JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — 62 percent is the share of seat belt and headlight violations issued to Black drivers by JSO going back to 2021.
Attorneys representing William McNeil Jr. have argued their client was racially profiled when he was pulled over for driving without headlights on in bad weather and not wearing a seatbelt.
“This is about driving while Black,” said McNeil’s attorney Ben Crump during a press conference last week.
That February traffic stop escalated after McNeil questioned the reason for the stop, locked his car door, and refused to exit his car when told to do so by officers.
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It resulted in McNeil being hit in the face by one officer at least twice.
Now, Action News Jax has analyzed nearly 12,000 seatbelt and 79 headlight citations issued by JSO since January of 2021.
Those statistics reveal Black drivers make up roughly 62 percent of those issued citations, despite accounting for only about 30 percent of the county’s overall population.
State Representative Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville) met with Sheriff TK Waters on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the McNeil case and traffic citation data.
“I don’t know how to get it through to him that the data speaks for itself. That there seems to be some kind of bias. There seems to be some type of over-policing of a community,” said Nixon just after the meeting concluded.
In total, Action News Jax reviewed more than 20,600 seatbelt violations issued by six law enforcement agencies in Duval County going back to the start of 2021.
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When compared to JSO’s citations, none of the agencies came close to matching JSO’s stats.
FHP was the closest, with Black drivers making up just over 40 percent of seatbelt tickets.
“I would have to think that is a systemic issue. The sheriff does not agree with me,” said Nixon.
An even more stark trend appeared when we broke the numbers down by race and sex.
Among JSO’s seatbelt violations, Black men in particular were overrepresented by roughly 250 percent.
They accounted for just shy of 40 percent of all citations despite only making up about 15 percent of the county’s overall population.
“And I asked him [the sheriff], are you saying that Black drivers are inherently violating the law? And he said the numbers are the numbers and that’s what it is and it’s not a white or Black thing,” said Nixon.
Sheriff TK Waters addressed the statistics Tuesday night.
He argued that JSO officers do not pull people over based on the way a driver looks.
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“This just happens to be something that, unfortunately, my friends in the media are playing up. I’m telling you, we don’t run an organization based off, we don’t deal with people based on what they look like. We deal with people based off of the violations they commit or how we serve,” said Waters. “That’s it. That’s the only way it happens.”
While Nixon said she left her meeting with the sheriff disappointed, she said she hopes there will be more conversations going forward to find ways to address crime without subjecting people to disproportionate traffic stops.
Officer Donald Bowers, the JSO officer seen hitting McNeil in the now-viral cell phone video of his arrest, was stripped of his policing authority pending the outcome of an internal review last Monday.
That same day, the State Attorney’s Office cleared all of the officers involved with McNeil’s arrest of criminal wrongdoing.
McNeil’s legal team has indicated a civil lawsuit is likely coming, and they also intend to challenge McNeil’s convictions for driving with a suspended license and resisting without violence that stemmed from his February arrest.
JSO has said it will not comment further on the case, given the likelihood of a coming lawsuit.
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