Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Tuesday that the recent arrest of a mother illustrates a pattern of excessive force by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office against Black motorists for minor traffic infractions.
Erika McGriff, 39, was arrested Oct. 7 after deputies said she left her car parked and running outside a charter school on the city’s Northside.
The sheriff's office said she became confrontational and scuffled with a deputy who approached her about the car.
Video from Deputy Randy Holton’s bodycam and a bystander’s cellphone show Holton punching McGriff and forcing her to the ground after he was bitten on his arm. McGriff was charged with battery on an officer, resisting an officer with violence and other charges.
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McGriff appeared with Crump at a news conference Tuesday at The Sanctuary at Mount Calvary Church in Jacksonville. Crump demanded that charges against her be dropped, as well as the charges against two other women accused of violating the state’s year-old HALO Act.
In her first public comments since the arrest, McGriff said she was at the school to pick up her daughter so the child wasn’t in the rain.
“That’s all, and this — everything that happened — that was just like uncalled for, and it’s not fair,” she said.
Crump then stepped in to say McGriff “can’t say very much” because she faces criminal charges.
He said McGriff was “a victim of this excessive and unjustifiable use of force in front of her 9-year-old daughter and other students and parents at the school.”
Asked for response, the sheriff’s office said it could not comment “due to anticipated litigation.” The office directed Jacksonville Today to comments from Sheriff T.K. Waters during a news briefing Friday.
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At that time, Waters described McGriff as a habitual traffic offender with a revoked driver’s license who refused to follow an deputy's directions.
People who violently resist will be arrested, he said, and people also must obey instructions under the HALO law.
The HALO law — short for Honoring and Listening to Our Officers — requires people to back away 25 week when a first responder asks.
“JSO will not tolerate those who violate the law and victimize our officers or any member of our communities,” Waters said, according to a report from News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner. “These jobs are tough enough without all of that.”
What the videos show
According to Waters, McGriff walked away when the deputy questioned her. She argued that she was a passenger, not the driver.
“I did not do anything wrong,” McGriff says, according to the videos. Holton tells her she left the vehicle unattended and can either “get a ticket, or you can keep playing these games and go to jail.”
When McGriff starts to walk away, Holton grips her right arm and begins taking her to his cruiser as a child is heard crying, “Mommy.” As Holton grabs both arms, McGriff resists, saying he is hurting her.
The encounter turns into a scuffle, and McGriff is heard yelling multiple times that Holton is choking her. She ends up on the wet parking lot several times.
At some point, Holton was bitten on his left arm. Teeth marks are visible on the bodycam video, as is blood on McGriff’s arm. The bystander video shows Holton grab McGriff by the hair and try to control her with a chokehold.
Attorney Harry Daniels, who works with Crump, says those actions, as well as a wrist lock, were meant to cause pain.
“For a civil infraction? No respect, no restraint,” Daniels said of the officer’s actions. “Then she is taken to the ground; thrown on the ground, flung to the ground, for civil infractions. She is placed in a headlock, something that has been outlawed by the U.S. government, for civil infraction.”
HALO arrests
Crump also demanded that the State Attorney’s Office drop the charges of violating the HALO law against Anita Gibson, 59, and Jasmine Jefferson, 36, bystanders who saw McGriff’s arrest.
These were the first arrests by the sheriff’s office under the HALO Law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in April 2024. A violation is a second-degree misdemeanor that could result in fines up to $500 and/or up to 60 days in jail.
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“The video that Sheriff Waters put out shows that neither of these women violated the HALO law,” Daniels said. “First, you have to be warned. After they were told to back up, Ms. McGriff was already in the car; the incident was already over. … The only designed purpose was to try to intimidate, harass.”
Jefferson said she was not arrested until three days after the school incident. The arrest surprised her because a sheriff's office investigator had called and asked her only to make a statement about what happened, she said.
“They arrested me right on the spot, said I had a warrant for my arrest, and I spent 72 hours in the Duval County jail,” Jefferson said. “(All I was trying to do was) … get her daughter to a phone so I could call her grandmother.”
