Civil rights activists and Northwest Jacksonville community members will gather outside the Cleveland Arms apartments this evening at 6 p.m. to protest the police shooting of an unarmed black man there Sunday morning.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says two deputies responded to a domestic-violence call at the complex and found 22-year old Devanta Jones trying to strangle a woman.
Jones reportedly wrestled Deputy Clifford Sames’sTaser away from him and turned it on the officer, at which point, the JSO says, Sames pulled out his handgun and fired six shots, hitting Jones four times. He remains hospitalized.
Protest organizer Diallo-Sekou is the chairman of a group called the Kemetic Empire, which works to empower and educate African Americans. He wants to see three things happen to address what he says is the problem of systemic racism:
“One is body cameras for JSO. The other one is a civilian police-review board, and the other one is an independent investigation by the federal government of this case and the JSO agency itself.”
As the Miami-Herald reports, Jacksonville police rank second behind the Miami-Dade Police Department for the number of police-involved shootings.
