A video that captured the brutal arrest of a Black college student pulled from his car and beaten by officers in Florida has led to an investigation and calls for motorists to consider protecting themselves by placing a camera inside their vehicles.
The footage shows that William McNeil Jr., 22, was sitting in the driver’s seat, asking to speak to the Jacksonville deputies’ supervisor, when authorities broke his window, punched him in the face, pulled him from the vehicle, punched him again and threw him to the ground.
A few crucial points you are missing:
There’s absolutely no legal obligation for the cops to answer any of your questions. Feel free to ask them anything you want, but they don’t need to answer. Further, they can lie to you about why they pulled you over. I’ve seen videos where they were stopping an armed violent offender known for resisting arrest for their bigger crimes. So the cop pulls them over and wants to keep them calm so they only tell them something like seat belt or light violation. Then get them out of the car so they can’t reach for hidden weapons. And YES there are plenty of videos of people reacting innocently asking the same questions this guy asked only to suddenly pull a gun or something.
I’m sure all states have some law that requires you show your license when pulled over (mine definitely does) . Even for flimsy victimless traffic violations. Even if you absolutely are wearing your seat belt and had video evidence to corroborate, you would still need to show your license if pulled over for a seat belt violation. It doesn’t matter that you are innocent. The arguments you’d make on the side of the road are the exact same ones guilty people make. They’ll swear up and down they were wearing their seat belt knowing they weren’t. Nothing differentiates them from the innocent on the side of the road.
You keep harping about it not truly being inclement weather, but that doesn’t matter. Even without the seat belt issue included, they are legally allowed to come up with RAS after the stop. That’s one I personally think is utter bullshit but it doesn’t change the fact it’s legal. After all of this if it turns out he wasn’t guilty of the other infractions but they figured out his registration was expired, they can just swap the citation to that even if that wasn’t considered until after the stop was done.
This is not supposed to come off as defending cops. I’m all for legally resisting as much as you can, but this wasn’t the case here. This was one to fight later in court. This doesn’t further the cause of police accountability. This just sets it back and is one more example of the general public being woefully ignorant of the law that strengthens police resistance to positive change.