JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – After the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office released a partially redacted report of an incident at the jail that led to the death of an inmate, the public has raised several questions regarding transparency in this investigation.
In a statement on Monday, Sheriff T.K. Waters said the information in the report was redacted to maintain the integrity of the criminal investigation. However, the attorney representing the family of Charles Faggart, the inmate who died following last Monday’s incident at the Duval County jail, called the release of the “heavily redacted” report “unacceptable” and demanded JSO improve its communication with the family regarding the progress of the investigation.
“They have learned everything they know alongside the rest of the community — and that is simply unacceptable," Attorney Belkis Plata wrote in Monday’s statement.
News4JAX Crime and Safety Analyst Tom Hackney weighed in on the transparency concerns, saying that this is a case of balancing the public’s right to know with keeping the integrity of their investigation.
“It’s frustrating to see that [the blacked out lines in the incident report], and I’m sure for Mr. Faggart’s family to look at, ‘I want to know what happened to my son, my brother.’ They want to know that. It’s an unfortunate thing because I’ve been on both sides of that,” Hackney said.
Click here to read the redacted incident report
Hackney pointed to numerous investigation issues like the FBI now investigating and whether other inmates or officers who aren’t directly related to this case but may have witnessed something need to be talked to.
“You’ve got the federal investigations from the FBI looking into whatever they’re looking into, civil rights violations, or whatever that happens to be. You got the State Attorney’s Office. You got the Medical Examiner’s Office and their investigators looking into what caused his actual death. So, when you start doing that, all of those investigators get there, and if that information is all placed out there, and there was no redacted information, and only maybe names but not the circumstances, that just adds to the difficulty that investigators have,” Hackney said.
Hackney added that if too much comes out, the case could be tried in the court of public opinion before it’s tried in a courtroom.
The readable sections of the report paint the picture of a chaotic scene where officers said Faggart was acting so aggressively he had to be restrained in a safety chair.
Several people have also questioned the use of the restraint safety chair during the incident with Faggart.
There are rules JSO follows for restrained inmates, as JSO laid out in its “response to resistance policies” obtained by News4JAX.
“If subjects are no longer a threat, restrained, subdued, or compliant, a CEW shall not be used,” the policies say.
CEW stands for “conducted energy weapons,” like Tasers.
“Even if you take an inmate who’s combative and you place them in some kind of isolation cell, they still have the option of hurting themselves. I’ve said this before. There’s not a good day you’re incarcerated,” Hackney said.
This is not the first time JSO has had issues with inmates in restraint chairs.
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News4JAX followed John Laughon’s story back in 2005 after he was put in a restraint chair, leaving him in a vegetative state. His family eventually settled with the city.
According to JSO, once the criminal investigation ends into Faggart’s death, the sheriff’s office will also administratively review the incident to determine if policies and/or procedures were followed correctly by staff.