JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As someone who grew up in Jacksonville and has covered most of the major crimes that have happened in our area for the last 27 years, I am excited to give you a sneak peek at our new crime series, Florida Justice.
I’ve been digging deep into the News4JAX vault for the last year, piecing together our first series about police corruption in Jacksonville in the late 1990s.
For 25 years, I’ve wanted to revisit the case since at the time none of the detectives or witnesses were allowed to talk about it. I was a cub reporter at the time, working for the station.
It began in 1999 when my colleague Joy Purdy and I discovered police officers were being removed from the street and from duty related to a drug probe that quickly spun into a murder investigation. But it was so secretive, we only were given small pieces of information.
The more we dug, the more we discovered a web of deceit created by these officers, who were accused of targeting bank customers, homeowners, drug dealers and others.
For three years, I followed the investigation, which led to one of the worst cases of police corruption in the history of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
I never forgot it.
I kept all my notes, old newspaper clippings, evidence pictures and police reports. There was so much we were never allowed to know.
Now, more than two decades later, I was finally able to sit down with the detectives, the prosecutor and the star witness, who walked us through what happened — the why and the who — and detailed how a drug probe led them to a dead body: An innocent man who was targeted at a local bank.
We learned so much new information that we couldn’t fit it into just one episode of Florida Justice, so there are six.
I had always wanted to be a fly on the wall in their office 25 years ago, but now they’re revealing every detail about uncovering crimes committed by police in uniform.
I hope you will join me Thursday for a special presentation on Florida Justice: Betraying the Badge at 5:30 p.m. on Channel 4.
You can watch the first episode during the newscast at 5:30 p.m. and then be sure to watch Episodes 2 and 3 streaming at 7 p.m. on News4JAX+ on Thursday night.
The final three episodes will roll out every Thursday for the next three weeks.