JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – This month, two Duval County School Police officers were arrested and a school security guard is in the process of being terminated for allegedly making inappropriate comments.
A spokesperson for Duval County Public Schools said both officers are still employed by the district but have been reassigned to duties with no student contact.
The arrests did not involve students, but the incidents have raised questions about student safety, especially as the district has faced a reckoning over the past year about how it handles teacher misconduct. The district hired an outside law firm to investigate its process and that inquiry is still underway.
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“On one hand, it’s too many,” said News4JAX Crime and Safety Analyst Tom Hackney, who retired from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office with three decades of experience in law enforcement. “But on the other hand, I’m really happy as a former officer to see that they’re reactive to what’s going on here, that they’re arresting their own, that they’re not attempting to cover anything up.”
On Tuesday, the principal of Mandarin Middle School sent an email to parents, announcing school police officer Curtis Williams was arrested that day on a charge of battery, touching, or striking without injury.
He’s accused of groping the 31-year-old mother of a Mandarin Middle School student in his office at the school as she told him to stop numerous times. Williams denied it, telling the investigator there was some flirting, but nothing physical happened.
The email said the incident occurred at the school on Nov. 15, and he was pulled from the school the next day when the victim was interviewed. But the incident report shows a warrant for his arrest wasn’t issued until this month.
The DCPS spokesperson said their investigation was concluded and turned over to the State Attorney’s Office on Jan. 12, but full approval from the SAO to make the arrest didn’t come until May 14.
Hackney said sometimes it can take a long time to retrieve evidence like phone records.
“There may be something that we’re not privy to as to as to why it took so long. It does seem like a long time, though,” Hackney said.
In the email Tuesday, the principal also announced security guard Nathan Behar was in the process of being fired for making sexual comments to students following an investigation that began May 3 when a parent reported him. Behar had only been on the job for about two months.
And on May 5, Duval County School Police Officer Chris Foreman was arrested on a DUI charge on Blanding Boulevard. The arrest report said he was in his own car and his blood alcohol was more than twice the legal limit.
Hackney said DCPS, which recently named its next Duval Schools Police Chief, should look at its hiring processes and training.
“When you have a new chief, they would want to go through and look, to just look at every policy that they have, look to see what level of background check that they do,” he said.
News4JAX requested the personnel files for the two officers and the security guard to see what the hiring processes looked like and if there are any red flags that may have been overlooked. The DCPS spokesperson said the hiring and training processes are not being reviewed following the incidents.