Influential Republican donor Kent Stermon, who died last week, used a personal badge to access Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office buildings more than 700 times over the past five years and on at least 25 separate dates in 2022, according to records obtained by Jacksonville Today.
Those numbers, released last week, disproved two years’ worth of blank Stermon access records the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office provided to Jacksonville Today in June. When asked this week whether JSO intentionally created the false record — a violation of Florida’s public records laws — the department blamed the inconsistency on a “software” issue.
The department’s failure to produce accurate records before Stermon’s death raises new questions about the department’s relationship with Stermon as well as the public’s ability to obtain reliable information from the Sheriff’s Office.
Read the rest of this story at Jacksonville Today, part of WJCT Public Media.
