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An example of the citations given to drivers who are stopped for driving without their headlights on during inclement weather in Duval County. [Courtesy of Duval County Clerk of Court\u2019s]<\/p>\nAn example of the citations given to drivers who are stopped for driving without their headlights on during inclement weather in Duval County. [Courtesy of Duval County Clerk of Court\u2019s]<\/p>\n
Driving in the rain without headlights, the reason William McNeil Jr. was pulled over before he was hit and then dragged from his car by Jacksonville sheriff\u2019s deputies, is an exceedingly rare infraction in Duval County. But it is less rare if you are Black like McNeil, according to more than three years of traffic-stop data obtained by The Tributary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Video of the February stop, filmed from McNeil\u2019s cellphone, went viral last week and prompted a PR blitz by Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters to defend his agency\u2019s handling of the arrest, which he said remains under an administrative review. The State Attorney\u2019s Office cleared the traffic stop of any criminal charges on the part of the police, authorities have said.<\/p>\n
The traffic stop has nonetheless reopened long-simmering questions about how JSO treats Black residents, and the wisdom of what are known as pretextual traffic stops \u2013 a tactic in which police stop drivers for minor traffic infractions with the underlying goal of searching the car. Critics of such stops have said they disproportionately affect Black drivers<\/a> and erode community trust.<\/p>\n The citation figures obtained by The Tributary suggest that Black drivers are scrutinized far more closely than white motorists.\u00a0<\/p>\n From 2021 through July of this year, Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office deputies wrote tickets for \u201cno headlamps\u201d in rain, fog or smoke at least 78 times, according to records from the Duval Clerk of Courts, with the vast majority \u2013 about 63 percent \u2013 going to Black drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regina Wright, a local defense attorney, was not surprised by the disproportionate number of Black drivers stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how they police mostly Black neighborhoods,\u201d she told The Tributary. \u201cThey look for minor traffic offenses so they could stop the car, possibly smell marijuana and search the car.\u201d<\/p>\n For an agency that conducts tens of thousands of traffic stops each year, the headlight violation is an obscure citation. By contrast, a similar request for data about seatbelt violations over the same time span generated more than 20,000 citations.<\/p>\n That data is based on citations recorded by the clerk\u2019s office, and provided to The Tributary, for every citation given to drivers under the same state statute McNeil was ticketed for.<\/p>\n Of the total number of tickets analyzed by The Tributary, eight included citations given by other Duval County police departments or the Florida Highway Patrol. Just three of those tickets \u2013 or 37.5% \u2013 were given to Black drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though the violation is only cited on average twice a month in Duval County, the The Tributary found that one patrol officer is responsible for more than a quarter of all tickets and that on one day in August last year, he cited 17 people within three and a half hours, with most of those tickets being written just five to 10 minutes apart.\u00a0<\/p>\n McNeil, alongside his attorney, national civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, said last week he plans to sue JSO, the officer who punched and dragged him out of his car and the other officers who were involved in his stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n McNeil\u2019s stop<\/strong><\/p>\n When Officer Donald Bowers pulled McNeil over in a neighborhood near the intersection of Edgewood Ave. North and Commonwealth Ave. on the Westside, McNeil immediately opened his driver\u2019s side door to ask why he was stopped. He explained to Bowers that his window didn\u2019t work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bowers said he was pulling him over for not having his lights on, and for not wearing a seatbelt. McNeil said it wasn\u2019t raining and Bowers responded that he wasn\u2019t going to argue with him.<\/p>\n There were raindrops on McNeil\u2019s car, but it was not raining in any of the body camera videos released by JSO.<\/p>\n McNeil shut the door and started to record from inside his car<\/a>. Bowers told McNeil multiple times to exit the car and told him he was under arrest for resisting without violence, then he called backup. Eventually, at least three other officers showed up to the stop.<\/p>\n McNeil asked the officer to call his supervisor multiple times. He later said at a press conference that he didn\u2019t exit the car because he was scared.<\/p>\n About three minutes into the stop, a second officer pulled up and started to talk with McNeil from the passenger side window. Just 57 seconds into their conversation, Bowers said he was going to break the window<\/a> and did.\u00a0<\/p>\n McNeil\u2019s video shows that Bowers hit an unmoving McNeil in the face before unlocking the door and dragging him out of the car. McNeil raised his hands when told to and did not resist being cuffed. A police report says that he punched McNeil an additional six times in his right thigh.<\/p>\n The hit to McNeil\u2019s face can\u2019t be seen from the body camera footage, which was positioned at a different angle than McNeil\u2019s in-car cellphone, and the strike was not mentioned in the arrest report.\u00a0<\/p>\n Officers also wrote in a response-to-resistence form that McNeil reached for a knife that was on his floorboard, which was discovered after he was cuffed.<\/p>\n None of the videos back up that claim.<\/p>\n JSO\u2019s response<\/strong><\/p>\n McNeil\u2019s own video, which he posted to social media on July 20, sparked nationwide outrage and drove Waters to hold a press conference and release body camera footage the next day.<\/p>\n McNeil asked for him to pull the law up, and Miller refused until he exited the vehicle. Soon after that is when Bowers broke the window.\u00a0<\/p>\n Waters said the State Attorney\u2019s Office had already cleared the officers of any criminal charges and that his office was still investigating the stop internally for any potential violations of JSO rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although Waters said he was reserving judgment about the stop, he nonetheless was defensive about Bowers\u2019 conduct and implied that McNeil\u2019s video was misleading the public.<\/p>\n When a reporter asked why Waters thought it was appropriate that Bowers landed a \u201csucker punch\u201d on McNeil, for example, Waters disputed that characterization.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all let me stop you, not a sucker punch,\u201d Waters said, interrupting the reporter. \u201cI\u2019m not excusing that administratively \u2026 there are things that we definitely need to look at, but the context of this video should tell you everything you need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked again about the sucker punch, Waters said \u201cit is what it is,\u201d saying that body camera videos add additional context to what McNeil released himself.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/JSO-stops.jpeg\")
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