
Attorneys whittled down the jury pool to a few dozen citizens on Monday morning and afternoon. Around 3 p.m., the final jury of eight people was called out.
With jury selection completed, a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) kicked off.
Opening arguments ended Monday’s session, and the court is scheduled to hear arguments from the plaintiff’s side, Sgt. Kevin Davis, on Tuesday and Wednesday. The defense side, ACSO, is scheduled to present its arguments on Thursday in order to leave Friday for closing arguments and jury deliberation.
Attorney Tiffany Cruz laid out the case of Davis during her opening arguments.
Cruz said society has prohibited race discrimination. Employees are expected to report incidents just as employers are responsible for investigating those reports, she said.
“We are here because Sgt. Davis observed racially discriminatory conduct in the workplace under the Clovis Watson administration, and he did what was right and what was required by his employer, and he reported that discrimination,” Cruz told the jury. “After making that report, he himself was subject to race discrimination and retaliation, which is wrong.”
The jury’s job, Cruz said, is to decide if the Watson administration would have taken the same actions if Davis were not white and had not filed discrimination reports. Watson served as Alachua County sheriff from 2021 through October 2023 before stepping down.
Cruz highlighted the ACSO’s “Rule of Five” policy concerning promotions. The police, she said, means that the sheriff will consider the top five candidates for promotion—ranked according to their scores on a test.
Davis took the promotion test and ranked third, yet Cruz said he was passed up during multiple rounds of promotions in favor of less experienced candidates, even after he’d risen to second and first place within the top five.
In August 2022, she said a Black candidate who ranked lower, sixth on the list, was selected instead. She also walked through other rounds of promotion where Davis failed to make the cut to become a lieutenant and noted the internal investigations launched against him during those years.
Cruz touched on Davis’s track record with the sheriff’s office that dates back to 2004 along with an earlier stint. She also mentioned the testimony of Capt. Becky Butscher, a supervisor of Davis who recommended him for promotion.
“You will hear how the defendant created an atmosphere where such discrimination was not only tolerated but endorsed,” Cruz told the jury. “When Sgt. Davis came forward with claims of discrimination, the defendant failed to appropriately investigate them. They failed to appropriately investigate his claims for retaliation and, instead, actively retaliated against him.”
However, attorney Wayne Evans for the sheriff’s department said the case is one of assumptions. If something didn’t go Davis’s way, he assumed it was discrimination, Evans said.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what the evidence is going to show is that what he’s complaining about results from matters that were unrelated to his race and matters that were unrelated to his complaints of discrimination,” Evans said.
Evans said ACSO’s Rule of Five isn’t a Rule of One. He said once an employee made it into the top five then they were equal and compared with each other to see who would best fit the openings. He said the rule means that the sheriff gets to pick anyone within that section—not just the employee with the top numerical score.
Evans highlighted that most of the sergeants promoted to lieutenant were white. He also said that other candidates passed up didn’t claim race discrimination.
“Six out of the seven promotions we’re contesting were whites that were promoted—one African American,” Evans said. “He contends that he’s target somehow, that they’re out together, and that’s why he’s being passed over.”
Evans said Davis was a qualified employee for promotion, and some supervisors [namely Butscher] were in his corner. But he emphasized that different supervisors have different impressions of employees.
He said a group of captains overwhelmingly thought another candidate would be a better pick for a post than Davis. The captains came to their conclusions based on past experience with Davis, his personality and his work habits, Evans said.
Evans dismissed the plaintiff’s examples of retaliation based on internal investigations. He said the investigations followed ACSO policy, with punishments equal to that of other employees.
Judge Gloria Walker is presiding over the case. She gave the jury its instructions and told them that opening arguments are not to be considered during deliberations. Instead, the jury will hear these issues explained and debated in the following days. Those arguments will form the basis for the group’s verdict.
The trial is expected to last from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, with 72 witnesses potentially getting called to testify.