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The high cost of police brutality claims

The names have become shorthand for police brutality: Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice.

The names have become shorthand for police brutality: Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice.

But excessive force claims aren’t just political liabilities. They’re financial ones. Each one of those deaths cost the city where it occurred $6 million dollars to settle.

Jacksonville hasn’t had a police brutality case make national headlines, but it has settled and litigated thousands of claims over the past 10 years, costing taxpayers millions.

Germaine DuBose was one of those cases. Stopped at a traffic light on his way home from a basketball game in 2004, he saw red and blue lights flash in his rearview. He pulled through the light, drove to the next cross street, and turned right.

Dubose says he thought the officer was on a call, and wanted to pass him. He was wrong.

“He comes with the firearm to my face,” Dubose recalls. “I tell him, I say ‘I’ve got license and registration, I’ll get out of the car.’ He puts his gun back in is holster, and says ‘Yes, you’re going to get the F out of the car.’” His passenger fled.

Officers Fred Fillingham and Mark Flores pulled Dubose out of his car – and dragged him into one of the longest and costliest lawsuits in city history.

Attorney Tom Fallis calls it a classic case “of DWB – driving while black.”

Fallis represented Dubose in a lawsuit against the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which the city resoundingly lost. A jury awarded Dubose $372,000 for false arrest and battery – more than Dubose asked for, more than state liability caps even allow.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams, who sat in on the entire trial, says he was shocked by the verdict. “Completely surprised I’ll be honest with you,” he says.

But the case is part of a pattern of claims that have cost Jacksonville taxpayers millions of dollars. First Coast News obtained 10 years’ worth of data related to police misconduct claims, ranging from brutality complaints to wrongful death lawsuits. The data show the city shelled out more than $12.5 million between 2006 and the present, including 22 cases that, like Dubose’s, cost $100,000 dollars or more.

On top of that, there are 50 new lawsuits pending, including an excessive force lawsuit filed in the case of Deandre Ezell, a teen allegedly knocked unconscious by juvenile corrections officer David Stevens, who slammed his head into a wall while the teen was handcuffed.

And some individuals who have promised to file suit aren’t even part of the mix yet. That includes Mayra Martinez, who was beaten by police in the parking lot of a gentlemen’s club, and later in jail, while handcuffed.

“They get into their mode,” says Fallis, “and it’s an attack mode.”

JSO initially cited “excessive tint” as reason to stop Dubose. But pictures don’t bear that out – the interior of Dubose’s car is visible in photos -- and he was never charged with that offense. The charges that were filed -- fleeing and eluding, and resisting without violence – were later dropped.

Dubose says he suffered back and neck injuries from being tackled to the pavement, but his initial brutality complaint went nowhere. JSO decided no internal investigation was needed. Neither did city officials seem to grasp the potential liability they faced: The city’s first settlement offer was $500.

The jury awarded 744 times that. The city fought the verdict, but after an unsuccessful appeal, paid the amount allowed by law: $100,000.

Sheriff Williams can’t explain the disconnect. “It’s hard to know what the jury saw to make them render that verdict,” he says. “I’m not completely sure.” He found Dubose’s claims of injury dubious, but adds, “Obviously, that didn’t get through to the jury.”

But Dubose contends the jury saw the truth, and he hopes the size of their verdict serves as both punishment and a wakeup call.

“Those officers can’t just do anybody like that,” he says. “If they do me they going to do somebody else like that, and do somebody else like that, and somebody else like that. I figure like I’m a voice right now for every guy that done got battered for nothing.”

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