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.

  • PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au
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    4 days ago

    I linked to the full bodycam video, the officer clearly says that there were two reasons for the stop: Headlights and seat belt.

    Your video has the AI voice claiming that failing to give a Miranda warning before opening the door is a “clear 4th amendment red flag.” That’s a load of steaming crap. Moving on to the actual issue at hand, the charge there was for unlawful carrying of a weapon. The judge’s decision is that by the officer randomly opening the door of the guy’s vehicle, and then seeing the weapon, that means it was an unlawful search (it was “in plain view” according to the officer / prosecutor, but the judge says it wasn’t in plain view until you opened the door). That has literally nothing at all to do with the initial stop being unconstitutional, or failure to ID or anything. It’s just to do with how the cop found the gun.

    Do you have one where the person failed to ID on a traffic stop, and their lawyer was able to make the argument that the initial stop was improper, and so they didn’t have to, and it worked? I feel like those would be super-easy to find, if that argument ever worked, since it is very commonly what people say while they are refusing to ID, and so if their lawyers were able to make it work we would have examples of it working.

    • supamanc@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Well dont I look the fool. I’m pissed off now, I didn’t watch the video. Inhave seen like 3 where tthisnsame judge throws out the case based on an illigal stop. Ill find them tomorrow. As to yoir question, you keep leaving oit the illigal part. Yes, not providing ID is an offence if the initial stop is legal. Now you are again correct, the officer does claim that the driver wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so I suppose the initial stop can be justified, which makes refusing to ID an offence.

      • PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au
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        4 days ago

        Yeah, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I just don’t know of it.

        I also like that judge, AI voice aside I feel like he has a perfectly valid point. I also have a feeling he was the same judge I saw scorching a prosecutor one time for cutting a plea deal where it seemed like they could have prosecuted the guy and he was getting away with sexual assault with a pretty minimal sentence, and he was furious at the prosecutor for not doing their job. He couldn’t exactly just take over the prosecution’s job for them, I think he sent the lawyers away to work out a new plea deal instead, and they came back with one that was still pretty minimal but I think added in some jail time. He sort of yelled at the guy some more and then just approved the plea deal, but if that is the judge I’m thinking of, it seems like he cares a lot about the purpose of what he’s doing, which is a really good thing.