The sergeant who was among nine guards suspended by Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters after a Duval County inmate was allegedly brutalized to death in April was reprimanded in 2021 after he pepper sprayed a restrained inmate at close range. That is the second instance of a corrections officer involved in the controversial in-custody death found to have a black mark on their record, according to The Tributary’s review of partial disciplinary histories provided by the agency.
William Cox was the highest ranking corrections officer to be stripped of his duties on April 8 while Charles Faggart laid unresponsive in a hospital bed. Faggart was pronounced dead two days later.
It’s not clear how Cox or the other officers were connected to Faggart’s death because JSO has released little information about the controversial incident, which is under criminal investigation. What is clear is that Faggart was taken to UF Health in a broken, bruised and unresponsive state from which he never recovered.
Details in a heavily redacted police report written in the aftermath of Faggart’s transport to the hospital indicated it was likely Faggart was pepper sprayed while locked into a restraint chair, though for reasons that the report either does not explain or were redacted. Doctors at UF Health also removed a stun-gun barb from his back.
Four years earlier, Cox, who was still an officer at the time, used pepper spray after an inmate refused to put on a face mask before heading to a court appearance, according to an internal affairs review, which The Tributary obtained Monday.
The inmate allegedly called Cox a “p—y a– cracker” and “took an aggressive posture” before he “pulled away” from Cox, the officer wrote in a report explaining his use of force. Cox wrote that he warned the man he would be pepper sprayed if he did not comply and when he attempted to pull away, Cox used his spray from about a foot away from the man’s face.
Cox received a written reprimand for violating the department’s response to resistance policy for spraying a restrained inmate at close range. Mike Williams was the sheriff at the time.
Cox refused to sign the documentation because he felt the “write up is not fair” and that he should not have been disciplined.
The Tributary filed public-records requests for any previous internal affairs investigations against the nine employees who are on leave in an effort to learn more about their track records at the agency. JSO charged $370 for those records and has not yet provided all of them.
Cox has been investigated six times since 2018, with five complaints of failing “to conform to work standards” being sustained.
The Tributary also found that Matthew Sullivan, another one of the suspended officers, landed in hot water last year after David Given, 68, was found dead in September 2023 from what an autopsy later determined was lobar pneumonia. Sullivan and two other corrections officers were upbraided by JSO’s brass for failing to conduct regular checks on inmates in violation of the department’s policy, according to an internal affairs report.
Faggart was taken to UF Health on April 7 brain dead, bloodied and with multiple fractures on his face and ribs, bruises throughout his body, and serious damage to his kidneys and liver.
Hundreds of pages of medical records obtained by The Tributary contradicted a heavily redacted police report – written by one of the officers Waters suspended – which claimed Faggart “verbalized” that he “did fentanyl” and that he had a seizure. Neither of which were true. Doctors also removed a barb from a stun gun that was in Faggart’s back, something that was either not in the police report or had been redacted.
Faggart had also likely been pepper sprayed, as a nurse was noted to have flushed his eyes with saline solution and he had internal damage to his lungs.
Nichole Manna is The Tributary’s senior investigative reporter. You can reach her at nichole.manna@floridatrib.org.
