Local Firebrand Sues Sheriff, County, Bunnell and School Board Over ‘Illicit’ Carver Center Agreement

Eric Josey, a retired New York cop with a brief, checkered history at the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office and an often controversial local firebrand in the name of African-American causes, is suing the Sheriff’s Office, the County Commission, the School Board and the city of Bunnell over the four agence’s recent joint agreement in running the Carver Center, also known as Carver Gym, in Bunnell.

The four agencies spent much of last year and part of this year rewriting a joint agreement dating back more than a decade, and opening the gym to the presence and activities of the Police Athletic League that operates under the sheriff’s umbrella.




While he was not a representative of any of the parties, Josey had participated in the joint committee meeting discussions that led to the new agreement, referred to as an “inter-local agreement,” or ILA, even as the meetings were not open to the public. It is not clear what standing he has to sue. He identifies himself as “a community representative and member of the George Washington Community Center Interlocal Committee” in the citing of parties, and elsewhere in the suit as “a private citizen, widely known community representative, civil rights advocate, taxpayer, and voter with a personal stake in the G.W. Carver Community Center.” The personal stake is not explained. He lives in Palm Coast.

Josey, a former member of the local branch of the NAACP (that relationship ended about two years ago), is challenging “the constitutionality and lawfulness of the defendant’s [sic.] abuse of their county and municipal home rule powers” to “arbitrarily” execute an inter-local agreement, a seemingly invalid claim on its face: the four government agencies routinely engage in interlocal agreements with each other and with others, and there was nothing “arbitrary” about the agreement–its process or its adoption: it was laborious, often heatedly debated through public meetings, and eventually approved in public meetings.

Josey charges that the “illicit purpose of the defendant’s [sic.] ILA is to replace the preexisting youth programs of the school district, without cause, and institute the youth programs of the Flagler Sheriff’s favored local Police Athletic League, a discrete, privately owned organization, which is an extrajudicial party operating on behalf of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office… in their ILA as an unnamed entity.”




In fact, the police athletic leagues’ programs are in addition to numerous other programs and organizations’ activities at the center, none of which are named in the ILA because the ILA is between the four government agencies, not the organizations operating under their umbrellas at the gym. Josey, however, is claiming that PAL’s particular involvement is improper or illegal.

He is also claiming that the sheriff “knowingly made false representations in purporting that the FCSO would be responsible for ‘staffing, mentoring, programming, and management.'” The ILA does spell out the sheriff’s responsibilities for daily operations at the gym, including “athletic staffing, mentoring, programming and management.” In repeated appearances before the County Commission and the School Board, either Sheriff Rick Staly or Chief Dave Williams, or both together, have said that PAL would operate at the gym and fulfill those roles, while the staffing, management and programming outside of PAL’s direct programs would be left in the hands of the district and its staff there.

The heart of Josey’s argument remains that the sheriff standing in for PAL or vice versa is improper in the context of the ILA. But in that case, any program that any of the agencies would bring there, including job training, literacy or athletic programs and tournaments, would be equally improper. The lawsuit makes no such claim, reserving its animus for the sheriff and PAL.




During the public debates over the ILA, the community in South Bunnell, the predominantly Black neighborhood to whom Carver Gym–once a local high school, before desegregation–is the only community center and institution with which it has long identified, feared that PAL’s introduction would upend a measure of local control over the facility. “More than any other element within the Bunnell community,” the lawsuit states, “cultural resources that express its historical, architectural, and archaeological legacy provide a visible and intellectual link with the past, establishing a reassuring, feeling of continuity history and present strives toward positive advancement and change in Flagler County.”

There were initial and inaccurate reports disseminated over social media that PAL was taking over, or that the sheriff was taking over. The ILA delineates clear lines of authority, keeping the school district in charge while granting PAL generous time slots to run its programs–and demanding that no child be turned away for lack of ability to afford PAL programs.

Josey cites four “causes of action,” some of them downright puzzling, such as the claim that the ILA is “expressly preempted by state legislation” or that “county and city action conflicts with state legislation.” The Florida legislature has zealously encroached on home rule and pre-empted local authority in innumerable instances over the past decade, but local authority to have shuffleboard or basketball programs in a public gym is not one of them. Josey is also asking the court to order PAL out of the gym, and to prevent the ILA from going in effect. It has been in effect since last month.

Each of the named defendant is preparing a response. For some of them, it would not be the first run-in with Josey on legal grounds.




In 2016, Josey sued Palm Coast government over the rezoning of the old Matanzas Woods golf course, arguing that the city had violated public notice requirements. He lost on the merits, and lost on standing: the court ruled that, contrary to Josey’s claim, he was not an “affected property owner” entitled to a mailed notice about the land use changes. He’d also claimed that he lived in a subdivision adjoining the subject property. But his property did not adjoin. the golf course property. The same year, he battled with then-Superintendent Jacob Oliva over a discrimination lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center that had been settled the previous year. Josey charged that parents and community members were being obstructed from reviewing disciplinary records.

In 2017, Josey, in the name of the NAAACP, filed a “notice of complaint” against the Sheriff’s Office, charging employment discrimination against Black employees. In 2018, Josey, playing to television cameras in an event he’d organized on behalf of the local branch of the NAACP, accused the sheriff of under-charging two students who’d made racist threats against a teacher at Flagler Palm Coast High School. One student fled the country, the other was sentenced to felony probation. In 2020, Josey, speaking for the NAAACP, announced federal lawsuits filed by two Flagler County school employees, Travis Lee, now the principal at Rymfire Elementary (following a settlement), and Jawanda Dove, now a dean at Indian Trails Middle School (following an October settlement the school district to this day has illegally refused to produce despite numerous public record requests.)

Josey also lost a legal action against the New York Police Department, after he went on disability. In 2016, when Jim Manfre was sheriff, the agency hired Josey as a deputy, though his application included several misrepresentations. He resigned less than two months after the hire, and after superiors had raised objections and criticism about his performance in training. (See: “Despite Alarms, an Ex-Cop on Disability–and Supporter of the Sheriff–Is Hired As Deputy.”)