The Duval County jail. [Andrew Pantazi/The Tributary]

A Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office correctional officer has been arrested and accused of battery after he pepper sprayed and hit a Duval County inmate who was not resisting him, the Sheriff’s Office said Monday.

Jordan Weiss, 22, was arrested on Saturday on a third-degree felony charge of official misconduct and one count of misdemeanor battery. He had been employed by JSO for 10 months.

Undersheriff Shawn Coarsey announced the arrest at a press conference on Monday, which The Tributary was not invited to. 

Coarsey said Weiss was working on March 13 when he saw an inmate “engaged in a sexually inappropriate act in the presence of a civilian employee.” Weiss told him to stop and he left and hid in another part of the dorm. 

Weiss then found the inmate and pepper sprayed him before hitting him several times, despite him not resisting, Coarsey said. The inmate was seen by the medical team and then returned to his dorm. 

The inmate didn’t file a complaint, but the alleged assault was discovered by JSO’s Professional Oversight Unit, Coarsey said. Then, in a use-of-force report, Weiss gave a different account of what happened than what the evidence showed. 

Then, JSO’s Internal Affairs Unit and its Integrity Unit, which investigates officers for crimes, stepped in. 

Weiss is the second JSO employee arrested in the last two weeks. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office arrested Josue Garriga on child sex crime charges. 

This year, the agency has arrested three of its own officers, Corasey said. In total, six JSO staffers have been arrested this year, according to News4Jax.

Nichole Manna is The Florida Trib's Senior Investigative Reporter. She has been with the organization since 2023 and has covered the criminal justice system for more than a decade.

Nichole has extensively covered conditions at the Duval County jail and in 2024 received first place from the Green Eyeshade Awards in online investigations for her reporting of medical neglect at the facility. That series of stories was recognized with awards at the local, regional and national level. She took home the first place prize for a feature story in a small newsroom from the Online Journalism Awards in 2025 for her series, ‘Cold-Blooded’, which dissected a 1993 death penalty case and questioned whether the defendant received a fair trial.

Prior to joining The Trib, Nichole was an investigative reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas where she was a Livingston Award finalist for a series of stories about a neighborhood with the lowest life expectancy in the state. Her work helped get residents access to free pop-up clinics and they continue to receive help with food disparities.

She is currently working with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network to produce an investigative project.

You can reach her at nichole@floridatrib.org.