Jacksonville police officer charged with punching handcuffed suspect

A Jacksonville police officer has been arrested and faces termination after bodycam footage captured him punching a handcuffed, intoxicated suspect during an arrest, Sheriff T.K. Waters announced Tuesday.

It happened on Monday evening, when a man was arrested on charges related to possessing an open container in a vehicle and resisting an officer without violence.

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Waters said the suspect was “extremely intoxicated” during the arrest, causing Officer Shane Saydek, who has worked for the Sheriff’s Office for a little over three years, to become increasingly frustrated with him.

According to Saydek’s bodycam video, Saydek accused the suspect of scratching him during the arrest. The intoxicated man did not appear to be resisting or ignoring Saydek’s orders.

“Imma tell you one more time. You curl your [expletive] finger and reach at me again and make me [expletive] bleed, Imma punch you in the [expletive] head,” Saydek could be heard saying to the suspect.

Then the video shows Saydek forcefully grab the suspect’s cuffed hands and place them on the patrol car to collect his fingerprints.

Saydek tells the suspect to “stop moving your fingers” before the video captures him punching the man in the face.

“I told you, I warned you multiple times, you’re getting a punch if you keep [expletive] grabbing at me and moving your [expletive] fingers,” he said to the suspect.

The video showed Saydek hit the suspect twice.

“There’s no reason to think about punching him at that time,” Waters said.

According to Waters, the other arresting patrol officer who witnessed the encounter reported the incident to officials, prompting an investigation and ultimately leading to Saydek’s future termination.

“He’s not posing a threat,” Waters said, condemning the officer’s actions in the video. “There’s nothing going on that’s a problem.”

Gene Nichols, an attorney not associated with this case, said this situation is unfortunate and that it should have never gotten to the point that it did.

“It is not easy being a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer. And they face pressures all of the time. But this is why they go to the academy. This is why the Sheriff’s Office trains them extensively on handling situations like this,” Nichols said. “The officer had every opportunity to walk away.”

Saydek was arrested on a battery charge. He’s been with the Sheriff’s Office since March 2023.

Waters said the officer had no prior investigations prior to this arrest, which marked the sixth arrest this year of a Sheriff’s Office employee.

This story was produced by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner.