Violence erupts after Jacksonville demonstration; officer hospitalized

Violence erupted in Jacksonville’s downtown Saturday night, after thousands of people earlier marched peacefully on police headquarters in protest against law enforcement abuses of force and calling for reforms in the law enforcement and criminal justice systems.
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said that one officer had been hospitalized after being “slashed in the neck.”
Broken glass and damage to Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office vehicles were reported, as was the firing of tear gas.
Police urged people not already downtown Saturday night to stay away from the area.
“They [the city] worked with the protesters to make sure it was organized peacefully and that their voices were heard, and that’s exactly what happened for a good part of the day,” Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said. “...Then they left, and the folks that are left, [with the latter group] it’s not about peaceful protest, it’s not about reform, it’s not about change, it’s about violence.”
“We’re not going to let them burn our city to the ground,” Curry said.
The mid-afternoon demonstration drew a racially diverse crowd that called for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office to release videos captured by body cameras in connection with recent police-involved shootings.
During the afternoon, marchers twice blocked the entrance to the JSO headquarters — packing the stairs, sidewalk and spilling onto Bay Street as police detoured traffic around the demonstration.
But shortly after the demonstration was ending, a crowd became violent near the Main Street Bridge, according to WOKV.
People were throwing bottles and other items at police and jumping on top of at least one Sheriff’s Office patrol car, according to WOKV.
Tensions also rose at the intersection of Newnan and Bay streets where police in riot gear were seen trying to disperse a crowd.
Video from Times-Union news partner First Coast News showed broken windows at the office of the Duval County Supervisor of Elections, on East Monroe Street.
At 7:37 p.m., the Sheriff’s Office issued a tweet urging people to avoid downtown “due to police activity.”
As of 8:25 p.m., the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office was preventing people from proceeding past North Main Street toward JSO headquarters and herding people to the south side of Bay Street.
No violence was occurring in this location at the time, although a young man on a skateboard was observed shouting at a JSO officer near the intersection of Laura Street and Forsyth Street. Both were African-American.
"Proud to wear that badge? They're killing your people. When are you going to stand up to it and wake up?" the young man said, before leaving on his skateboard in the opposite direction.
Other protesters were questioning the police as to why they couldn't walk back towards where a lot of earlier action had occurred, but the officers didn't respond.
Several people were riding bikes and skateboards through downtown, while two couples were holding hands, looking as if they were taking a walk.
A broken window was also visible along Adams Street at the Jessie Ball duPont Building.
Nick L., who did not want to give his last name, brought four cases of water to the intersection of Bay and Forsyth and was giving the water out to police and passers-by alike.
"I wish they'd let me go a little further," said Nick, who was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a Florida Gators mask. "I just wanted to do something to help."
On Adams Street, a jazz club called Breezy was open for business and a jazz group was due to start playing at 9 p.m.
"We've been open for six days and we'll be open tonight," said Jacqueline Belk, who identified herself as the club's advertising manager. "The people walking up and down the street have been very peaceful. Some have stopped in for a drink."
Two protesters, who did not want to be identified, held up a banner that said: "Punish police like you punish people," and said they were also protesting the fact that they were not yet allowed to open their tattoo parlor. They did not want their name used.
Traffic was continuing Saturday night across the Fuller Warren Bridge and the Acosta Bridge. The Main Street Bridge, blocked earlier in the evening by protesters, was now closed by the Sheriff’s Office.
First Coast News reported later Saturday night that the Sheriff’s Office and St. Johns Town Center security officials were beginning to clear the major dining and retail hub on Jacksonville’s Southside.
However, as of shortly after 10 p.m., no incidents had been reported at the Town Center. At P.F. Chang’s, diners continued their evening routines as police cruisers patrolled the area.
Less than a mile east of the violence, families had gathered for an evening screening of Frozen 2 as part of a Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp movie night, held on the baseball club’s field at 121 Financial Ballpark.
A Jumbo Shrimp official said that all families — maximum capacity for the event was capped at 1,000 as a result of the Centers for Disease Control’s social distancing guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic — safely exited the ballpark “ASAP” after the screening ended around 8 p.m.
Curry said he and Williams were downtown in the early evening. The two spoke at a press conference during the evening.

In the afternoon, relatives of several victims killed in Jacksonville police shootings were among the speakers during the Motorcade Caravan for Justice demonstration.
An alliance of local civil rights groups and community activists led by the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville and Jacksonville Community Action Committee, along with several church pastors, organized the afternoon demonstration.
It was part of a nationwide solidarity protest focusing on George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery as well as other victims of police officer-involved shootings.
Floyd, 46, died Memorial Day while begging for help as a Minneapolis, Minn. police officer used his knee on Floyd's neck to pin him — unarmed and handcuffed — to the ground.
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, died after being shot at least eight times March 13 when three Louisville, Ky., police officers forced their way into her apartment to serve a search warrant.
Arbery, 25, was killed Feb. 23 in Brunswick, Ga. when confronted by an armed father and son who said they thought he was a burglar. The father is an ex-cop and retired District Attorney’s Office investigator. He, his son and a neighbor who recorded the fatal shooting on cell phone video are jailed on murder charges in the case.
Floyd, Taylor and Arbery were black and the officers or ex-officers involved in their deaths are white. Their killings ignited ongoing protests — some violent — in Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta, New York and Washington, D.C.
About 300 people had gathered by 2:30 p.m. — a half hour before the demonstration began — in the vacant lot across from Sheriff’s Office headquarters as a five-block line of cars waited on Bay Street to pull in and join the crowd.
Many demonstrators carried homemade signs reading “Police Accountability,” “Justice NOT Just Us,” “Black Lives Matter,” “No Justice No Peace” and “I Can’t Breathe,” which were Floyd’s dying words.
Dee Fortin-Wolf was participating in her first demonstration. The 53-year-old said she had been a “Facebook Warrior” until now.
“Because it felt like the right thing to do,” Fortin-Wolf, who is white, replied when asked why she joined the protest.
“I asked my friends in the black community what I could do to be impactful and here I am,” she said.
Her sign read, “Do not avoid talking about racism for fear of getting it wrong.”
Fortin-Wolf said she personally didn’t know anybody affected by police violence.
“If it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us,” she said.
Another demonstrator, Damian Salzburg, 71, said silence is betrayal of America.
“To say nothing is to be just as guilty, you know, complicit with evil,” Salzburg said of police abuse. “If you see it happening report it to the cops, the district attorney, the TV stations and newspaper. Keep saying it until they listen and do something.”
By 3:35 p.m., the crowd had grown to about 1,000 people and more kept coming.
Within minutes the crowd appeared to have doubled. A Sheriff’s Office helicopter circled overhead as demonstrators rallied then marched down Bay Street to Sheriff’s Office headquarters while chanting “We want justice!” and “No justice, no peace!”
The crowd size was difficult to immediately determine but at one point it wrapped around the block.
A lone counter-demonstrator waved an all-blue American flag — presumably supporting the Blue Lives Matter movement. He said nothing while standing on the Sheriff’s Office side of Bay Street.
By 4:15 p.m., the demonstration showed initial signs of winding down as many marchers returned to the vacant lot across from the Sheriff’s Office where the protest began.
Jacksonville police maintained a discreet presence during the afternoon demonstration.
Several officers talked with protest organizers right before the protest. Police then detoured traffic around the demonstration. A couple of officers asked some of the older marchers if they were all right during the hot spring afternoon.
Then protesters moved throughout downtown including marching in front of the Duval County courthouse and Main Street Bridge. It was later in front of the bridge when things begin getting violent.
Jacksonville police shootings questioned
The Jacksonville demonstration in the afternoon focused on concerns about black residents shot by Sheriff’s Office police officers.
So far, 10 suspects have been shot by Jacksonville police this year with six dead, Times-Union records show.
Half of the suspects were black while three were white and two were Hispanic.
Nine suspects were shot all of last year, also with six dead. The 10 suspects shot marks the highest total since 2015. The next highest was 15 in 2009, according to the records.
Saturday, demonstrators accused Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams, Mayor Lenny Curry and State Attorney Melissa Nelson of not being transparent about the city’s officer-involved shootings.
Protest organizers say there is a pattern of excessive police use of force against black residents, a racially disproportionate number of police-involved shootings, and a growing number of questionable police shootings.
Organizers also cited the refusal by the Sheriff’s Office and State Attorney’s Office to release the body camera video of police-involved shootings.
“We are shocked at the corruption being shown by the mayor, the sheriff and the state attorney regarding the public's right to know,” Ben Frazier of the Northside Coalition said prior to the protest.
Frazier accused Williams, Curry and Nelson of hiding the body camera footage from the public for the past three years.
“We’re very concerned that JSO is guilty of widespread police misconduct, brutality and even the murder of our fellow citizens,” Frazier said.
Sheriff’s Office, State Attorney Office response
Williams in a written statement sent to the Times-Union didn’t address the demonstrators’ complaints about the Sheriff’s Office.
“Organized protests happen in Jacksonville on a regular basis. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office works diligently with citizens to ensure safety for all participants,” Williams said.
Under Williams, the Sheriff’s Office has never released body-camera footage of a police shooting.
Williams has resisted calls to release footage from officer-involved shootings since his office began using body cameras in 2017.
That resistance has prompted suspicion from some community activists as well as families of shot relatives who want more clarity about their cases.
State Attorney’s Office spokesman David Chapman said Saturday that Nelson, since taking office in 2017, has worked “to rebuild community trust and improve public safety — neither of which can be achieved without a commitment to fairness and equality.”
“Guided by a mission that directs us to pursue justice, our office has implemented initiatives that build transparency, increase accountability, and promote human rights,” Chapman told the Times-Union. “However, we recognize that none of these initiatives can be effective if we do not commit to working collaboratively with agencies, citizens and communities to conduct comprehensive investigations, reveal truths, and identify reforms and solutions that improve lives and protect the rights of citizens.”
The State Attorney’s Office has a distinct and independent role in investigations of police-involved shootings, he said.
“When an investigation is complete, we make our findings and all relevant records, including body-worn camera footage immediately available so that the public has a clear understanding of the facts and evidence on which our decisions are based,” Chapman said.
Chapman said body camera footage videos are evidence in criminal investigations. Those videos are often integral in the State Attorney’s Office role to evaluate whether deadly force was justified, or not.
“Just like any other evidence and without exception, body-worn camera footage is made available to the public upon the conclusion of the investigation,” said Chapman, adding the office believes in fairness, impartiality, and equal protection under the law.
“Our goals and commitment to our community remain the same: to pursue justice always,” Chapman said.
Chapman also said more information including a hotline is available on the State Attorney’s Office Human Rights Division page.
In addition, the office’s police-involved shooting page lists all completed reports by year, Chapman said.
RELATED | Read more Jacksonville-area crime news
Jacksonville police shootings
Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC) members demanded justice for victims who it described as “murdered by police and racist vigilantes.”
"Enough is enough,“ Maria Garcia-Gerardo, a JCAC organizer said prior to the protest.
“We are tired of killer cops and racist good old boys being protected by the same oppressive system and we demand accountability from those who are supposed to be serving and protecting us, from Minneapolis to Jacksonville," Garcia-Gerardo said.
Monique Sampson, a JCAC activist accused Curry, Williams and Nelson of “being deceptive and dishonest” about police shootings.
"From Jacksonville, to Ferguson, to Brunswick, to Minneapolis, we see that cops face little and in most cases no accountability for the crimes they commit. It's important to know why, as well as what we can do to change it,“ Sampson said before the demonstration.
JCAC and the Northside Coalition are calling for the immediate release of Sheriff’s Office body camera footage of all officer-involved shootings — especially the recent deaths of Jamee Christopher Deonte Johnson, Kwamae Jones and Reginald Leon Boston Jr.
Johnson, who would have turned 23 Monday, was shot and killed Dec. 14, 2019 on Buckman Street. during a traffic stop for a seat belt violation.
His mother, Kimberly Austin, has asked repeatedly that the Sheriff’s Office release body camera footage of the shooting. But she has said the Sheriff’s Office has refused.
"I don't like wondering, speculating about what happened. I would rather just have the full account and the details about what happened," Austin told Times-Union news partner First Coast News.
Jones, 17, was fatally shot Jan. 5. His mother previously told the Times-Union that Jones was in a car with two other boys who wouldn’t pull over during a traffic stop.
Their car ultimately crashed while fleeing police. An officer fired into the car killing Jones and wounding a second youth while the third wasn’t hit, his mother also said.
Boston, 20, was shot to death Jan. 21 during an undercover police operation on Harts Road. Another suspect was wounded and a third taken into custody.
JCAC renewed its call for creation of a Jacksonville Police Accountability Council “consisting of democratically elected civilians from each police district with oversight power.”
That council, JCAC said, should have the authority to participate in misconduct investigations, to subpoena evidence, participate in the writing of Sheriff’s Office hiring and firing practices and have “the overall ability to assure true transparency between law enforcement and the community.”
JCAC and the Northside Coalition also called for an end to policies they says “have turned prisons, jails, and detention centers into death traps during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
They specifically wants the release of all non-violent inmates due to COVID-19, as well as bi-weekly sanitation reports of the facilities.
The Times-Union’s Clayton Freeman contributed to this story.
Teresa Stepzinski: (904) 359-4075