Ex-DCPS police chief accused of ordering department to mislabel, not report thousands of crimes

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A former Duval County Schools police chief is accused of falsely reporting 2,261 crimes between 2016 and 2019, according to a newly released, unredacted report from the state grand jury.

Related: Grand Jury report says Ex-DCPS Police Chief accused of not reporting more than 2,000 crimes

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The 16-page report said Michael Edwards told officers to “stay in your lane” and to behave not as police but “advocates with a badge.” Several incidents in this report show that some students in custody were released, and some felonies were reported as misdemeanors in an effort to make Duval schools seem safer.

Edwards also, “issued both written and verbal orders to the members of his department to intentionally mislabel and fail to report crimes.”

The report states the reasoning behind the false reporting could be to “generate statistics that can be cherry-picked to reflect more favorably upon themselves.”

Some of the mislabeled reports included battery on a school employee, battery on a law enforcement officer, child abuse, gang-related activity and child pornography, among others.

The report notes in one instance, a witness saw a teen put a gun in a backpack and head into a school. A school police officer requested the school be locked down to find the gun. The report said Edwards refused, saying he didn’t want parents picking up their kids to be alarmed.

Read: Bradford County deputy resigns after video shows pregnant Jacksonville mother handcuffed at gunpoint

Another incident was deadly. Officers took a student into custody during a high school football game for fighting and disorderly conduct. When Edwards was informed about the situation, he ordered the officers to immediately release the student. The student stayed at the game and was later shot to death in a fight that continued from the previous incident.

While the report doesn’t give a specific date, Action News Jax told you in August 2018 that there was a deadly triple shooting at a Raines High School football game. A 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old student were shot and taken to a Jacksonville hospital. Joerod Adams, 19, was also shot and died from his injuries at the game.

Action News Jax reporter, Meghan Moriarty, spoke with Joerod’s mother about the findings in the report.

“I don’t know how to feel right now,” Jameelah Murphy said. “If they would’ve took action right then — and when people was letting the people know about what was going on — maybe, like I said, my son would be alive.”

We reached out to Duval County Public Schools for comment. A spokesperson sent us this statement:

“As we promised the community when the first grand jury report was released-and as was recommended in the most recent grand jury report-the school district did initiate and conduct a joint review of our current processes for SESIR reporting with state officials. We worked directly with the Florida Department of Education Office of Safe Schools on this review. Because of this collaboration with the state, we are confident that our current procedures are legally sound.

“The new grand jury report correctly states that we self-reported to the state when we discovered the errors in our 2018 SESIR reporting data. It should be clear to families and the community that we:

1. Self-reported the errors.
2. Corrected both the errors and our procedures.
3. Requested that the FLDOE Office of Safe Schools review our policies and procedures to ensure compliance with state law. That joint review was conducted earlier this year.

“Mr. Edwards resigned in 2021. We will continue to cooperate with the grand jury and participants in any further, potential judicial action to provide any evidence which may address the claims made against Mr. Edwards in the report.”

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