A video showing Florida deputies punching and dragging a Black man from his car during a traffic stop has sparked nationwide outrage, with civil rights lawyers accusing authorities of fabricating their arrest report.
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.
But Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters says there's more to the story than the cellphone video that went viral on the Internet. He warned the public about “a rush to judgment” that could lead to faulty conclusions. McNeil's lawyers say the video clearly depicts police brutality.
Body camera footage of the encounter shows that McNeil had been repeatedly told to exit the vehicle, and though McNeil earlier had his car door open while talking with authorities, he later closed it and appeared to keep it locked for about three minutes before deputies forcibly removed him. The vantage point of the bodycam footage that was released makes it difficult to see the punches that were thrown.
The cellphone footage from the Feb. 19 arrest shows that seconds before being dragged outside, McNeil had his hands up and did not appear to be resisting as he asked, “What is your reason?” He had pulled over and had been accused of not having his headlights on, even though it was daytime, his lawyers said.
“What happened to William McNeil Jr. is a disturbing reminder that even the most basic rights — like asking why you’ve been pulled over — can be met with violence for Black Americans,” lawyers Ben Crump and Harry Daniels said in a statement. Crump is a Black civil rights attorney who has gained national prominence representing victims of police brutality and vigilante violence.
“William was calm and compliant,” they said. “Yet instead of answers, he got his window smashed and was punched in the face, all over a questionable claim about headlights in broad daylight.”
The sheriff said the cellphone camera footage from inside the car “does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident.”
“Part of that stems from the distance and perspective of the recording cell phone camera,” the sheriff said in a statement, adding that the video did not capture events that occurred before officers decided to arrest McNeil.
Cameras “can only capture what can be seen and heard,” the sheriff added. “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.”
A key point of contention in the police report is a claim that McNeil was reaching toward an area where a knife was. Deputies later found the knife on the driver's side floorboard of his car when they searched it after taking McNeil into custody.
“The suspect was reaching for the floorboard of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting,” Officer D. Bowers wrote in his report. “The suspect continued to attempt to pull away from officers and refused to place his hands behind his back.”
Bowers does not mention any punches being thrown in his report, and describes the force this way: “Physical force was applied to the suspect and he was taken to the ground.”
In a separate report, a second officer describes knocking McNeil to the ground by grabbing his legs and driving his shoulders into him. Then, he delivered six closed-fist punches to the hamstring of McNeil's right thigh, he said.
“After delivering the six closed fist strikes, the subject stopped resisting” and was handcuffed by another officer, he wrote.
Crump and Daniels called Officer Bowers' report on the knife a "fabrication,” saying that “he never reaches for anything.”
“The only time he moves at all is when the officer knocks him over by punching him in his face," they said. "Then this young man calmly sits back straight and holds his empty hands up.”
“He’s never combative, never raises his voice and he certainly never reaches for a knife,” they added. “He simply asks for a supervisor and then they break his window and beat him yet, somehow, the report failed to mention that.”
The second officer, who punched McNeil in the thigh, observed that McNeil kept his hands up as Officer Bowers smashed the window.
“After Ofc. Bowers opened the door, the subject refused to exit the vehicle, but kept his hands up," the second officer wrote. "With the subject’s hands up, I reached in and unbuckled his seatbelt, telling him to exit the vehicle.”
McNeil was charged with resisting a police officer without violence; driving with a suspended license and having less than 20 grams of marijuana, Waters said. He pleaded guilty to the charges of resisting an officer and driving with a suspended license, Waters said.
Waters said the sheriff’s office on Sunday became aware that the cellphone video was circulating on social media. Investigations then began, and the State Attorney’s Office determined that no officers violated any criminal laws, he said at a news briefing. An “administrative review” to determine whether officers violated any department policies is still ongoing, he said.
FILE - Attorney Ben Crump speaks during a news conference, May 5, 2025, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, file)
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.
But he'd be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area — one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.
The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions — but rarely since the 20th Century's Civil Rights Movement.
Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level — before Washington's involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection — like the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.
“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we've never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”
William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there.
But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge “because the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.
Here is a look at the law, how it's been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.
George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias — National Guard forerunners — when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.”
He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic's survival.
Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.”
The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters' and bystanders' video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.
“ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” Nunn said. “But what they're doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.
“They can't intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, “in good faith.”
Courts have blocked some of Trump's efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he'd argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state's permission to send troops.
That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.
Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.
During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration — and governors sought help.
President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor's request — at that time it was a U.S. territory — to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.
Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump's feds left.
As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.
Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR's aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.
Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith's admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama's integration.
“There could have been significant loss of life from the rioters” in Mississippi, Nunn said.
Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace's troopers attacked marchers' on their first peaceful attempt.
Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.
Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.
Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to “restore order” yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.
President Donald Trump answers questions after signing a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
