Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, right, says he plans to sue the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office on behalf of Will McNeil Jr., left, following a February 2025 traffic stop that led to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office punching McNeil during his arrest. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on July 23, 2025 at 6:53 pm
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Will McNeil Jr., the Jacksonville man whose self-recorded arrest video has renewed national conversations about racial profiling, police brutality and pretextual stops, on Wednesday announced his intention to sue the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
In the video, McNeil, 22, was pulled over shortly after 4 p.m. for having his lights off. When McNeil asked to see a supervisor, and did not comply with an officer’s instruction to step out of the vehicle, officers broke his driver’s side window and punched him in the face. The video of McNeil’s arrest went viral over the weekend.
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McNeil and four generations of his family stood inside St. Paul Church of Jacksonville Wednesday as the college student recalled the encounter with police.
McNeil had no prior arrests in Duval County. He says he was scared.
“I just really wanted to know, you know, why I was getting pulled over and why I needed to step out the car,” McNeil says. “And, I know I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
His attorney, Crump, said Wednesday, “He just kept asking simply, ‘Why are you stopping me?’ I mean, think about that. I understand the sheriff said ‘anti-police.’ No, no, no. It’s not anti-police when an American citizen asks, ‘Why are you stopping me?’ That is an American citizen exercising his constitutional rights.”
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McNeil chipped a tooth and sustained a concussion in the incident. He later pled guilty to driving with a suspended license and resisting arrest without violence.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump called on Sheriff Waters to terminate Officer D. Bowers to prove public accountability extends to law enforcement. Bowers has temporarily been stripped of his law enforcement duties until an investigation can be finished.
Crump and co-counsel Harry Daniels say JSO violated McNeil’s Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
“People talk about him pleading guilty to resisting without violence and driving on a suspended license. The entire stop was not just pretextual, racially motivated, it was unlawful,” Daniels says. “Everything that stemmed from that stop was unlawful.”
Florida law does not criminalize pretextual stops. That is when law enforcement initiates a traffic stop for a minor violation in search of additional criminality.
Florida’s “Stop and Frisk Law,” Statute 901.151, says law enforcement may detain someone when circumstances “reasonably indicate” they have committed or are committing a crime.
The statute also says that if probable cause arises during the temporary detention, that person may be arrested.
Moments after the press conference ended, Sheriff T.K. Waters released a statement: “Our agency has publicly released body-worn camera footage pertaining to this matter, and I provided a briefing on the status of the investigation earlier this week. This publicly shared information is currently available on all JSO’s social media platforms and our transparency portal.” The sheriff said, in anticipation of litigation, JSO would not speak further on the matter.
The body camera footage shows an officer telling McNeil he was stopped due to his car lights being off in inclement weather. The department’s footage does not appear to show rainfall at the time of the encounter.
None of the sheriff’s publicly disclosed footage shows an officer flashing a gun at McNeil.
For McNeil, a biology major who plays trombone in the Livingstone College Marching Blue Thunder, it was a first arrest.
McNeil’s left front tooth remains chipped five months later. His attorneys say he still has short-term memory issues.
McNeil’s mother, Latoya Solomon, is heartbroken. She says it took her months to watch the entire video.
According to police records, Solomon retrieved the silver Kia Sorento her son was driving from West Palm Avenue on the Westside in February after his arrest.
“I’m thankful to God for protecting him. I know what the outcome could have been,” Solomon said Wednesday.
Alton Solomon, McNeil’s father, said he was also roughed up by JSO when he was McNeil’s age. On Wednesday, recalling his inability to protect his son from a similar encounter brought tears to his eyes.
“To see that…It’s a hurting feeling,” Solomon said.
The Solomons say they gave McNeil “the talk” about what to do if he were ever stopped by police. Among the instructions common in Black households: Keep calm and document everything.
The police report says officers provided several warnings that they would break the window and remove McNeil from the vehicle before officers “broke the driver’s window and opened the driver’s door.” It does not mention that an officer punched McNeil in the face.
Crump said that omission, as well as the fact that multiple officers appeared to forcefully retain McNeil, despite his charge being listed as resisting without violence, could mean McNeil’s personal video might have saved his life.
“He got punches in his face, head beat against the concrete and a gun drawn on him,” Crump says. “That is excessive. That is excessive force 101.”
The family are members of Love, Faith and Peace Deliverance Temple, where McNeil’s Uncle Frank James Jr., is the pastor. James opened and closed Wednesday’s event, which was attended by members of several Jacksonville-based civil rights organizations.
“He is a really, really good man of God,” Latoya Solomon said of her only son, who is on scholarship to study biology at a Christian HBCU in North Carolina. “He’s a mentor of all the children in the neighborhood. He is a self-taught musician in our church. He’s a really good son.”
