JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax spoke with our law and safety expert about what defines excessive force after a viral Facebook video shows officers with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office restraining a woman.
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The 56-second video, which started while the altercation was already in progress, it shows a struggle between two officers and a woman face down on the ground.
Action News Jax’s Jimmy Marlow spoke with our law and safety expert Dale Carson about whether excessive force was used in this situation, in his opinion. Carson is a former police officer and FBI agent with decades of experience in the field.
The video begins with an officer already in the progress of restraining a woman, and the officer can be seen using his knee in the area of her head and neck before moving to his forearm.
Carson responded, “We don’t want officers doing that because of things that have happened that have had negative outcomes. People die in a circumstance like that, but when you’re by yourself, you’ve got to do what you can to control the individual that you are trying to arrest.”
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While the first officer is trying to grab the woman’s hand in the video, a second officer gets out of a police cruiser, grabs the woman’s legs and tries to secure her lower body.
“You can see there is an effort to just grab her hand and to get control of one hand to get her in an arm-bar, so they can get a cuff on. After they’ve got that one cuff on they can both collectively work on the other arm to pull it out,” Carson said.
Carson also said that while the video seems to show officers using excessive force, their actions depend on how the subject responds.
“If you’re going to resist as they did, the officer is duty-bound to protect himself and other individuals and, in this case, the person they are trying to restrain. You don’t see them punch her in the face or punch her in the chest. You don’t see any of that, and we don’t know why it began to begin with,” Carson explained.
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The video is posted on Facebook, and people are commenting that the officers took it too far, so Marlow asked Carson directly if there was excessive force used by the officers.
“No, there was no excessive force,” Carson responded. “There were no punches to the face or attempts to choke. This was an effort to subdue a person who did not wish to be subdued.”
To reiterate, the video begins while the altercation was in progress, so it’s unknown what led to this woman being restrained or why the officers felt the need to react the way they did.
Action News Jax has also reached out to JSO, and they stated the matter is currently under administrative investigation. Action News Jax will provide updates when they become available.