A Florida sheriff’s office has suspended an officer who punched a driver in the face during a traffic stop that went viral.
William McNeil Jr posted video of himself sitting in his car as the policeman smashed the window, hit him and dragged him to the ground in the city of Jacksonville on 19 February this year.
After the clip spread online, police released bodycam footage that shows McNeil, 22, refusing demands to exit the vehicle after being told he has been pulled over for traffic violations.
The sheriff’s office said a state prosecutor had found no misconduct by the officers, but an internal review was also under way.
In his Instagram video, McNeil said his tooth was chipped and he required stitches to his mouth after the arrest, and suffered a concussion.
So you need to exit your vehicle for a traffic violation? If you run a stop sign you have to get out to receive your ticket???
Pennsylvania v Mimms.
It is lawful for a cop to tell you to get out of the car, you must comply and if you don’t, you can be charged with failure to obey a lawful order or obstruction. There is no real criteria that must be met for you to be ordered out of the car that would differentiate between a lawful command and unlawful command except that the stop is lawful in the first place. Since there are oodles of reasons why a cop can initiate a lawful stop, pretty much every case is a lawful stop. So yes, if you run a stop sign, you can lawfully be ordered to exit the vehicle.
All the same, just do what you are told and deal with it in court, which may end up with you getting paid if you are in the right. The side of the road is no place to make a shit situation worse by arguing, getting arrested, opening yourself up to physical harm, etc. By not complying, all you are doing is constructing the pretext for whatever comes next and that leaves you at a huge disadvantage in a court case that you could have otherwise won and gotten paid.