St. Augustine police chief suspended over email use

An email discussing official business sent from a private email account led to a recent one-day suspension for St. Augustine Police Chief Jennifer Michaux. 

St. Augustine City Manager David Birchim suspended Michaux last month after an email involving a change in the department’s public records policy.

In a letter informing Michaux of her suspension, Birchim noted that the department’s policy says that emails discussing official police business must be sent from official email accounts to ensure they are preserved as public records.

“(You) violated City policies, your own department’s internal policies, and have not enhanced the police department’s reputation with the public, therefore, after careful consideration, I have decided to suspend you for one day without pay,” Birchim wrote.

Michaux was suspended without pay on March 27, 2025. The police chief’s annual salary is $140,000.

Michaux has served as St. Augustine’s police chief since 2021. According to the city of St. Augustine, her suspension last month was the first in her 27-year law enforcement career.

In a rebuttal letter Michaux sent to Birchim, Michaux said the only reason she was emailing from her personal account was because then-St. Augustine Police officer Kelly Baker had added Michaux to an email chain between herself and Greg Forhan, attorney for the Central Florida Police Benevolent Association. 

Michaux wrote that she was not sure why Baker sent the email to her personal account.

Baker resigned from the St. Augustine Police Department earlier this year after an internal investigation found she repeatedly failed to properly activate her body-worn camera during police activity.

Discussing policy changes

Michaux was emailing Forhan to begin with to discuss changes to the department’s public records guidelines. The police chief’s goal was to curb what she referred to as “the rise of frivolous complaints.” 

Speaking with Jacksonville Today, Michaux referenced ongoing complaints St. Augustine resident Shannon Sapp had made to the city about the St. Augustine Police Department’s arrest of her son. 

Sapp believed the department had purposefully deleted records related to her son’s 2013 arrest on charges of reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter.  

“Ms. Sapp had been leveling allegations at the city for years,” Birchim told Jacksonville Today. 

To try to get to the bottom of her complaints, he asked that Clay County — a third party with no connection to the situation — conduct an internal affairs investigation. 

While Birchim says Michaux’s suspension was entirely because of the email sent from her personal account, his letter to the police chief details additional situations that he believes “could have been handled differently.”

In his letter, Birchim wrote that he believed the department mishandled files that Sapp had provided to the St. Augustine Police Department on her own personal thumb drives. 

In addition to the incident with Sapp’s thumb drives, Birchim wrote that Michaux provided a seemingly “inappropriate” response to a request Sapp made for an internal affairs investigation. 

“On February 18th, through the police department’s records request portal Ms. Sapp requested an internal investigation of Patrice Drinkard into the redaction and/or deletion of her files. Ms. Sapp made this request again at the City Commission meeting on February 24th, which you attended and heard the mayor ask that this be addressed.” Birchim wrote. “Yet despite this, you wrote a letter to Ms. Sapp on February 26th stating her allegations had no merit, because they were reviewed by you and that Ms. Sapp’s concerns were addressed by you and Ms. Drinkard.”

Birchim notes that Michaux was able to dismiss Sapp’s request because the department changed its policy regarding complaints just days earlier.

“The changes allow you to summarily resolve certain complaints that you deem have no merit and with a finding of ‘no further action required,’” Birchim wrote.

In his letter to Michaux, Birchim notes that the deletion of files and the response provided to Sapp were not necessarily policy violations, but that along with the email from Michaux’s personal account, they give the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Michaux’s rebuttal to Birchim did not acknowledge her direct response to Sapp, but she did assert that her department had properly investigated her complaints in a timely manner.