Jacksonville has seen a significant drop in overdose-related deaths, halving from 472 in 2022 to 221 this year.<\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office says it\u2019s making major progress in the fight against overdose deaths \u2014 pointing to new data showing a sharp decline over the last three years.<\/p>\n
At a briefing Tuesday afternoon, Sheriff T.K. Waters said overdose deaths in Jacksonville have fallen from 472 cases in 2022 to 221 so far this year, a drop he attributes to targeted enforcement and community cooperation.<\/p>\n
During the update, Waters issued a direct warning:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you’re a drug trafficker in Jacksonville, stay away from here. Don\u2019t come here. We don\u2019t want you here \u2014 and keep your poison out of our city.”<\/p>\n
Waters said the agency is using a variety of tactics to disrupt drug networks; however, he declined to reveal details.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things I don\u2019t wanna talk about because it keeps us being able to operate the way that we operate\u2026 a lot of undercovers and things like that,\u201d Waters said.<\/p>\n
Waters also said that overdose-related deaths are not concentrated in any single part of the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cIllegal drugs affect a lot of people all over \u2014 all over the map. No specific neighborhoods\u2026 this is the decrease, which is really good,” he said.<\/p>\n
The sheriff also pointed to a reduction in gang or group-related murders, reporting just one such case so far this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne murder is too many. We are encouraged by truly historical-related deaths. In 2025, narcotics investigators arrested 813 criminals, and we\u2019ll only continue this work in 2026,” said Waters.<\/p>\n
Waters emphasized that community tips remain a critical part of investigations. Anyone with information about illegal activity is urged to contact JSO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville has seen a significant drop in overdose-related deaths, halving from 472 in 2022 to 221 this year.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":436699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-436698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115692566377582808","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}