Inquiry Is Opened After Jacksonville Officer Punches Man Through His Car Window

U.S.|Inquiry Is Opened After Jacksonville Officer Punches Man Through His Car Window

A Black man whose car window was broken by a police officer and was then punched, dragged out of his car and thrown to the ground during a traffic stop in February said on Wednesday that he was “really just scared” during the arrest, which the authorities said this week they were investigating.

The man, William Anthony McNeil Jr., said at a news conference that he “wanted to know why I needed to step out of the car” when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

His lawyer, Ben Crump, called for the officers involved to be forced out. “Look at that video with your own eyes,” he said. “Listen with your own ears. We have audio/visual evidence, proof of what happened.”

The sheriff’s office in Jacksonville, Fla., said on Monday said that it had opened an investigation into the episode.

Body camera footage taken on Feb. 19 showed a white officer telling Mr. McNeil, 22, that he had been pulled over because his headlights were off during “inclement” weather and because he was not wearing a seatbelt. Mr. McNeil questioned why his headlights needed to be on when it was not raining. He asked to speak with supervisors about why he was stopped and then closed his car door.

An officer then smashed the driver’s side window and struck Mr. McNeil in the face. Other officers pulled him out of the car and threw him on the ground. “I was really just scared,” Mr. McNeil, a student at Livingstone College in North Carolina, said at the news conference on Wednesday. Cellphone footage taken by Mr. McNeil, which appeared to start a few minutes into their encounter, was circulated widely over the weekend on social media.

An incident report said that Mr. McNeil’s offenses included possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, and resisting an officer without violence. It also mentions driving with a suspended license, the absence of lights and that he was not wearing a seatbelt.

He pleaded guilty to resisting an officer without violence and driving with a suspended license and was sentenced to two days in jail.

Sheriff T.K. Waters of Jacksonville said at a news conference on Monday that the officers’ actions were under “administrative” review, but that the State Attorney’s Office had determined that none of them had violated criminal law. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said that it was made aware on Sunday that cellphone video footage of the arrest was circulating on social media.

The Sheriff’s Office released footage from the body camera of one of the officers and said it would not release further information for the time being because of Florida’s confidentiality laws.

The footage of about six minutes from a body camera of the arrest, released by the sheriff’s office, shows additional details. The officer asked Mr. McNeil why he opened his car door after being pulled over, and Mr. McNeil replied that his window did not work. He also asked the officer repeatedly to call his supervisor, and shut the door to his vehicle.

Within the first two minutes of the encounter, the officer can be heard telling Mr. McNeil that his own camera was “on, too.”

He told Mr. McNeil about a half dozen times to leave the vehicle, stating that he was under arrest for resisting, and eventually said he would break the window. The officer appeared to be told to “go for it” by another law enforcement official who arrived.

After about four minutes, the officer was seen breaking the window, and Mr. McNeil was thrown to the ground, held down by his head and handcuffed, a streak of blood visible on the side of his face.

Another officer called in that Mr. McNeil had a lacerated lip. A post on Mr. Crump’s Instagram said that he also had a concussion and chipped tooth.

“In this case, the cellphone camera footage that began viral circulation over the weekend does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident,” Sheriff Waters said. He said that was because of the perspective of the camera and because the footage did not capture the events that preceded the officer’s decision to arrest Mr. McNeil.

“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,” Sheriff Waters said.

Mr. Crump said that Mr. McNeil was merely exercising his constitutional rights by asking police officers to explain why they had pulled him over. Mr. Crump said that if the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office did not remove this officer from the police force, it would send a message that such treatment of Black drivers was acceptable.

“In America,” he said, “this is not OK.”