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.
No court will side with a suspect for demanding a reason and refusing to comply until given one they agree with. That’s a recipe for idiots and armchair lawyers asserting their “rights” incorrectly. Look up sovereign citizens. They are always horrifically wrong on the law yet still demand the law they broke or to get a supervisor.
Any court would maintain the status quo that any traffic stop should be presumed lawful until proven otherwise in court. This includes your obligation to provide license, registration and/or insurance (depending on state), and to exit the vehicle for “officer safety”. That last one is one of the worst ones protecting bad cops. Used legitimately it makes the stop safe for everyone. Used by some power tripping asshole it’s their easiest path to making the stop violent.
Ding ding ding
The system still has some massive problems. If your goal is less police brutality and reform of the system, though, committing crimes in front of the police and refusing to cooperate with them in any way unless they use force is not going to be a real good way to go after that goal.
I’ve seen situations that are way worse than this one. One guy got spooked (like legitimately spooked, you could tell he was for-real scared that the cops were going to do something to him) when he got stopped for an open container in the car. They asked him to get out of the car, he took off instead, crashed his car, foot chase, they tackled him, he ended the night with a bunch of felonies and his car totaled. That’s one reason I think this stuff is so absurd and dangerous when people say it on the internet; sometimes it translates to real world behavior too. You could tell that he was influenced by it, and that’s part of why he thought stomping on the gas and making the situation a hundred times worse was the right play.