Florida officer suspended over viral traffic stop footage

A Florida sheriff’s office has suspended an officer who punched a driver in the face during a traffic stop that went viral.

William McNeil Jr posted video of himself sitting in his car as the policeman smashed the window, hit him and dragged him to the ground in the city of Jacksonville on 19 February this year.

After the clip spread online, police released bodycam footage that shows McNeil, 22, refusing demands to exit the vehicle after being told he has been pulled over for traffic violations.

The sheriff’s office said a state prosecutor had found no misconduct by the officers, but an internal review was also under way.

In a news conference on Monday, Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters said: “The State Attorney’s Office has determined that none of the involved officers violated criminal law, even though the administrative review has yet to be completed.”

But he said one officer, D Bowers, had been stripped of law-enforcement duties pending a review into whether he violated any of the sheriff’s office policies.

Sheriff Waters added: “A person must comply with an officer’s commands, even if that person disagrees with that officer’s reasons for the stop.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing McNeil, said the incident was “a disturbing reminder” of historical racial violence by police against black Americans.

Police released the bodycam footage on Monday, a day after McNeil posted his own clip to Instagram.

The bodycam video shows the officer telling McNeil he has been pulled over for not wearing his seatbelt or having his headlights on in inclement weather.

“It’s daylight, I don’t need the lights,” says McNeil.

He refuses to leave the vehicle and asks to speak to the officer’s supervisor before locking the doors.

After warning him to get out of the car for about three minutes, the officer smashes the window.

The policeman wrote in his arrest report that he called for backup after McNeil refused requests to show his driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance.

In the arrest report, Officer Bowers wrote: “The suspect was reaching for the floor board of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting.”

In the video posted to social media by McNeil, his hands are up and visible as police unlock his seatbelt to drag him from the car. It is unclear if his seatbelt was fastened at the time police pulled him over.

He pleaded guilty to resisting a police officer without violence and driving on a suspended driver’s licence. He was sentenced to two days in jail.

In his Instagram video, McNeil said his tooth was chipped and he required stitches to his mouth after the arrest, and suffered a concussion.

“This was very hard to do I’m not mentally healed from this but I had to get the word out eventually,” he wrote in the video caption.