JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has dropped its jail house medical provider.
Sheriff T.K. Waters said he has ended the contract with Armor Correctional Health Services and agreed to a new contract with NaphCare.
"I've been looking at this since November, JSO is a big place with a lot of different working parts and moving parts so I'm looking at this for a long time now and how we were going to address this moving forward," Sheriff Waters said.
"The time came where I had to wait until we got our mayor in office, and I wanted to make sure they understood what was going on."
The announcement came hours after reporting by The Tributary showed jail deaths tripled after Armor Health took over as the jail’s health care provider in 2017.
The Tributary article says NaphCare has a reputation for poor treatment of inmates that largely mirrors Armor's.
Including a lawsuit that ended in a 3-million-dollar settlement for the family of a man who died in a Virginia jail in 2015.
“I wouldn’t have done it if I had that kind of concern listen, I’ll tell you this you can look at any medical facility in North Florida throughout the State of Florida and they’ve all had issues, they’ve all had lawsuits, they’ve all had those things. But, at some point you have to look through it very carefully and make sure that you’re making the right decision and I think we did," Waters said.
Andrew Bonderud, an attorney representing the family of Dexter Barry, who died after spending two days in the Duval County jail while Armor was contracted, said it's a good day.
But he also had a reminder for the Sheriff's Office.
“If the Sheriff’s Office is going to rely on a third party private for-profit company to provide these services the Sheriff’s office needs to be monitoring it and imposing consequences,” Andrew Bonderud said.
The Tributary has been reporting on Barry's death since February.
“Dexter Barry’s story kind of started the seed that started to grow," The Tributary reporter, Nichole Manna, said.
"Once you start reporting on one story people start contacting you and we ended up finding 12 people who say between December and June they did not get their medications in jail. That also opened up the question of if you’re not getting your medications does that mean people are dying because they’re not getting proper medical care?”
Manna reported deaths tripled when Armor took over in 2017.
First Coast News attempted to reach out to Armor and NaphCare but has not heard back.
Mayor Donna Deegan said Waters made the decision to end the contract with Armor.
Sheriff Waters said the contract with NaphCare will start Sept. 1.
He said it's a 5-year deal worth about $110 million.