JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — An officer, whose use of a Taser on a woman in a Publix parking lot sparked a lawsuit, acted appropriately, according to an internal review by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
An Internal Affairs report obtained by First Coast News says Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer Kevin Munger “had the required probable cause” to arrest Tawanda Crowell in February 2020 and that she was “arrested without violence.”
According to a report, Crowell was hit with a stun gun in a car with three children in February 2020 after a store employee suspected her of stealing from the Publix on 103rd Street.
Munger, who was working off duty as store security, followed her to her car and asked to see her receipt. Crowell allegedly refused, accusing Munger of racial profiling. She also declined to provide her ID, but offered to return to the store with Munger to watch the store’s surveillance footage, which she said would prove her point, a report says.
Munger declined to return to the store and eventually used his stun gun on her. A video shows her blouse being ripped off during the takedown. She was arrested, though the State Attorney’s Office later dropped the charges.
Crowell did eventually produce the receipt that proved she did not steal any items. She later told police she was afraid to give Munger her receipt for fear he might destroy it.
At an April press conference announcing the lawsuit against Publix, Crowell's attorney, Benjamin Crump, said, “The fundamental issue here is this police officer being empowered by Publix to harass this Black woman for shopping while Black.”
The suit claims the store failed to properly train Munger and seeks damages in excess of $50,000 for physical and mental trauma.
Publix’s response to the lawsuit notes Munger is not a store employee and says the store did not instruct him to arrest Crowell. Munger is not named in the lawsuit.
JSO investigated Munger’s conduct after receiving a complaint from someone identified only as a “disgruntled citizen.” The complaint says “Deputy Munger’s EGO would not allow him to respect her rights and just was so butt hurt from her not obeying him he had to taze her (and did I mention IT WAS IN FRONT OF HER KIDS!!!) the end result was he found her receipt and she didn’t steal anything but she spent the night in jail.”
The citizen complaint continues, “so after all of this you have investigated yourselves and found Deputy Munger did nothing wrong??? What happened to the police man of yester year? You are all BLUE LINE GANGSTAS.”
First Coast News also obtained Munger’s complete discipline history. It shows 25 citizen complaints filed against him since 2004 including allegations of bias-based profiling and excessive use of force.
Most of the complaints were not sustained following an internal investigation. Munger also received formal counseling for misuse of JSO property and failure to submit timely reports. Because of JSO policy, which purges all officer discipline investigations after five years, regardless of the outcome, details on most of the complaints no longer exist.
Read the full Internal Affairs report. The story continues below.
Munger was featured as part of a JSO social media campaign to humanize officers, called #BehindTheBadge. In an 2015 interview with public radio station WJCT, Munger said he was motivated by negative public attention directed at police officers.
“You know, it feels different,” Munger told WJCT. “It’s been a tough year.”
Munger said he wanted kids to know the police are around to protect them.
"One of the common things you’ll hear is a parent tell their child or their little one that if they do something wrong, they’ll call the police and a policeman is going to take them away,” Munger is quoted a saying. “We don’t want that.”