Protesters rally outside of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office headquarters on April 13, 2025, in response to the death of Charles Faggart, who died after he was beaten by jailers, according to his family’s attorney.
Published on July 21, 2025 at 10:52 am
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A Duval County jail sergeant suspended after the death of a 31-year-old suspect in April was hired despite having been kicked out of the Marines and having a history of arrests for domestic violence and DUI, according to records obtained by The Tributary.
William H. Cox, 45, was promoted to his current rank less than a year after he was punished in 2021 for improperly spraying noxious chemicals into the face of a disrespectful detainee at close range, then refusing to sign the official reprimand.
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The records raise questions about the hiring and promotion practices at the Jacksonville jail, which suspended nine staffers — including Cox, the highest ranking of the nine — after the still-unexplained death of Charles Faggart. The Tributary pursued personnel records for all the involved corrections officers in an effort to better understand the circumstances that led to Faggart’s hospitalization at UF Health on April 7. Faggart arrived unresponsive and showed signs of having been brutalized.
More than 24 hours after Faggart’s hospitalization, Sheriff T.K. Waters stripped Cox and the eight other guards of their corrections powers, all of whom have since been reassigned to other roles with the Sheriff’s Office. Agency records show that Cox was reassigned to duty at the courthouse.
Faggart’s death is the subject of at least one criminal investigation by State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s Office. The FBI has also been examining the death, but the scope of that agency’s work is not clear.
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Through their attorney, Belkis Plata, Faggart’s family declined to comment. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail and hired Cox, did not return a request for comment. Cox’s attorney, Phillip Vogelsang, declined to comment pending an ongoing investigation by the State Attorney’s Office.
Years before joining the Sheriff’s Office, Cox was arrested twice in Collier County for charges of battery and intentional threat to do violence — the first arrest in 2001 when he was 21 and the second two years later.
In the first case, Cox and a woman fought and blamed each other for being the aggressor. Each had injuries. The responding officer arrested them both and charges were eventually dropped but court documents don’t explain why.
In the 2003 case, Cox was accused of jumping on the same woman and throwing her against a wall. The victim told police that he grabbed her by the neck, threw her over a TV that was on the floor and then threatened to kill her. Collier law officers noted the woman’s glasses were broken and she had a cut on her chin.
Cox told the investigating officer that she hit him first. He had a small abrasion on his arm, according to an arrest report. Cox avoided a trial by going through a state diversion program. The charge was then dropped.
Cox was also arrested for breaking into a different ex-girlfriend’s home in 2000. After talking on the phone and telling him she no longer wanted to speak to him, the woman said she woke up to Cox climbing through her bedroom window, according to court documents. He left after she asked him to multiple times and police noted no forced entry, though they found a palm print on her window. She told police the window had been left unlocked.
A jury found him not guilty after deliberating for 40 minutes.
Cox’s personnel file shows that the department was aware of those charges but does not indicate whether the department looked into them or any of the other arrests more deeply.
In addition to the domestic violence arrests, Cox was nabbed as a minor in 1998 for reckless driving and open container and was arrested in 2003 as an adult on a DUI charge. The latter was resolved through a no-contest plea to the lesser charge of reckless driving.
Around the same time, Cox started basic training to join the Marines. He was “involuntarily discharged” for what was termed fraudulent entry into military service. Discharge papers included in his personnel file do not describe the circumstances around his departure.
A U.S. Marine Corps public affairs official did not respond to questions about Cox’s discharge.
Cox was hired by then-Sheriff Mike Williams in 2015 as a corrections officer.
The basic qualifications to be considered for that job include not having any felony convictions, misdemeanor domestic violence convictions or a dishonorable discharge from the military.
Since his hiring, Cox has been investigated internally six times, with four complaints of failing “to conform to work standards” being sustained.
One of those complaints involved wrongful use of force. Cox was punished in August 2021 after he used pepper spray on a restrained inmate who refused to put on a face mask before heading to a court appearance, according to an internal affairs review.
Cox received a written reprimand for violating the department’s response-to-resistance policy by spraying a restrained inmate at too close range. Cox refused to sign the documentation because he felt the “write-up is not fair” and that he should not have been disciplined.
Eleven months later, in July 2022, Sheriff Pat Ivey promoted Cox to sergeant. Cox has had two sustained complaints of failing to conform to work standards and received formal counseling twice since that promotion.
Ron McAndrew, a former Florida prison warden turned prison and jail consultant who has had Duval County jail inmates as clients, told The Tributary he was surprised Cox would be granted a promotion after such an egregious use-of-force write-up.
“It is not common to be promoted after you’ve been reprimanded for something that serious,” he said. “These are harsh, hardcore chemicals that put somebody down so that you can restrain them.”
Cox was the highest-ranking officer on scene during a confrontation between guards and Charles Faggart on April 7 that the agency has said little about. Faggart was taken to UF Health with multiple fractures on his face and ribs, bruises throughout his body, serious damage to his kidneys and liver and a barb from a stun gun in his back. Police and medical records suggest Faggart was also pepper-sprayed.
He died three days later.
A police report released in response to a records request doesn’t reveal how the injuries were inflicted, redacting narratives describing Cox’s actions during the event. A week later, Cox and eight other officers were removed from their job duties while police and prosecutors investigated.
The Sheriff’s Office did not respond to The Tributary’s request for a comment on the transfers of the nine corrections officers. That information was not reflected in the 166-page personnel file kept on Cox that The Tributary received through a records request.
Also missing in the file were any yearly evaluations, commendations or any information about the other internal affairs investigations that Cox underwent during his time working at the jail. The records unit — which now includes at least one of the reassigned officers — told The Tributary that yearly evaluations must be requested separately, which a reporter then did.
A response on the follow-up request has not yet been received.
Other officers, other complaints
Cox is not the only staffer whose history has been scrutinized following Faggart’s death.
Matthew Sullivan was reprimanded last year in an unrelated internal affairs investigation resulting from the death of a different inmate, according to internal affairs documents.
Sullivan and two other corrections officers failed to conduct regular checks on David Given in violation of the department’s policy. The 68-year-old was found dead in September 2023 from what an autopsy later determined was lobar pneumonia.
The four-page investigative summary shows that the jail’s division chief filed a complaint against the three officers who were working at the time, alleging that they failed to complete mandatory 30-minute rounds, despite records indicating they did.
In his defense, Sullivan said that “due to escorting, diabetic checks or breaks,” it is possible that rounds were clocked but not actually conducted.
The officers received written reprimands.
Sullivan’s personnel file also reflects a 2011 arrest in El Paso, Texas, for misdemeanor assault causing bodily harm. Sullivan pleaded not guilty, and the charge was dismissed the next year.
Another of the nine, Eldar Kurtovic, was reprimanded in July 2023 after he made two inmates strip naked before he would allow them back into their housing pods.
One of the inmates told investigators that Kurtovic told them, “the rules to the game were either sit in the hallway for 2 hours or whichever one of us gets naked first can go back in the dorm.” Both men immediately stripped and got “butt naked,” the man said.
Kurtovic self-reported what happened to his superior and said it was a joke that went too far.
The Sheriff’s Office contacted the FBI to see if any federal civil rights had been violated, but the FBI declined to take up the case.
Kurtovic received corrective counseling.
The Tributary read through the personnel files of all nine officers. Like Cox’s, none of them included copies of yearly evaluations or information about any internal affairs complaints. A page listing their previous employment and qualifications was completely redacted.
This story is published through a partnership between Jacksonville Today and The Tributary.
