The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office arrested its own correctional officer and 16 other people and charged them with bringing drugs into the Duval County jail.
Correctional Officer Kobe Collett resigned after he was arrested on Monday. He had been with the department for more than two years. Collett was charged with money laundering, unlawful compensation for official behavior, introducing or possessing contraband in a county detention facility and three counts of criminal conspiracy, all of which are felonies.
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters announced the arrest on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference that The Tributary was not invited to. The Sheriff’s Office did not return a request for comment.
Collett was suspended from his job last October, the same month the Sheriff’s Office began its investigation, Waters said.
The Sheriff’s Office has not shared the arrest reports with the Tributary.
Back in January, City of Jacksonville Public Works employee Corey Copeland was also accused of dealing drugs to inmates who were on the work crews he supervised, the sheriff said. He was charged with three counts of selling drugs, two counts of possessing drugs and one count of introducing or possessing contraband in a county detention facility.
Collett’s sister, Elisha Hughes, was also charged with three counts of criminal conspiracy and one count of money laundering. Fourteen inmates were charged with various drug offenses.
Sheriff Waters said investigators cannot connect all of the people to the drug operation that he said was spearheaded by Collett.
The sheriff did not tie the drug operation to any deaths in the jail or give details on the type of drug that was being distributed.
At least six people since 2022 – during a time period when Collett worked at the Sheriff’s Office – have died with fentanyl in their system while incarcerated there, according to JSO and medical examiner’s records previously obtained by The Tributary.
In 2022, Justin Bryan, 34, died on Oct. 11, 2022, of a fentanyl overdose after spending eight days in jail. According to a police report, his roommate said Bryan had asked if he wanted to do the drug with him, but the roommate declined. Then two months later, Jarvis Miller, 22, died of a fentanyl overdose. No drugs were found in his cell, and since he had been incarcerated for more than 5 months, investigators believed he got the drugs inside the jail.
In 2023, four more men died in the jail with fentanyl in their system. Shaun Perkins, 44, died on April 12, after spending two days in jail; Caleb Johns, 26, died on June 17 after spending five months in jail; Josh’uan Stripling, 29, died on June 26 after spending eight days in jail; and Danny James, 68, died after spending 13 days in the jail.
Waters said that security measures at the jail have been strengthened to stop a similar operation from happening in the future, though he declined to give details on what that entailed.
Despite Waters’ assurances, last week, on April 22, three women incarcerated at the jail were treated for possible overdoses at the same time, according to an incident report. Each of them survived.
They had been jailed between 11 days and two months prior to the possible overdose.
According to an incident report, inmates in the dorm started banging on the windows just after noon, indicating they needed help. Officers found three women who were unresponsive with discolored skin. Each woman was given CPR and Narcan, a medication that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose, the report says.
They were each taken to the hospital. All three were back in Duval County jail custody, as of Tuesday.
Nichole Manna is The Tributary’s criminal justice reporter. You can reach her at nichole.manna@jaxtrib.org or on Twitter at @NicholeManna.