Demonstrators demand Jacksonville police officer be indicted, fired after fatal shooting
Joined by community activists, family and friends of a Jacksonville man fatally shot by a Sheriff’s Office police officer during an Oct. 10 foot chase rallied on Saturday demanding the immediate indictment and firing of the officer as well as police reform.
About 50 people called for “justice for Dejuane “Woo Woo” Hayden” during the peaceful afternoon demonstration on the front steps of Sheriff’s Office headquarters downtown.
Brandon Virdell Boyd struggled to hold back tears as he told the crowd about his younger brother and his killing.
“My little brother wasn’t a gang member. He was scared. He wasn’t trying to hurt nobody. All he was trying to do was get away. … My little brother was a good person,” Boyd told the crowd.
About 50 people including family, friends and community activists rallied on the front steps of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on Saturday to demand justice for Dejuane “Woo Woo” Hayden, who was shot and killed Oct. 10 by JSO Officer Bradley Griffitts during a foot chase. The crowd demanded that Griffitts be indicted and fired, as well as the reforms including the creation of an independent Jacksonville Police Accountability Council to ensure accountability by the Sheriff’s Office.
The family and activists said Hayden was unarmed, running away and posed no threat when Officer Bradley Griffitts shot Hayden, 30, during a foot pursuit in the 5700 block of Tall Pine Lane.
It was Griffitts’ second fatal police-involved shooting in four years. The first one, in 2020, involved five other officers who fired their weapons.
Carrying signs reading “Indict, Convict, Send Those Killer Cops to Jail,” “Community Control of the Police,” “Gut the Gang Unit” and “Long Live Woo Woo,” demonstrators refuted the Sheriff’s Office’s statements, including recently released police body camera video, of the circumstances leading up to the shooting and afterward.
They said the Sheriff’s Office video shows that Hayden never pointed a gun at the police or anyone else.
“I thought it was horrible. It made me sick to my stomach. What I saw and what everyone else saw as well was a man that was running and he had dropped any weapons and he was shot multiple times. And then you go on to witness him bleeding out the last moments of his life,” said Monica Gold of the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, adding that she watched the Sheriff’s Office video.
In addition to demanding Griffitts be indicted and fired for shooting and killing Hayden, the crowd called for the immediate formation of an independent Jacksonville Police Accountability Council to ensure the Sheriff’s Office is held accountable so officers don’t have more rights than citizens.
Sheriff T.K. Waters on Thursday during a Critical Incident Briefing released officer-worn body camera video from the shooting, which remains under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office and State Attorney’s Office.
Mike Shell, JSO chief of professional standards, in the briefing, said a task force was conducting surveillance on Justina Road which ultimately led up to Hayden being shot. The task force observed known gang members and former members outside a Buy Rite store flashing guns. Officers approached and detained several individuals there, but Hayden ran away.
Griffitts ran after him, ordering him to stop. Hayden kept running and pulled a handgun from his waistband, police said. When he saw a gun in Hayden’s hand, Griffitts yelled “Gun, gun, gun,” then fired his JSO-issued weapon, striking Hayden, who fell to the ground and dropped the gun, police said.
Although Griffitts ordered Hayden not to move, he got up and continued running and jumped over a wall before ultimately collapsing on the front steps of a home where another officer found him.
Shell said Griffitts had stayed behind to secure the handgun and didn’t chase after Hayden following the shooting.
Police treated Hayden at the scene before rescue personnel arrived and took him to the hospital where he later died, Shell said during the briefing.
Hayden’s shooting marks the fifth time this year that a Jacksonville officer shot a suspect, two of whom died. Last year at this time, officers had shot 12 people, eight of them fatally, according to Times-Union records.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Demonstrators demand indictment of JSO police officer in fatal shooting
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