A cell phone video showing a white Jacksonville, Florida, police officer striking a Black man in the face during a February traffic stop before he’s dragged from his car has gone viral, sparked outrage and led to conflicting accounts of the incident from civil rights lawyers and law enforcement.
William McNeil Jr.’s lawyers Ben Crump and Harry Daniels say the video, which McNeil took from inside his car, is a clear depiction of brutality, coming as law enforcement officials – from masked ICE agents to local police officers – have been scrutinized for their use of force, particularly against people of color.
This whole thing is a shit show. From the cops lying on the report about him reaching for a knife, which the cellphone video shows clearly didn’t happen, to the State Attorney writing it off and the Sheriff going full DARVO during the press conference.
Sheriff’s Full Press Conference and Bodycam Footage
Notes:
- The sheriff was in church when the story broke, so it inconvenienced him during his Good Boy time.
- The victim should have filed a complaint so the Sheriff’s Office could do things The Right Way (aka. get ahead of the story).
- The unannounced public release of the cellphone video was intended to hurt the Sheriff’s Office reputation (no shit). Implying they’re the real victims here.
He was beaten by the cops for the offense of questioning their authority (asking for a supervisor) while being black.
Asking for a supervisor never works.
I’ve seen a few videos where it worked. In the end, they were still arrested, but they did get the supervisor to come, lol.
Saw both POV and it was shocking
From the police POV you don’t see anything really bad happening (due to the angle basically showing the cops’ feet), but from the guy’s POV you see that everything is wrong
Sounds to me like the guy getting brutalized was the one “under fire” and the police officer wont even get a slap on the wrist.
I really hate how modern headlines use words like “under fire” or “slammed” or insert other words that sounds like someone in power is actually being held accountable but in a WWE style wrestling match.
Funny how a cop never breaks the windows of those sovereign citizen types. Oh wait that’s because they’re white.
They do sometimes get spectacularly dragged and tazed though, all the while claiming immunity with their magic words
Yeah plenty of white people get brutalized by police. Its the clean-cut white Christians that always get a pass not white people in general.
Hate to break it to ya but most of the sovcits around here are black. Moorish is what they call themselves. Somehow they are citizens of morocco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorish_sovereign_citizens
Edit: ARRRR
Shouldn’t have punched him but the whole supervisor thing is as ridiculous as some of these warrantless stops.
The body cam video has now been released, and shows the cop ordering him out of the car 7 times, warning he’d break the window, and so he did. The dashcam video make it looks like the cop just did that without warning.
The guy still shouldn’t have been punched, and there may be other issues, but the idea that the guy was perfectly innocent in his behavior is not strictly true.
He refused to provide his license during a traffic stop which is certainly an arrestable offense. However, it kind of sounds like the stop might have been illegal in the first place. They pulled him over for not having his headlights on. During the day. In clear weather. They also say they pulled him over for not wearing his seat-belt, but I don’t see how they could have possibly known that until they had already pulled him over. So you start to see how this looks more like profiling/harassment than a legit traffic stop.
If the traffic stop is illegal, then you are well within your rights to refuse to cooperate.
If the traffic stop is illegal, then you are well within your rights to refuse to cooperate.
Don’t know if that’s the case in australia. It is in the USA I believe, but for other countries? Not sure
The wrongs of the police far outweighs the ones of the victim
They also say they pulled him over for not wearing his seat-belt, but I don’t see how they could have possibly known that until they had already pulled him over.
This has been a thing forever here. It’s common(-ish) knowledge to leave your seatbealt on until the cop approaches you. Otherwise they’re allowed to assume that you also weren’t wearing it before the stop and write you a ticket. It’s dumb.
Which sucks for guys, since we usually carry our wallets in our back pocket. So our first instinct is to take off the belt, take out our wallet and have everything ready for the cop when they walk up. Which is a $100 mistake you only make once (hopefully).
And that totally makes sense. If you’ve been pulled over for, say, speeding, and the officer notices that you aren’t wearing your seat-belt then that should get added. But it seems like that would be really easy for the officer to make a mistake or simply lie about as a primary offense. I did look it up and Florida has a primary enforcement law for seat-belts, which means technically they can pull you over for not wearing it without any other reason for the traffic stop. So that sucks. I mean, I want people to wear seat-belts, but that just seems like a statute ripe for abuse.
Oh it’s abused alright. They’re called pretextual stops and they’re basically used to skirt your rights of unreasonable search and seizure.
Despite the fact that SOCTUS has ruled that traffic stops are NOT grounds for further criminal investigations.
You are correct, the police officer on scene is supposed to determine the innocence of the people that they are giving the pre-arrest brutalizing to.
Maybe he was not totally innocent, maybe the may even had a valid reason for breaking his window, since he said it would not roll down. However punching him in the face, dragging him out and the violence that followed was completely unjustified and unnecessary.
Cops should be accountable for what they do. They ore meant to enforce the law and are not above it
