Latest news with #DuvalCounty
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
New stats: Black drivers disproportionately ticketed by JSO for having headlights off in bad weather
New data from the Duval Clerk of Courts reveals Black drivers have been disproportionately ticketed by JSO for one of the reasons behind the controversial traffic stop and arrest of William McNeil Jr. That arrest sparked outrage after cell phone video of McNeil being struck by an officer during the February traffic stop went viral. Attorneys representing McNeil have repeatedly argued racial bias played a role in his traffic stop. 'This is about driving while Black,' said McNeil's attorney Ben Crump during a press conference last week. The official reason given for the stop was driving without a seatbelt and driving without headlights on in inclement weather, though McNeil's attorneys have pointed out it didn't appear to be raining at the time of the stop. Now, data reviewed by Action News Jax from the Duval Clerk of Courts shows at least one of those citations has been used disproportionately to ticket Black drivers. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks] Since 2021, of the 79 citations written by JSO for driving without headlights in inclement weather, 64.5 percent were issued to Black drivers. Black drivers made up just 37.5 percent of the eight citations issued by other police agencies in the county during that same timeframe. Meanwhile, Black residents account for just about 30 percent of the county's overall population. 'Obviously, it would be very powerful for a jury to hear that there was very systemic profiling that was going on,' said local defense attorney Chris Carson. Carson noted those numbers could come into play during a potential lawsuit against JSO. But he cautioned against jumping to conclusions or interpreting the data as concrete evidence of systemic racial bias at the agency. 'You just kind of have to be careful when you're dealing with very small sample sizes because those don't always totally reflect what's going on there. I mean, it may suggest it, but as far as the big picture goes, it may not be totally accurate,' said Carson. JSO has repeatedly highlighted the tens of thousands of traffic stops conducted by the agency each year that go without incident. Sheriff T.K. Waters has also pointed the finger at McNeil for escalating the situation by refusing to get out of the car when told to do so by officers. Sheriff Waters recently rejected any suggestion the agency targets Black residents during his press conference last Monday. 'I wouldn't work here if we're after Black men or Black people period,' said Waters. Along with the citations for driving without headlights on in inclement weather, Action News Jax also obtained a list of more than 20,500 citations for seatbelt violations. We'll also be digging through that data to try an identify any racial trends in traffic stops and tickets. >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<< [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Yahoo
Bound for execution, these 5 killers haunt Jacksonville as another prepares to die
As the state prepares to execute the first man sentenced to death in a Jacksonville since the 'I-95 Killer' Gary Bowles in 2019, the Times-Union takes a look at five of the most reprehensible cases this century in Duval County. Many people might not recall Michael Bell, who killed five people in the late '80s/early '90s and is set to be lethally injected at 6 p.m. on July 15, so we're going to stick to the last 25 years in Jacksonville. With 34 inmates currently on Florida's death row for Duval County cases, all obviously involve a certain amount of vileness and contempt. So there's no way to quantify the most sinister. These five particularly struck a chord in the community and beyond. Donald James Smith's 2013 crime shocked and sickened the community. He started by befriending a mother and her three young children shopping on a Friday night at a Dollar General store. Smith said he had a gift card at a nearby Walmart on Lem Turner Road and could buy food and clothes for the family. While shopping, Smith offered to take one of the children, 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle, to the store's McDonald's to get them some hamburgers. He instead whisked her away in his van. He then raped and strangled her and dumped the body in a creek bed near a church. Police issued photos of Cherish, Smith and his van and received tips leading to him being pulled over and arrested the next morning on Interstate 95 — without the girl. Cherish's body was found a short time later. Smith, a registered sex offender, had been released from jail three weeks earlier in a similar scheme to lure a child to a McDonald's and had two other child sex-related convictions. Now 68, he's been on death row since May 3, 2018. It took jurors about 25 minutes to decide the man who came to be known as 'The Craigslist Killer' was guilty of murdering 21-year-old Tiara Pool after having sex at her Hodges Boulevard apartment. But David Kelsey Sparre didn't just kill her, he stabbed the 5-foot-3, 111-pound young mother 89 times. He tortured her and took pleasure in it, the lead prosecutor said at the time. The two met in 2010 after Sparre, who was living in Georgia, answered her personal ad on Pool was having marriage problems, and her husband was deployed at sea and their children were out of town with grandparents. Sparre later said he killed her for the "rush." Now 34, he's been on death row since April 2, 2012. Prosecutors described Michael James Jackson as the mastermind of the July 2005 murders of Reggie and Carol Sumner, who were mercilessly buried alive. Jackson's girlfriend, Tiffany Ann Cole, knew the Sumners when they lived in South Carolina, and he hatched the robbery plan to get the couple's bank cards and their savings. The 61-year-old couple, both frail and sick, were kidnapped from their St. Nicholas neighborhood home in Jacksonville, bound with duct tape and left in a pre-dug grave in Charlton County, Georgia. They smothered under soil piled on them in the 4-foot-deep pit. Through multiple hearings, appeals and sentencings, Jackson ended up with a death sentence while co-defendants Cole, Alan Wade and Bruce Nixon were sentenced to life, life and 45 years, respectively. Now 43, Jackson has been on death row since Aug. 30, 2007. Before the massive searches for children such as Somer Thompson, Haleigh Cummings and Lonzi Barton, there was Jay-Quan Mosley in 2004 — the 10-month-old was never found. After strangling Jay-Quan's mother, John Franklin Mosley Jr. wrapped his crying son in a garbage bag and placed him next to her body to suffocate under a tarp in his SUV while he went to work. Lynda Wilkes, 40, had gone to meet Mosley in attempt to get him to pay child support. Nine days later, her burned body was found in a field near Waldo in Alachua County after a teen accomplice came forward. He said Jay-Quan was thrown into a trash bin behind a supermarket in Ocala. Police and volunteers then spent days searching in vain for the baby's body in area landfills. The teen, 15-year-old Bernard Deon Griffin, was sentenced to two years house arrest and eight years of probation after pleading guilty to two counts of accessory to murder. Mosley, now 60, has been on death row since July 3, 2006. Killing three people in a domestic rage in 2002, Pinkney 'Chip' Carter eluded authorities for two years — even swimming across the Rio Grande River into Mexico. The case was profiled in People magazine and 'America's Most Wanted.' In the early morning hours, Carter snuck through the back of ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Reed's Arlington home and shot the 35-year-old, her new boyfriend Glenn Pafford, 49, and daughter Courtney Smith, 16, all in the head. Reed's other children — ages 6, 8 and 14 — were also home at the time. Carter fled Jacksonville, traveling through several states before swimming to Mexico, where he was arrested for entering the country illegally. He was released by Mexican authorities after paying a fine and then disappeared again. He was finally arrested in January 2004 in Kentucky where he was working as a roofer under the alias of Rodney Vonthun. Now 70, Carter's been on death row since Dec. 27, 2005. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Duval County cases fill death row, here are 5 of the worst
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
TRAFFIC ALERT: Truck with camper crashes over I-95 bridge at Duval/Nassau line
A truck pulling a camper flipped over the bridge near Mile Marker 370 on Interstate 95 at the Duval/Nassau County line causing a massive scene. It's unclear early what the extent of injuries are, but authorities advised that all southbound lines will be shut down for undetermined amount of time. The Nassau County Sheriff'f Office said to expect significant delays. It happened around 1 p.m. July 9 but the circumstances weren't available as Nassau and Duval law enforcement and fire-rescue work with the Florida Highway Patrol at the scene. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Truck with camper crashes over I-95 bridge at Duval/Nassau line
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gov. DeSantis on hand to celebrate Duval County Public Schools' first A grade in district history
In a visit to Jacksonville on Monday, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that Duval County Public Schools is celebrating a Grade A rating for the first time in history. The governor shared the news at Oceanway Elementary School. 'Duval's gone from B to A! Congratulations!' DeSantis said. While Duval celebrates a major win, districts across the state made growth during the 2024-2025 school year, too. Twenty-eight school districts received an A grade, with 31 districts at a B grade, and only eight districts receiving a C grade. No districts received a D or F grade. Here's how other Northeast Florida districts performed: Baker: B Bradford: B Clay: A Columbia: B Nassau: A Putnam: C St. Johns: A Union: B Click here to see how your child's school performed DeSantis credits the advancement to the state's new approach to end-of-year testing. This school year marked the third year since the state has adopted its Progress Monitoring Testing concept. With the new model, students are evaluated at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. With year-round, real-time data, teachers and parents can get help for students before the end of the school year. RELATED: Duval County Public Schools achieves an A grade for the first time ever 'We decided that we would institute reforms and embrace this concept known as progress monitoring. So, with progress monitoring, teachers, students, and parents are provided real-time time continuous, actionable assessments at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year,' DeSantis said. This past school year, grades 3 through 10 grew 21 percentage points in language arts, and grades 3 through 8 grew by 44 percentage points in math. The district also shared these stats to show how some individual schools made strides in growth: Ten schools jumped two letter grades: 1. Andrew Jackson High (C to A) 2. Annie R. Morgan Elementary (F to C) 3. Holiday Hill Elementary (C to A) 4. Jean Ribault High (C to A) 5. Landmark Middle (C to A) 6. Long Branch Elementary (D to B) 7. Northwestern Legends Elementary (D to B) 8. Oceanway Elementary (C to A) 9. Pickett Elementary (C to A) 10. Rufus E. Payne Elementary (C to A) Both Andrew Jackson High and John E. Ford earned their first A-rating. Ed White High School earned its first B-rating. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks] In the press conference, the governor announced a new, incentivized program for teachers. With a new civics certification curriculum for teachers, state educators can take a course designed to strengthen the way teachers deliver lessons in Civics and History. The Civic Seal of Excellence Program comes with a $3,000 bonus, too. To better teacher pay, the governor shared that the state has increased its allocation to teacher pay. [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] 'This year's budget for teacher pay is $1.36 billion, so that's an increase over last year of $102 million. So that goes to folks that are in the classroom, and we've made a lot of strides,' DeSantis said. DCPS released this statement in response to the district's historic grading: 'To ensure the momentum continues, Duval County Public Schools is launching a year-long communications effort titled 'Duval Delivers.' The campaign will spotlight school success stories, amplify instructional best practices, and maintain a consistent message of progress throughout the 2025–2026 school year." Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Florida Rep. Angie Nixon calls immigrant detention centers 'concentration camps' on CNN
State Rep. Angie Nixon said President Donald Trump is using "modern-day concentration camps" to carry out mass deportations. Nixon, D-Jacksonville, leveled that charge when she appeared on CNN during its coverage of Trump's visit to a South Florida detention center in the Everglades that state officials call "Alligator Alcatraz." The state also plans to set up a similar center in Northeast Florida at Camp Blanding in Clay County. The facilities will have capacity to hold several thousand people while they await deportation by the federal government. Nixon said Trump is "returning our country to the worst chapters in our history." "This isn't about safety," she said during an interview July 2 on CNN. "This is about Donald Trump building modern-day concentration camps in an effort to disappear people from their communities. Donald Trump's blueprint for America has now become broken families and barbed wire." The use of "concentration camps" to describe such facilities has been controversial. When Trump was running for election, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said last October in response to a question during a radio interview about Trump's pledge to conduct mass deportations that it would amount to creating a "concentration camp type situation" for holding undocumented immigrants. Five Republican members of the Duval County Legislative Delegation issued a joint statement at the time calling on Deegan to retract her comment and apologize for remarks that are "particularly harmful to Jacksonville's Jewish community and Holocaust survivors who understand the horrors of antisemitism firsthand." Deegan subsequently said she regretted using the term "concentration camp" and did not intend to diminish the horror of the Holocaust. She said she did not regret "calling out the inhumanity of treating immigrants, or any person, as less than human." Nixon said she calls the facilities" modern-day concentration camps" because they are inhumane and Trump made jokes about the prospect of alligators hunting anyone who tries to leave the Everglades center. "These are people's lives," she said after her appearance on CNN. During the CNN interview, Nixon was asked about Gov. Ron DeSantis saying "Alligator Alcatraz" will help carry out deportations by causing people to "self deport" back to their home countries rather than risk going to the facility. "So this is a force multiplier for the president's efforts," DeSantis said when he took Trump on a tour of the facility. Nixon said the facility will cost several hundred million dollars to operate. "Instead of ensuring that we don't have cuts to Medicaid, instead of ensuring that we're addressing issues like the rising cost of property insurance, instead of ensuring that we have quality schools for our children to go to, they want to blow racist dog whistles and push xenophobia instead of handling the things that Floridians and Americans care about," she said on CNN. Camp Blanding: Is work on center to detain 2,000 immigrants starting 'right after' July 4? Political alliance: Once rivals, Trump and DeSantis deepen bond with shared targeting of undocumented migrants During Trump's tour of the facility in the Everglades, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the partnership between the Trump and DeSantis administrations. "Florida was unique in what they presented to us, and I would ask every other governor to do the exact same thing," she said. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Lawmaker compares 'Alligator Alcatraz' to concentration camps
