A Black college student shown on video being punched and dragged from his car by Florida law officers during a traffic stop faces a long recovery from injuries that include a concussion and a broken tooth that pierced his lip and led to several stiches, his lawyers said Wednesday.
At a news conference in Jacksonville, 22-year-old William McNeil Jr. spoke softly as he made a few brief comments with his family and civil rights attorneys by his side.
“That day I just really wanted to know why I was getting pulled over and why I needed to step out of the car,” he said. “I knew I didn’t do nothing wrong. I was really just scared.”
McNeil is a biology major who played in the marching band at Livingstone College, a historically Black Christian college in Salisbury, North Carolina, Livingstone President Anthony Davis said.
The encounter with law enforcement happened in February, but the arrest didn’t capture much attention until the video from McNeil’s car-mounted camera went viral over the weekend. That’s when the sheriff said he became aware of it and opened an internal investigation, which is ongoing. The sheriff said a separate probe by the State Attorney’s Office cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing — a finding fiercely criticized by McNeil’s lawyers.
Video from inside the car captures him being punched
Footage of the violent arrest has sparked nationwide outrage, with civil rights lawyers accusing authorities of fabricating their arrest report.
The video filmed by McNeil’s camera shows him sitting in the driver’s seat, asking to speak to the Jacksonville officers’ supervisor, when they broke his window, punched him in the face, pulled him from the vehicle and punched him again. He was then knocked to the ground by an officer who delivered six closed-fist punches to the hamstring of his right thigh, police reports show.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday defended law enforcement officers and implied the video was posted to advance a “narrative” and generate attention on social media.
“That’s what happens in so many of these things,” DeSantis said. “There’s a rush to judgment. There’s a, there’s a desire to try to get views and clicks by creating division.”
DeSantis says he hasn’t seen the video, but backs law enforcement
DeSantis said he hasn’t reviewed the viral video but has “every confidence” in Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters, who has urged the public not to cast judgment based on the footage alone.
“If people get out of line, he’s going to hold them accountable,” DeSantis said.
Body camera footage of the encounter shows McNeil had been repeatedly told to exit the vehicle. And, though he earlier had his car door open while talking with an officer, he later closed it and appeared to keep it locked for about three minutes before the officers forcibly removed him, the video shows. The vantage point of the body camera footage that was released makes it difficult to see the punches.
The cellphone footage from the Feb. 19 arrest shows that seconds before being dragged outside, McNeil had his hands up and did not appear to be resisting as he asked, “What is your reason?” He had pulled over and had been accused of not having his headlights on, even though it was daytime, his lawyers said.
On Wednesday, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said his client had every right to ask why he was being pulled over and to ask for a supervisor.
Report that McNeil reached toward a knife is disputed
A point of contention in the police report is a claim that McNeil reached toward an area of the car where deputies found a knife when they searched the vehicle after taking him into custody.
“The suspect was reaching for the floorboard of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting,” Officer D. Bowers wrote in his report.
Crump called that police report a “fabrication,” saying McNeil “never reaches for anything.” A second officer observed that McNeil kept his hands up as Bowers smashed the window.
“After Ofc. Bowers opened the door, the subject refused to exit the vehicle, but kept his hands up,” the second officer wrote.
Sheriff says officers have been cleared of committing any crimes
The State Attorney’s Office determined that the officers did not violate any criminal laws, the sheriff said. No one from the State Attorney’s Office ever interviewed McNeil, Crump said.
Daniels called their investigation “a whitewashing.”
“But for that video, we would not be here,” Daniels said. “And we thank God Mr. McNeil had the courage to record.”
Asked about the criticism of the State Attorney’s review, a spokesperson for the office said Wednesday that “a memo to McNeil’s file will be finalized in the coming days that will serve as our comment.”
Shortly after his arrest, McNeil pleaded guilty to charges of resisting an officer without violence and driving with a suspended license, Waters said.
Civil rights attorneys call for accountability
“America, we’re better than this, we’re at a crossroads,” Crump said. “We are a Democracy, we believe in the Constitution. We are not a police state where the police can do anything they want to citizens without any accountability.”
Crump said his client remained calm while the officers who are trained to deescalate tense situations were the ones escalating violence. He said the case harkened back to the Civil Rights movement, when Black people were often attacked when they tried to assert their rights.
“What he exhibited was a 21st century Rosa Parks moment where an African American had the audacity to say ‘I deserve equal justice under the law. I deserve to be treated like a human being with all the respect that a human being is entitled to.’”
The sheriff has pushed back on some of the claims by Crump and lawyer Harry Daniels, saying the cellphone camera footage from inside the car “does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident.”
“Part of that stems from the distance and perspective of the recording cell phone camera,” the sheriff said in a statement, adding that the video did not capture events that occurred before officers decided to arrest McNeil.
Cameras “can only capture what can be seen and heard,” the sheriff added. “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.”
Many of the speakers at Wednesday’s news conference said they hope the Florida case results in accountability so that what happened to McNeil doesn’t happen to others.
“It’s incumbent upon everyone to understand that this could have been us, this could have been me, this could have been you,” civil rights lawyer Gerald Griggs said.
