DRUG STINGS TO CONTINUE, SHERIFF SAYS

Rutherford says test show the man killed by police in undercover
operation had gun residue on his gloves.

The 18-year-old whom a detective shot dead in an undercover drug
operation had gunshot residue on his gloves showing he fired a gun,
Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford said Monday.

Tests on the revolver that police recovered at the Jan. 20 shooting
scene on Emerson Street showed Douglas "D.J." Woods III fired at an
undercover officer six times in a robbery attempt, according to
Rutherford. The sheriff said three of Woods' shots misfired and three
missed the detective he tried to rob.

The news came as Rutherford called a news conference to address three
recent fatal police shootings.

The last killed 80-year-old Isaac Singletary on Saturday after he
exchanged gunfire with police. Authorities said Singletary may have
mistaken undercover officers for drug dealers and tried to chase them
away from his home in the 2300 block of Westmont Street.

Fraternal Order of Police President Nelson Cuba said Monday one of
the officers involved in the shooting had met Singletary in the past
in the neighborhood, an area where police are known to concentrate
efforts against drug dealing.

While revealing some new details, Rutherford said police were still
early into the investigation of what he called a "tragic" incident
involving someone police believed to be a good citizen.

Police still don't know if Singletary fired his gun first or if the
undercover detective he confronted near the front of his property
shot at him first, the sheriff said.

After police shot Singletary at least once, the man went through a
side yard toward the back of his property when a different officer
who was part of a backup team also shot him, Rutherford said.

That officer was wearing gear that identified him as police. He
opened fire after he told the man to drop his gun and the man turned
toward him, the sheriff said.

The police shootings began on Jan. 15 when 65-year-old Harry Lamar
Shuler died after SWAT officers opened fire when the man emerged from
his family's Gilchrist Road home after a 12-hour standoff with a
shotgun in his hands.

With two of the shootings related to undercover drug busts,
Rutherford insisted publicly on Monday both during and after the news
conference that police wouldn't stop street-level drug busts.

"Our narcotics officers are going to be there, making the buys and
making the arrests," he said, adding that police were going to look
into whether they needed to "tweak" anything in their procedures.

However, three law enforcement sources told the Times-Union that
narcotics detectives were ordered Monday to temporarily stop the kind
of street-level work involved in the two homicides.

That includes stings in which the officers pose as drug buyers and
drug sellers. Woods was killed during a buy/bust operation, while
police were selling drugs in a "reverse sting" when the confrontation
with Singletary occurred.

No definitive time frame was given as to when the work would resume,
the sources said, who are all familiar with the decision. The
decision left at least some of the 37 street-level detectives in the
unit puzzled by what they were to do.

Despite repeated follow-up phone calls to Rutherford on Monday
evening, he could not be reached to comment about the reported stand-down.

Woods' mother, Machealle Woods, said on Monday evening that she
wished police would halt undercover drug operations like the one her
son D.J. died in.

Despite the sheriff's statement about finding gunshot residue on her
son's gloves, the 38-year-old mother said she wouldn't give up
fighting until she cleared her son's name. Police said he had no arrest record.

"The protocol they're doing now isn't working," she said. "They're
killing the wrong people."