After a struggle with several officers during his arrest, Michael Norris, who was not armed, was hospitalized with multiple facial, elbow and rib fractures, along with a hemorrhage in his right eye, bruising up and down his body and pain in his lungs from being unable to breathe during the attack, according to UF Health records The Tributary reviewed.
Michael Norris was holding his newly adopted puppy and leaving a gas station when a haggard man approached him and asked him for crack cocaine. Norris said he told the stranger he didn’t have anything, that he doesn’t use coke. But the man, Norris said, kept pestering him.
“Come on, man, I’m sick, I’m really sick,” Norris, 48, recalled the man saying.
Eventually, Norris sold him $25 worth of meth out of his personal stash. He said he warned the man that he doesn’t normally do that, but he wanted to help – he “felt sorry for the guy.”
Norris and his dog got into a truck with the man so they could go to a nearby smoke shop to get a pipe. When they parked and Norris opened the truck’s passenger door, he was immediately seized around the arms and waist by a Jacksonville Sheriff’s officer who slammed his head into the pavement, according to body camera footage reviewed by The Tributary.
The haggard man was an undercover cop – and on May 1, Norris became the latest person to experience what Jacksonville police call a “response to resistance” – even though he says he wasn’t resisting at all.
“They came at me and didn’t even give me time to do anything,” Norris recalled in an interview. “They just tackled me to the ground.”
After a struggle with several officers, Norris, who was not armed, was hospitalized with multiple facial, elbow and rib fractures, along with a hemorrhage in his right eye, bruising up and down his body and pain in his lungs from being unable to breathe during the attack, according to UF Health records The Tributary reviewed.
Norris has taken the first step in filing a lawsuit against JSO by securing civil rights attorney Alisha Hurdle, who said a future lawsuit will allege human-rights violations and unnecessary use of force.
This is the kind of complaint the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has come under fire for multiple times in the past few years.
The police report written after Norris was arrested accused him of not complying with commands to get on the ground, so officers “escorted the suspect to the ground.” The report alleged that Norris continued to resist by “curling his arms underneath his body.” The body-cam footage shows he was already being hurled to the ground before any instructions were given.
“We understand that police have to use force, but this is beyond excessive force,” Hurdle, Norris’s attorney, said after she reviewed the body-camera footage. She added that at no point did an officer tell Norris he was under arrest. Additionally, after Norris was cuffed, he was questioned without his Miranda Rights being read, she said.
Norris was charged with selling meth and resisting an officer without violence. Prosecutors dropped the resisting charge, and Norris pleaded not guilty to selling. He’s been arrested dozens of times for drug possession, and Hurdle wonders if officers targeted Norris specifically.
“We’re not saying that Michael wasn’t wrong, but he definitely wasn’t intending to sell. He is not a dealer,” Hurdle said. “The evidence that was brought against Michael is a singular bag of methamphetamine, not multiple baggies, because he was not selling.”
What the video shows
When Norris and the undercover officer parked in front of a smoke shop in the City Thrift shopping center, officers surrounded the vehicle and started to yell at Norris to get on the ground. Before he could step out of the truck, Norris’s 130-pound body was whipped out of the vehicle and violently thrown to the pavement.
The left side of Norris’s head and body slammed into the ground, likely causing the facial fracture that doctors later recommended surgery to fix. Norris has not been able to get that surgery. On the ground, officers yelled at Norris to put his hands behind his back, but at least one officer was holding onto his right arm, according to the video reviewed by The Tributary.
“You see an officer that punches him in the face several times, and then there’s another officer that’s punching him in the ribs,” Hurdle said, adding that at one point, an officers hand was on Norris’s head, driving into the ground. “They keep telling him to put his hands behind his back, but at the same time they’re holding his arms and preventing him from being able to move.”
The struggle lasted about a minute. Norris kept yelling that his face and ribs hurt as blood pooled around his head. As he cried out in pain, he was told to “shut the f–-k up.” Ordered to “quit trying to get up,” Norris responded, “I’m not!”
He was taken to UF Health by an ambulance that JSO called. Medical records show he was prescribed several medications. His jail records, which The Tributary reviewed, show that Norris asked several times when he was behind bars to be given his medication.
He and Hurdle say he never got them. Norris doesn’t know what happened to his puppy.
The Tributary requested a copy of the Response-to-Resistance form that officers noted on the arrest report was filled out. JSO’s record department declined to release the form, stating, “The case you are requesting is an active Criminal Investigation.” Hurdle said she has also not been able to get a copy of the form.
Hurdle plans to file a civil lawsuit against the city regarding Norris’s arrest. Her lawsuit will be one of dozens filed against the sheriff’s office since 2022. Since then, the department has doled out $1.9 million in these types of cases.
“Michael is a good person,” Hurdle said. “We’re not saying he’s not a drug user. We’re saying he is, and he needs help. I still want to get him access to rehab, because that’s what he needs.”
Nichole Manna is The Tributary’s senior investigative reporter. You can reach her at nichole.manna@jaxtrib.org.
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