What we know about the violent Jacksonville traffic stop that went viral
The incident is being investigated by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
No criminality in viral video of man being repeatedly punched by deputies: SheriffThe Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating a viral video showing sheriff’s deputies punching and beating a Black man during a traffic stop.
William McNeil
William McNeil, Jr., the 22-year-old man whose violent arrest by Jacksonville, Florida, sheriff’s deputies was caught in a viral video, is expected to speak out about the incident during a press conference outside the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday morning.
The sheriff’s office said on Sunday that the agency launched an investigation into the Feb. 19 incident after the 2-minute cell phone video captured by McNeil went viral. On Monday, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters also released body camera footage from two deputies who were present on the scene of the arrest.
MORE: ‘I was really just scared’: Man punched in viral Jacksonville traffic stop speaks publicly for 1st time
In the video, sheriff’s deputies are seen beating and punching McNeil during the traffic stop after he repeatedly questioned why he was being pulled over and refused to exit his vehicle.
What the video shows of McNeil’s arrest
McNeil was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy at 4:15 p.m. local time for allegedly not having his headlights on due to “inclement weather” and not wearing a seat belt, according to a police report obtained by ABC News.
Body camera video shows McNeil telling the deputy that it wasn’t raining and he didn’t need to have his headlights turned on and asked to speak with a supervisor. After McNeil locks himself in his vehicle and repeatedly refuses to exit, the deputy threatens to break his window and calls for backup, the video shows.
The body camera video and the 2-minute cell phone video both captured McNeil being punched and beaten after a deputy broke his car window.
The videos show McNeil speaking with a group of deputies and appearing to explain why he was pulled over by the first deputy who arrived on the scene.
“There’s no rain,” McNeil says in the video.
“It doesn’t matter,” a sheriff’s deputy can be heard saying as they ask him to exit his vehicle.
Harry Daniels, one of the attorneys representing McNeil, told ABC News Live anchor Kyra Phillips in the interview on Monday that his client refused to exit his vehicle because he was “afraid” of police.
“He is afraid. You know, in this environment, policing in America, especially young men of color, are very afraid of police,” Daniels said, adding that his client decided to begin recording the incident once the deputy refused to call a supervisor so he could dispute the traffic stop.
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigating video of Black man beaten by deputies
After McNeil again asks to speak with a supervisor, the videos show a deputy — who was identified by Waters on Monday as D. Bowers — breaking McNeil’s car window and punching him in the face while McNeil is facing forward. McNeil then appears to be pulled out of his car and is punched again as he is pushed down to the ground by multiple deputies and seemingly beaten.
“You’re under arrest,” officers can be heard saying as they push McNeil to the ground and hold him down.
The charges against McNeil
Court records show that McNeil was arrested and charged with “resisting arrest without violence to his or her person,” possessing not more than 20 grams of marijuana with intent to use drug paraphernalia, driving while driver’s license is suspended, not wearing a seatbelt and no headlights in rain/fog/or smoke.
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Additionally, court records show that he was sentenced to and served two days in jail for resisting arrest without violence and driving with a suspended license.
“McNeil was arrested and pled guilty to resisting a police officer without violence,” Waters said. “Force absolutely looks ugly, and because all force is ugly, whether or not the officer involved acted within outside [Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office] policy, that’s still what we’re investigating.”
No criminality in viral video of man being repeatedly punched by deputies: Sheriff
In the incident report filed by Bowers, the deputy does not mention that he punched McNeil while he was sitting in his car, but says that “force” was used after McNeil was removed from the vehicle.
The report filed by Bowers also claims that McNeil reached for a knife on the floor of his vehicle as officers opened the door.
The body camera video does not show McNeil reaching for a knife on the floor of his car.
The video does appear to show an object that the sheriff’s office identified as a knife on the floor of McNeil’s car that officers recovered after he was removed from the vehicle. A deputy can be heard pointing it out in the video.
A reporter pressed Waters on the claim that McNeil reached for a knife, saying, “I couldn’t see any clear indication of that in the video. Do you see that when you’re watching?””
“No, actually, I don’t see where his hands are. I can’t assume, no one can assume,” Waters said.
Daniels told Phillips on Monday that the claim that McNeil reached for a knife is a “lie,” and criticized the deputy for not disclosing that he punched McNeil in the incident report.
What’s next for McNeil and the officer
Waters announced on Monday that “the State Attorney’s Office has determined that none of the involved officers violated criminal law,” but highlighted that the deputies’ actions are now being examined in an “administrative review,” which will determine if the deputies “violated [Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office] policy.”
ABC News has reached out to the Office of the State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit serving Clay, Duval, & Nassau Counties for further comment.
“Pending the outcome of this administrative review, Officer Bowers has been stripped of his law enforcement authority,” Waters said. It is unclear if other deputies involved in the arrest have been placed on administrative leave.
“I will neither defend nor commend officer Bowers’ response to resistance until all the facts are known and the investigation is completed,” Waters said.
It is unclear if Bowers has retained an attorney. ABC News has reached out to Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for further comment, but have not heard back.
On Monday, Daniels said that his client plans to take legal action.
“This officer broke his window and just punched him in his face. Mr. McNeil suffered very significant injury,” Daniels said.
“We are planning to do everything we can do to secure justice,” Daniels said when asked if the legal team plans to file a lawsuit. “We are seeking all options to ensure accountability.”
Florida police under fire as video of Black man punched, dragged by deputies during traffic stop goes viral
Incident under review after video shows officers punching driver who questioned why he was pulled over
A cell phone video showing a White police officer in Jacksonville, Florida, striking a Black man in the face during a February traffic stop before officers dragged the driver from his car has sparked outrage online as conflicting accounts of the incident have emerged.
The video, which 22-year-old driver William McNeil Jr. took from inside his car, is a clear depiction of brutality, say his civil rights lawyers, Ben Crump and Harry Daniels, and comes 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.
“I just really wanted to know why I was getting pulled over and why I needed to step out of the car,” McNeil, an undergraduate student and church musician, said at a news conference Wednesday. “I know I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office argues the video doesn’t show the full context of the incident. “Yes, there absolutely was force used by the arresting officers, and yes, that force is ugly,” Sheriff TK Waters said Monday at a news conference. “Just because force is ugly does not mean it’s unlawful or contrary to policy.”
The sheriff said he wouldn’t stay silent while “facts and information are buried to advance an anti-police agenda.”
McNeil, along with his family and legal team, are calling on the sheriff to immediately terminate the officer who struck the young man, in what they describe as a case of racial profiling and excessive force, Crump said Wednesday.
“The sheriff cannot justify this. He cannot condone this. You must condemn this,” Crump said. “I mean, there is no way you can say this reflects your policies, your training, your values. This is very disturbing on every level.”
Here’s what we know:
What videos show
Police bodycam video released Monday shows McNeil opening his car door to speak to an officer, who tells him he was pulled over for driving without his headlights or seat belt on. Florida law states drivers must use seat belts while operating a car and use headlights from sunset to sunrise and in cases of rain, smoke or fog.
“It’s daylight, I don’t need the lights. And it’s not weather – it’s not raining,” McNeil says in the video.
McNeil asked the officer to call his supervisor, refused to give him his license, and closed his door. He locked it as the officer asked him to step out of the vehicle, bodycam video shows.
“Open the door and exit, or we are going to break the window,” the officer says as another patrol car pulls up in front of McNeil’s vehicle.
McNeil was warned seven times he was under arrest and needed to open his door, Waters said.
The video from inside McNeil’s car begins with him sitting in the driver’s seat, talking to another officer through the passenger side window. He asks the officer to show him the law stating that he must have his headlights on.
One officer then says he’s going ahead with breaking the window, according to body camera footage. “All right, go for it,” a second police officer is heard saying.
Seconds later, the driver’s window is smashed in, McNeil is punched in the face, and officers open the door and pull him to the ground next to his car, striking his face again, McNeil’s video shows.
McNeil’s “only crime, allegedly, was he didn’t have his headlights on and he didn’t have his seatbelt on – things that most people would get a notice to appear. He got punches in his face, head beat against the concrete and a gun drawn on him. That that is excessive,” Crump said Wednesday.
“This is about driving while Black. We don’t believe they ever would have done that had this been a young White citizen,” Crump said.
McNeil’s lawyers say he sustained a tooth fracture, concussion and a traumatic brain injury. He also had cognitive impairment and short-term memory deficits after the traffic stop, they added.
The body camera footage released Monday didn’t show the initial strike between the arresting officer and McNeil, Waters said.
McNeil was arrested following the incident on February 19 and charged with resisting a police officer without violence, driving on a suspended license and possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana, Waters said. The next day, he pleaded guilty to the resisting and suspended license charges.
Thrown punches and a large knife
D. Bowers, the arresting officer who pulled McNeil over, made no mention of McNeil being punched in his police report. He wrote that the suspect, McNeil, refused to comply, which led him to break the window to open the driver’s door.
“Physical force was applied to the suspect and he was taken to the ground,” Bowers continued.
A second officer, however, described in a separate report six punches to McNeil’s leg before he stopped resisting, according to the Associated Press.
“He simply asks for a supervisor and then they break his window and beat him yet, somehow, the report failed to mention that,” McNeil’s lawyers said in a statement.
Bowers’ report also claimed McNeil was “reaching for the floorboard of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting,” as he was removed from the car. Deputies found a knife while they searched McNeil’s vehicle after taking him into custody, according to police reports.
The knife in that car was not a weapon, “because he did not weaponize it,” McNeil’s lawyers said Wednesday, reiterating their stance that the young man never reached for the knife.
McNeil kept his cool throughout the interaction, at one point calmly taking a punch to the face without retaliating, his lawyers noted.
When asked Monday about what he saw in the footage, Waters, the sheriff, said he couldn’t see where McNeil’s hands were.
An image taken from video released by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office show’s McNeil on the ground. Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office
An investigation five months later
Waters said McNeil hadn’t filed a complaint or shared his video with the department before it was released on social media. Had he done so, he said, the department would have started an investigation.
The sheriff said the cell phone footage showed there were aspects of the arrest the department needed to investigate, but said he assumed the video was “intended to inflame the public.”
“The context of this video should tell you everything you need to know,” he said.
A criminal investigation at the sheriff’s office began Sunday, as soon as it became aware of the viral footage, Waters said, adding the State Attorney’s Office determined Monday no officers involved in the arrest violated any criminal laws.
An administrative review over whether the deputies violated department policies is also ongoing, Waters said.
The arresting officer has been “stripped of his law enforcement authority” pending the outcome of the administrative review, according to the sheriff.
McNeil’s lawyers called Wednesday for an independent investigation, separate from the one conducted by the state attorney’s office, which they say never attempted to interview McNeil.
“We do not believe that is an independent investigation,” Crump said.
The legal team also called on the sheriff’s office to release the names of the officers in the video. “If they’re proud of the conduct on the video, then they should release the officers’ names,” Crump said.
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McNeil’s attorney Daniels said he was disgusted but not surprised by the actions of the officers.
“The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has a long history of this kind of needless violence and brutality,” Daniels said in a news release.
“It should be obvious to anyone watching this video that William McNeil wasn’t a threat to anyone,” Crump added. “He was calmly exercising his constitutional rights, and they beat him for it.”
‘He mastered the talk’
McNeil did everything right during the incident and was still brutalized by police, his lawyers said.
“We all give our children the talk, and he mastered the talk,” Atlanta civil rights attorney Gerald Griggs said Wednesday.
Many Black parents say they feel they have to have a conversation with their children about systemic racism and how to handle encounters with police in the US.
McNeil’s stepfather, Alton Solomon, spoke about a similar experience he had with law enforcement years ago.
“I’ve been through what he’s been through,” he said. “To see that video made me go back to the moment when I was 22. It hurts.”
“The day I seen that video, I couldn’t finish it past the window breaking,” McNeil’s mother, Latoya Solomon, said. “It wasn’t until maybe a few months ago, I finally finished the whole video.”
McNeil is a self-taught musician – having mastered the trombone, keyboard and drums – who plays music in church, Latoya Solomon said.
“He is a really, really good man of God,” she said. “He’s a mentor of all the children in the neighborhood.”
McNeil is a biology major and member of the marching band at Livingstone College, a historically Black school in North Carolina, the university’s President Anthony Davis said Wednesday.
Davis noted McNeil often volunteers his time on the weekends to give back to his community, commending the college student for the restraint, resolve and resilience he has shown during and after the incident.
