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Faggart, a Jacksonville father and well-known chef, died in custody at the Duval County Jail in April. Nine officers are being investigated in his death.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office internal investigation into the officers involved in the incident that killed Charles Faggart has concluded, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters confirmed to First Coast News Monday.
JSO is now waiting on the State Attorney’s Office to complete its investigation. Waters says the decision to prosecute or not to prosecute any of the officers comes solely from the SAO, Melissa Nelson’s office.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was also brought in to assist this investigation.
Waters stressed the importance of this investigation to JSO — and that he wants the public to know the agency instigated it themselves. “I think it’s important for me to let people know that we self-report this,” he said during an exclusive interview. “No one caught us. It wasn’t anything that we tried to sneak by the wayside.”
He said that now that the internal investigation is over, it becomes “a waiting game.”
At this time, Waters does not want to share any information about the investigation so that he can make sure that information he dispenses is absolutely correct, he said.
“People want to hear that their sheriff is on top of the information and…when I give it to you, it’s going to be right,” he said. “So I’m just waiting for that to be done.”
Waters said there is no timeline for the investigation. “This one’s a little different, because it requires experts, it requires so many, so many different things, so we’re waiting for all that to get done and once we get it done, we’re gonna tell the public about it,” he said.
What happened?
Faggart died on April 10 after an “incident” left him critically injured at the Duval County Jail. He was a beloved father and a well-known local chef.
He was in custody for simple assault and criminal mischief, both misdemeanors.
JSO released a redacted version of the incident report on April 14, and the exact circumstances that led to Faggart’s death remain unclear.
Nine officers were reassigned after they were connected to the case, and they are currently subject to investigation.
The State Attorney’s Office says it has received his autopsy report from the Medical Examiner’s Office, but it is not releasing it publicly while the investigation is still ongoing.
A jail incident report from the incident that led to Faggart’s death claimed he told jail officials he was on fentanyl. The incident report was written by one of the nine corrections officers currently under investigation by JSO, the State Attorney’s Office and the FBI for the incident.
However, Faggart’s attorney, Belkis Plata, released a statement saying that he was not.
“Medical professionals we consulted have reviewed Charles’s hospital records and confirmed that no fentanyl was detected in his system upon admission—contrary to statements in a police report alleging that Charles told officers he had taken fentanyl,” Plata said in a statement on behalf of the family. “That statement came from officers who are themselves under investigation, and we maintain that this claim is false.”