Brutal arrest of black Florida students shows benefits of recording police from new Vantage

A video of a black college student who was evacuated from his vehicle and beaten by a Florida officer led to an investigation and called on motorists to consider protecting themselves by placing cameras in their vehicles.

William McNeil Jr. It offers a unique view, providing the only clear footage of officer violence, including fists that are not clearly visible in the officer body camera footage released by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

Since McNeil has the vision to record encounters from inside the car, “we have to see and hear them firsthand and put it all in the driving time when black Americans are driving,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of several McNeil’s attorney.

“All young people should record interactions with law enforcement,” Krup said, because what it tells us is that, like George Floyd, if we don’t record the video, we can see them reporting in the police report with George Floyd before realizing the video exists. ”

McNeill was pulled that day because officials said his headlights should have been caused by bad weather. His camera told him to ask the police what he did wrong. A few seconds later, an officer smashed his window, hit him in the driver’s seat, then pulled him out of the car and punched him in the head. Police report states that McNeill was hit six more times in his right thigh after he was hit on the ground.

The incident report did not describe an officer slamming McNeill in the head. The officer who pulled McNeil and hit him described this force in his report: “The force was applied to the suspect, and he was taken to the ground.”

But after McNeil posted his video online last month and spread the virus, the sheriff’s office launched an internal investigation that is underway. A spokesman for the sheriff’s office declined to comment on the case this week, citing no lawsuit, although no lawsuit was filed.

McNeil said the ordeal left him with brain injuries, fractured teeth and several stichs on his lips. His attorney accused the sheriff’s office of trying to cover up what was really going on.

“On February 19, 2025, Americans saw what America is,” said Harry Daniels, another McNeill attorney. “We saw injustice. You saw abuse of police power. But most importantly, we saw a young man’s temperament that can control himself and face cruelty.”

He said the traffic stop was not only racially motivated, but “it was illegal and everything that was caused from that stop was illegal.”

McNeil isn’t the first black motorist to record a video in a traffic stop – Philando Castile’s girlfriend passed away during a 2016 traffic stop near Minneapolis. But McNeill’s arrest reminder of how mobile videos show different events than those described in police reports, his lawyer said.

Christopher Mercado, who retired from the New York Police Department, agreed with McNeil’s legal team that drivers should record their police interactions and that cameras installed inside the driver’s car can provide a unique perspective.

“Use technology for your advantage,” said Mercado, an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay’s School of Criminal Justice in New York. “There’s nothing evil. I think it’s actually a wise thing.”

Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Chairman Rod Brunson said he thought it was a good idea for citizens to shoot with police — just doing so wouldn’t make the situation worse.

“I think it’s a form of protection – it protects them from false claims of criminal acts or interference with statements such as officials,” Brunson said.

Although the sheriff’s office refused to talk to the Associated Press this week, Sheriff TK Waters has spoken publicly about McNeill’s arrest since the video was circulated. He opposed some of McNeill’s allegations and noted that McNeill was told more than six times to exit the vehicle.

Waters also highlighted images of the knife on McNeill’s car during a press conference last month. The officer who punched him claimed in a police report that McNeill reached to the floor of the car, where deputies later found the knife.

McNeil’s video shows that Crump said he “never reached for anything,” and a second official wrote in the report that McNeil held his hand as another officer smashed the car window.

Mercado said the camera inside the driver’s car could make up for some shortcomings of the police body, which could have a narrow field of view, and the closer the officers were to the person being photographed.

But after police murdered Floyd, some states and cities debated how and when citizens should be able to capture police videos. The Constitution guarantees the right to record police officers in public, but the argument in some states is whether recordings of civilians may interfere with the ability of people to do their jobs. In Louisiana, for example, a new law makes crimes close to 25 feet (7.6 meters) within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of police officers in some cases.

Waters acknowledged these limitations at a press conference last year, recounting videos of a wild brawl in the stands at Everbank Stadium in the football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Florida last year.

The sheriff showed the officer’s body video during the start of the confrontation near the top of the stadium. But when the officer conquered the suspect and pressed him, the body cameras were not much videotaped, so the sheriff shot stadium safety videos from a longer distance.

In McNeil’s case, the BodyCam video does not clearly capture the thrown fist. The sheriff said the case will be investigated immediately if any.

Over the past 20 years, Brunson has been interviewing young blacks in several U.S. cities to learn about their encounter with law enforcement. When he first began submitting research papers for academic review, many readers did not believe that men’s stories were burned by officers.

“People living in a civil society do not expect to treat the police like this. For them, their police interactions are mostly pleasant, mostly friendly,” Brunson said.

“So it’s hard to understand the situation without a trivial person with the police,” he said. “That’s where the video does play a big role because people can’t deny what they’re seeing.”