The man seen in a viral video being pulled from his car and struck by Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office officers has hired nationally known attorneys to represent him.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for William McNeil Jr. confirmed he has retained civil rights lawyers Ben Crump and Harry Daniels to quote, \u201cfight for justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <\/b><\/a><\/p>\n The video of the February 19th traffic stop has sparked widespread reaction online, with tens of thousands viewing and sharing the footage. It has also prompted an internal investigation by JSO.<\/p>\n Attorney Chris Carson, who reviewed the video, said what he saw raises serious concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cI will say that video seems very over-the-top in terms of the officer\u2019s behavior,\u201d Carson said.<\/p>\n According to McNeil, the stop began when officers pulled him over, claiming he was required to have his headlights on due to cloudy weather.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, so what did I did it wrong. He said well one, your headlights are off under this weather,\u201d McNeil says in the video.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n McNeil said he questioned the stop and asked for a supervisor, and that\u2019s when the situation escalated.<\/p>\n Moments later, an officer is seen breaking the driver\u2019s window and punching him. The video shows McNeil with his hands up, asking what\u2019s happening, then being struck again.<\/p>\n Carson believes the officer\u2019s actions may not be justified.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really seem there was any criminal behavior that was alleged on the part of the gentlemen. It\u2019s a traffic stop. It happens 100 times a day,\u201d Carson said.<\/p>\n McNeil said the encounter left him with a chipped tooth, nine stitches in his lip, a concussion, and short-term memory loss.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are definitely circumstances where force can be warranted, but from everything that we\u2019re seeing in the context of this video, but I just I just really don\u2019t really see it there, and frankly it seems unnecessary,\u201d Carson added.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n JSO released a statement Sunday confirming that an internal investigation is underway into the incident.<\/p>\n Carson said the implications could go beyond internal discipline.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen cases over the years. I have handled cases where enforcement officers were actually charged with crimes for things that they did in the course of their police work. It is rare, but it certainly legally can happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Action News Jax reviewed court records related to the incident. A man with the same name as McNeil was arrested that day and later pleaded guilty to driving with a suspended license and resisting an officer.<\/p>\n He was also charged with marijuana possession, not having headlights on, and not wearing a seatbelt.<\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man seen in a viral video being pulled from his car and struck by Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,54912,50458,3188,723,7310,16047,8423,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,10881,54911],"class_list":{"0":"post-79894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ben-crump","10":"tag-chris-carson","11":"tag-fl","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-sheriffs-office","15":"tag-jso","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa","22":"tag-viral-video","23":"tag-william-mcneil"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114889689886497101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}