree on: get them out there sooner rather than later.”
Zona, however, is opposed to releasing that video before the investigation is completed it would taint any witness testimony taken after the video is public.
Jacksonville police launched its body camera pilot program in November 2018. Since then, there have been 21 police shootings in which 23 people have been shot. Not all of the officers involved were wearing body cams. Of those 21 shootings, the state attorney’s office has ruled four of them were justifiable. Of those four, only one officer was wearing a body camera -- Officer Tyler Landreville. -- when he shot and killed Frankie Feliciano in July 2019.
When giving details the first weekend of protests in Jacksonville following Floyd’s killing, Sheriff Williams announced that the final hearing in that case is about to happen and he hoped that video would be released soon after that.
Nelson’s office released a statement last week saying that, “as a result of current events,” it would review its current practices about when to release body camera video.
Zona said the hostility against police being expressed on social media is making it harder for police to do their job.
“You can see where some of the family members, their wives are very concerned about our officers going to work now and whether or not they’re going to make it home,” Zona said. “You know, we support the right to peacefully protest. ... Whether we agree with you or not, we support that. What we don’t support is the acts of violence against members of our community, the looting, the vandalism and the threats towards our police officers.”