The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has moved an embattled sergeant out of its narcotics unit following at least one complaint questioning his role in a February buy-bust drug sting that ended in a fatal police shooting.
Sgt. Clayton Short was reassigned to Zone 4, the Sheriff’s Office revealed in response to a public-records request. Lauri-Ellen Smith, the Sheriff’s Office’s senior spokeswoman, declined to give a reason for the move.
“It is within the purview of the administration to move personnel, any time,” Smith said.
Smith acknowledged that the office had received an anonymous complaint about Short’s role in the narcotics operation that preceded the shooting. She said the department investigates every complaint it receives.
The Sheriff’s Office refused to say whether Short had any involvement in the operation, instructing the Times-Union to file a public records request for that information. That request was filed Tuesday and hasn’t yet been filled.
A copy of Short’s time sheet, obtained through a records request that took five weeks to fulfill, shows he was on duty the night of the shooting.
Shifting assignments
The Sheriff’s Office made several personnel moves following the fatal shooting of Jerome Keith Allen, a 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed by former narcotics detective Brian Turner on Feb. 6.
Police said Allen pointed a replica handgun inside a vehicle occupied by Turner and two other detectives, Lance Griffis and Kyle Kvies, who were participating in an undercover drug sting.
Immediately after the shooting, Turner was placed on administrative leave in accordance with Sheriff’s Office policy. Griffis and Kvies were moved to the Teleserve unit, a phone-answering section within the Sheriff’s Office, according to the unit roster. Teleserve often houses officers who are injured or under some sort of disciplinary review.
Shortly after their reassignments, Kvies and Griffis were arrested and charged with felony counts of tampering with a crime scene by removing cans of beer from their undercover vehicle after the shooting.
Though undercover detectives are allowed under Sheriff’s Office policy to use beer cans as props, the officers were charged with removing them without permission.
Short’s reassignment was a development that the Sheriff’s Office only recently confirmed. The Times-Union had obtained a copy of an emailed complaint dated Feb. 23 that had been submitted to the Sheriff’s Office’s Integrity Unit. Smith verified that the Sheriff’s Office had also received the complaint.
The police sergeant’s reassignment also followed a mid-April settlement agreement of a civil lawsuit stemming from a separate police shooting in 2012. Allegations in the lawsuit implicated Short’s professional behavior.
Before the settlement was reached, former Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office patrolman Jeff Edwards — who fired the fatal shots in the 2012 police shooting of Davinian Williams — claimed Short, who was his supervisor at the time, made racist comments immediately following the shooting.
Specifically, Edwards claimed during a deposition that Short said he was “glad [Edwards] shot that n———.” The city agreed to settle the case for $1.9 million.
An internal Sheriff’s Office document showed a lengthy history of both in-house and citizen complaints against Short, who was hired in June 2002.
In his deposition, Edwards complained of nepotism within the department, specifically claiming that the sheriff’s internal disciplinary reviews were biased toward certain officers.
Response to shooting questioned
The complaint questioned what it said was Short’s supervision of the narcotics operation and how long it took him to respond the night of the shooting, citing an unverified computer-assisted dispatch timeline.
Because the complaint contained unverified allegations, the Times-Union has decided not to immediately publish it.
In a follow-up email on April 1 to the Integrity Unit, the complaintant questioned whether the Sheriff’s Office was taking the allegations against Short seriously, or if his connections to the office shielded him from scrutiny.
The Sheriff’s Office said it could not comment on an ongoing investigation.
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