The controversial traffic stop of a motorist who refused to open his car door or window to Jacksonville Sheriff’s deputies – an encounter that has recently renewed a longstanding debate about JSO’s treatment of Black residents – stemmed in part from the department’s vague use-of-force policy that gives individual officers broad discretion to use violence at the first sign of resistance, according to experts who spoke with The Tributary.
Those experts also unanimously agreed that Officer Donald Bowers should have reported his hit to the face of William McNeil Jr. after he smashed the car’s window to drag McNeil out of the car. That open-handed hit was not disclosed in either the police report or response-to-resistance report Bowers completed after McNeil’s arrest.
Video of McNeil Jr.’s February traffic stop and arrest went viral this summer, after McNeil released footage taken from his cell phone, which was mounted on his dashboard.
The footage shows Bowers smash McNeil’s window and hit the visibly calm 22-year-old man in the face before unbuckling and dragging him to the ground with the aid of multiple officers called in as backup. Facing criticism over the dashboard footage, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office released Bowers’s bodycam video and argued it contained crucial context that was absent from McNeil’s cellphone footage…