Lawsuit alleges Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office pattern of K-9 misuse, excessive force

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has a track record of conducting shoddy police work and using excessive force, including the overly eager use of police dogs, against civilians who are not resisting arrest or posing a threat, a 2023 federal lawsuit alleges. It’s the second active federal lawsuit involving JSO’s controversial use of a police dog that The Tributary has identified including a November suit that accuses local officers of siccing a K-9 on an unarmed man during a traffic stop in Northwest Jacksonville. 

The 2023 lawsuit argues JSO officers violated Maurice Whigham’s constitutional rights when they deployed a dog on him during a March 2021 arrest at a Red Roof Inn in Southwest Jacksonville for a robbery Whigham was eventually cleared of. The dog bites left Whigham, 41, with a fractured left foot that became infected in jail, according to his lawsuit. 

Body-worn camera footage of the arrest, provided by Whigham’s attorneys, showed JSO officers loosing a K-9 on Whigham while he sat on the corner of a bed in a second-story hotel room.

On its face, the video raises questions about JSO’s eagerness to sic K-9s on suspects.

Michael Benza, a Case Western Reserve University School of Law professor who reviewed the video and lawsuit for The Tributary, noted the officers were quick to use the dog and threatened to sic it on Whigham from the beginning, rather than assess the potential threat and escalate force from there. Police K-9s are considered a serious use of force and should only be used when a severe threat is posed, police and legal experts have told The Tributary.  

“What we’d have to know is, did [the officers] have reasons to believe that there was a need for the dog from the very beginning?” Benza said. “The body cam video shows [Whigham] sitting on the bed, and his hands are actually sort of up, and yet they still release the dog and put the dog on him. That seems to be a very quick escalation of use of force, from ‘You’re under arrest’ to ‘Here’s the dog.’”

Whigham’s lawsuit is against former Sheriff Mike Williams in his official capacity and three officers who were involved in the arrest: William O. Jensen, Linda A. Morgan and Caleb M. Bumgarner. 

A lawyer for Williams declined to comment citing the pending litigation. The attorney for the detectives did not respond to requests for comment. 

Jail records show that Whigham has been on JSO’s radar for other reasons since his 2021 robbery arrest. He is being held in the Duval County Jail on a $321,000 bond for multiple drug possession and trafficking charges.

Like Whigham’s arrest, the 2023 arrest of Joseph Bratcher – who filed a separate lawsuit in November, which was previously reported by The Tributary – also involved a JSO handler’s decision to use a K-9 that experts said was potentially problematic.

To better understand JSO’s use of K-9s, The Tributary on Feb. 5 requested the past three years of reports involving the use of police dogs during arrests. One month later, JSO invoiced The Tributary $35 so it could begin the “multi-step” process of pulling and reviewing the records. It’s not clear when JSO will complete that process or how much the second invoice – which JSO said will cover the expenses of reviewing and redacting information – will cost.

JSO has not shied away from charging large fees to access its records: The agency invoiced Bratcher’s attorney more than $35,000 when he requested five years of incident reports involving the use of a K-9 and gave him three weeks to pay it. He didn’t.

Part of a pattern?

The use of force exhibited in Whigham’s case is “part of a longstanding practice by JSO of tolerating the use of force against individuals who are not resisting, particularly when those individuals have already been placed in custody,” Whigham’s lawsuit argues. Further, the officers’ investigation into the preceding robbery, in which Whigham was a suspect, was “part of a longstanding practice by JSO of tolerating negligent and inefficient investigations and unlawful searches and seizures against innocent individuals.”

Whigham’s lawyers listed a dozen past JSO use-of-force incidents against civilians, some of which were themselves the subjects of public controversy. That list could help establish a pattern showing officers were aware of past inappropriate behavior and therefore are not entitled to qualified immunity, which shields some public officials, like police officers, from legal liability.

“The standard for qualified immunity is: Did the officers violate a clearly established standard of conduct?” Benza, the law professor, said. “So one of the issues of using these past incidents is to show that they know what the rules are and they did know that they can’t do these types of behaviors and they still did it anyway.”

Among the dozen use of force cases between 2003 and 2018, two involved K-9s. According to the lawsuit, the civilians in those cases were not resisting officers and some were already handcuffed when force was used. Often, the charges at issue in the disputed arrests were dropped or downgraded.

Lawyers in one prior case included in Whigham’s lawsuit also argued their client suffered at the hands of JSO officers who should have known better. Attorneys for Mayra Martinez, a Jacksonville woman who was knocked unconscious by police while she was handcuffed during a 2016 arrest, also listed prior use-of-force controversies to demonstrate that her experience was part of a troubling pattern. 

City lawyers argued Martinez’s attorneys had provided “nothing more than a summary list,” but the judge in the case found it more compelling than that.

Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger wrote that the list included in Martinez’s lawsuit “demonstrate(s) JSO officers have, since 2004, engaged in the practice of using excessive force on Jacksonville residents” and that they “illustrate that the city repeatedly took no corrective steps to remedy the officers’ actions.” Martinez settled her case for about $92,000. 

Schlesinger is also presiding over Whigham’s lawsuit. 

Whigham’s disputed arrest

According to Whigham’s lawsuit, officers began investigating a robbery at the Red Roof Inn on Feb. 17, 2021, where Whigham was staying. The hotel general manager told Jensen, one of the JSO officers, that a witness learned from “other individuals” the robbery suspect’s phone number, which was registered to Whigham. Jensen then honed his investigation on Whigham, according to the lawsuit. One person Jensen met with, whose identity was unclear in the lawsuit, pointed to Whigham in a photo spread provided by officers.   

Another alleged witness did not identify Whigham in a photo spread, according to the lawsuit, nor did others who were interviewed. The lawsuit characterized Jensen as “determined to pin the alleged Red Roof Inn robbery” on Whigham.

Officers went to the hotel March 11, 2021, to arrest Whigham. 

Whigham and his wife were sleeping in their room, according to the lawsuit, when one of the officers knocked on the door and announced that she was a housekeeper. The officer then stepped away from the door’s entry.

Whigham opened the door and peeked outside, the video shows. Officer Bumgarner raises a gun and quickly shouts, “Police K-9, come out, we’ll send this dog” and the K-9 starts to bark. 

According to the lawsuit, Whigham closed the door and told his wife, who was undressed, that police are outside. One of the officers then addressed Whigham’s wife, ordering her to leave the room and warned that she could be subjected to the dog’s bite, the lawsuit says. The wife left in the room wearing a shirt and underwear, the video shows. 

Detective Morgan told Officer Bumgarner to send the dog in when she opened the door. The video shows two officers pointing their handguns at Whigham, who is sitting on the corner of the bed with his empty hands raised, as the dog barrels toward him. Officers shout commands while Whigham begs them to stop the dog and moves toward them. 

Outside the room and surrounded by at least three officers, according to the video, Whigham complies with orders to get on the ground and roll onto his stomach while the dog jumps on him and yanks his pants off.

The dog bit Whigham’s foot, according to the lawsuit, as officers handcuffed his wrists. After he’s handcuffed, the dog is pulled back. Whigham, sitting up, can be heard asking, “What did I do?” Officers help him stand and lead him away. 

The whole encounter lasted less than four minutes.  

Detective Morgan and a male officer who is unnamed in the lawsuit then go into the hotel room to get clothes for Whigham’s wife, according to the lawsuit. While inside, Morgan pointed out things in the room. The male officer later noted that they will obtain a search warrant for the room “despite having already entered the room,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit mentions that Whigham and his wife separately told officers they were afraid of Jacksonville sheriff’s officers because their son, Devon Tillman Gregory, was killed during an encounter with JSO police a few months earlier.  

The robbery-related charges against Whigham were eventually dismissed, the lawsuit says, “upon information and belief” the DNA samples that officers collected from the robbery scene did not match Whigham. 

“Therefore, [Whigham] has been left with permanent disability, emotional trauma, and numerous scars on his body as a result of JSO incorrectly identifying and arresting him for an alleged robbery in which he had no involvement,” the lawsuit said. 

Williams, the former sheriff, denied the allegations of civil rights violations and backed the officers, saying they “acted reasonably and in good faith.” 

“The JSO officers had probable cause to detain Plaintiff and search the premises. Further, the JSO officers acted with objective reasonableness at all times toward Plaintiff and used only such force as was reasonably necessary under the facts and circumstances presented and reasonably known to them at the time of the incident,” Williams’ response said. 

In their own response to the lawsuit, the officers also denied the allegations, reiterated that they had probable cause to arrest Whigham and said they are entitled to qualified immunity.

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This story appears under a partnership with The Tributary.