COMMENTARY | There were a lot of valuable lessons Jacksonville police and elected officials could have gleaned from the death of Jamee Johnson, a 22-year-old Florida A&M University student whom a Jacksonville sheriff’s officer killed during a pretextual traffic stop in 2019, but years later, they’ve settled instead on a peculiar one: an expansion of Sheriff T.K. Waters’ already vast powers.
Last fall, Waters fumed that the city allegedly failed to provide him “proper notification” of a $200,000 settlement with Johnson’s parents, who had sued the city over the death of their son. Johnson’s parents had originally sought $5 million, according to city records, and ultimately accepted far less — truly, a pittance. But Waters, who has reflexively defended what police call “use of force” during his tenure in office, apparently wanted to take the case to a jury. “I am deeply disappointed by the outcome of this litigation and JSO’s lack of proper notification by our attorneys,” he said.
Waters and seven City Council co-sponsors are now pushing legislation that would effectively grant him veto power over such settlements in the future, placing the feelings of the city’s top law enforcement leader above the kind of basic fiscal prudence that ordinarily guides these decisions. City attorneys, for example, were hardly sympathetic to Johnson or the federal complaint his parents had filed. They emphasized in writing multiple times what State Attorney Melissa Nelson had previously found: JSO acted properly that winter day in 2019, and Jacksonville Sheriff’s officer Josue Garriga’s decision to kill Johnson was justified. City lawyers had simply concluded there was a substantial likelihood the city would spend more than $200,000 defending the lawsuit. In the future, if his legislation passes, Waters will get to override these concerns even though, in the end, he won’t be the one burdened with making the hard budgetary choices necessary to pay the tab.