Prosecutors will not charge officers who wrestled and punched William McNeil during a traffic stop. Photo / 123rf
Prosecutors will not bring criminal charges against sheriff’s officers who wrestled a black man out of a car during a traffic stop and punched him multiple times, the local sheriff said.
Jacksonville, Florida, sheriff’s officers stopped William Anthony McNeil jnr on February 19, telling him he didn’t have his headlights on and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, body-camera footage released by the sheriff’s office shows.
After McNeil, 22, questioned the reasons for the stop and refused to get out of the car, an officer smashed his window and punched him in the face.
Police wrote in a report that before he was pulled out of the car, McNeil reached for the floorboard, where an unsheathed knife was later found.
Publicly available video footage does not show him leaning down towards it.
Sheriff TK Waters said on Tuesday that local prosecutors “have determined that none of the involved officers violated criminal law”.
The state attorney’s office for the 4th Judicial Circuit declined to comment today.
An investigation is ongoing into whether the officers violated department policy, Waters said.
He said the officer who initiated the stop “has been stripped of his law enforcement authority” in the meantime. The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for more information.
Waters said cellphone video of the arrest, recently shared on social media, did not tell the full story.
“Moreover, cameras can only capture what can be seen and heard,” he said at a news conference.
“So much context and depth are absent from recorded footage because a camera simply cannot capture what is known to the people depicted in it.”
Ben Crump and Harry Daniels, lawyers for McNeil, said in a statement that the incident was a “disturbing reminder that even the most basic rights – like asking why you’ve been pulled over – can be met with violence for black Americans”.
“William was calm and compliant,” they said.
“Yet instead of answers, he got his window smashed and was punched in the face, all over a questionable claim about headlights in broad daylight. This wasn’t law enforcement, it was brutality.”
Footage from officers’ body cameras, as well as video from McNeil’s cellphone, show what happened during the arrest.
As an officer approached McNeil’s car, McNeil opened the door and looked out. The officer told him he was pulled over for not having his headlights on during “inclement weather” and not wearing a seat belt. McNeil responded that it was daylight and not raining.
When the officer asked to see McNeil’s licence, registration, and proof of insurance, McNeil told him to call the officer’s supervisor and asked again why he was pulled over.
The officer radioed for back-up and told McNeil to get out of the car. McNeil instead closed the door, the video shows.
The officer then told McNeil that he was under arrest for resisting. The longer McNeil took to comply, the officer said, “the worse it’s going to be”.
The officer repeatedly ordered McNeil to get out of the car and warned that he otherwise would break a window, according to the video.
Another officer arrived and spoke with McNeil through the passenger-side window. McNeil again refused to get out of the car, the video shows.
Then the first officer smashed the driver-side window and struck McNeil across his face, according to the video.
McNeil presented his hands when asked, lifting them a second time as officers pulled him out of the car, the video shows.
Multiple officers surrounded McNeil, and the first officer punched him in the face again as they pinned him to the ground, the footage shows.
The officers told McNeil to “stop fighting” and put his hands behind his back as they handcuffed him.
McNeil said that he had suffered a chipped tooth and that officers saw blood on his mouth, according to a police report.
Asked about the claim that McNeil had reached towards the knife, Waters said he couldn’t see from the video where McNeil’s hands were at that point in the arrest.
“All I can go by when I read those things is what’s stated in the report,” Waters said at the news conference.
“I’m not saying whether it’s true or whether it’s not. I’m saying no one sees his hands at that point.”
McNeil later pleaded guilty to resisting an officer without violence and driving with a suspended licence. He was sentenced to two days of time served.
On Tuesday, Waters acknowledged that officers used force during the arrest and said that “force absolutely looks ugly”.
“And because all force is ugly, whether or not the officer involved acted within or outside of JSO [Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office] policy, that’s still what we’re investigating,” he said.
Waters added that motorists are required to comply with officers’ commands during traffic stops.
“There are not options,” he said. “If you disagree, take care of it someplace else, but not on the side of the road.”
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has experienced other allegations of excessive force in recent years and has maintained that officers acted appropriately.
Crump and Daniels said in their statement that McNeil’s arrest was reminiscent of that of Le’Keian Woods, who was slammed to the ground in 2023.
Waters previously said that officers in that case “acted appropriately”, but he acknowledged that the incident was “ugly”.