One of the nine Duval County jail officers suspended earlier this month in connection with the death of 31-year-old Charles Faggart was reprimanded last year in an unrelated internal affairs investigation centered around the death of a different inmate, according to documents obtained by The Tributary.
Matthew Sullivan 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.
Sullivan was among the corrections officers whom Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters suspended earlier this month in connection with Faggart’s death. It’s not clear how Sullivan or the other officers were connected to Faggart’s death because JSO has released sparingly little information about the controversial incident, which has drawn fury and sadness from Faggart’s family.
The Tributary filed public-records requests for any previous internal affairs investigations against the nine employees who are on leave following Faggart’s death in an effort to learn more about their track records at the agency and within Duval County’s aging jail, which has proven to be a dangerous place for the people taken there.
JSO charged $370 for those records and has not yet provided all of them.
Given was taken to jail in the fall of 2023 for a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
He’d gone to UF Health complaining of hip pain but declined medical attention and then refused to leave the property, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
He was slapped with a $2,504 bond and was jailed for 13 days before he died.
Hours before JSO announced Given’s death, Sheriff T.K. Waters went on WJCT’s morning show, First Coast Connect, and said that people who are arrested on misdemeanor charges “don’t spend any time in jail.”
“Most of our jail is filled with individuals who are in there for pretty serious crimes,” he said in 2023. “Those that are involved in smaller cases either” receive a Notice to Appear in court without getting arrested “or they get released the next day, so misdemeanants don’t stay in jail very long at all, if they even end up being there.”
Given was last seen alive in his cell around 10 a.m. Two hours later, he was found unresponsive.
According to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office detention policy, officers must check on inmates at irregular intervals that don’t exceed 30 minutes each.
The four-page summary of the internal investigation shows that the jail’s division chief filed a complaint against the three officers who were working at the time, alleging that they failed to complete their rounds.
One of the officers told an investigator that he last saw Given “on the ground acting as a normal mental health inmate.” Two officers acknowledged that inmates should be checked every 30 minutes at most, but sometimes those checks exceed that if officers have to escort other inmates to the clinic.
Sullivan admitted that he documented his security rounds in ATIMS, a jail management software that allows officers to track when inmates are checked on or given medicine, but he didn’t know how many rounds he conducted, but “due to escorting, diabetic checks or breaks” the rounds could have been documented in ATIMS but not actually conducted.
The officers received written reprimands.
Given was the 12th person to die in-custody of the Duval County jail that year, and was the first reported death under the jail’s new medical provider, NaphCare.
Nichole Manna is The Tributary’s senior investigative reporter. You can reach her at nichole.manna@jaxtrib.org.
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