(NewsNation) — A sheriff in Jacksonville, Florida, claims viral video of a suspect who was elbowed and kneed by officers Friday is “altered” and “manipulated.”
Bystander video was released of what appeared to be a law enforcement officer kicking a cuffed suspect, 24-year-old Le’Keian Woods, while he was on the ground following a traffic stop. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters released body camera footage of the incident that he maintains tells a different story.
“Body worn camera footage and unedited versions of the cellphone camera footage on social media definitively indicate that this detective never kicked the handcuffed Woods. While a rush to judgment is dangerous, the intentional distribution of manipulated video is shocking, unacceptable, and frankly immoral. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn by the production of such altered video is that its creator or distributor had a personal agenda seeking to incite community rage against police officers,” Waters said at a news conference.
Attorneys for Woods insist nothing in the bystander video is altered and are petitioning the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the case. They say Woods suffered a ruptured kidney, throws up whenever he eats and has migraines following the incident.
A mug shot taken after Woods’ arrest shows him with both eyes swollen shut and bruises and cuts to his face.
“He is in excruciating pain,” attorney Marwan Porter said at a news conference. “He is really, really hurting.”
Another attorney for Woods, Harry Daniels, added: “The culture here in Jacksonville, in Duval County … we don’t have a bad apple, we have a bad apple orchard. When the sheriff validates, ratifies and confirms the actions of these officers, who are back on the streets today, nobody is safe.”
The body camera footage of the incident shows Jacksonville officers stopped a Dodge Ram pickup truck in an apartment complex’s garage. The stop allegedly came after Woods completed a drug deal at a gas station. The video shows officers pointing their guns at two men with Woods, and they surrender without incident. In the footage, Woods bolts from the front passenger’s seat and into the apartment complex with officers chasing after him.
The officer repeatedly yells at Woods to get on the ground or he will shoot him with his Taser stun gun. Once the officer got close enough, he shot Woods twice with the stun gun and Woods falls onto the pavement. Video shows the officer jumping on top of Woods and instructing him to place his hands behind his back. Woods appears to put one hand behind his back and moves the other beneath him.
In the arrest report, an officer said he repeatedly hit Woods in the head and ribs and elbowed him in the face since he feared he was reaching for a gun in his waistband. A detective arrived on the scene and said in the report that he kneed Woods in the head and shoulders while someone else punched him.
NewsNation host Dan Abrams said cellphone videos of police encounters recorded by bystanders can be “critical for police accountability, and they can also be taken wildly out of context.” Abrams interviewed Waters during “Dan Abrams Live” on Wednesday evening.
Waters said he first became aware of the bystander video of the incident after being tagged in it on Instagram. From there, he decided to investigate.
“I had the whole team on this, looking at it, because what we didn’t want to happen was, we didn’t want our public to see that. I’ve been very transparent, and I will continue to be very transparent. We didn’t want the public to see that and really believe that we were actually kicking handcuffed suspects,” Waters told Abrams.
Waters said the officer “had a knee issue he was dealing with during that time” and knew he needed to release the body camera footage as quickly as possible.
“Because again, we don’t want any civil unrest. We don’t want people feeling like they are doing these things just for the fun of it,” Waters told Abrams.
Attorneys for Woods claim Waters selectively released parts of the body camera footage. Waters said a snippet was released at the news conference, as the entire video was being uploaded online.
“The purpose of the short video was to show that the kick did not exist. It was not real,” Waters said, adding that Woods “created a situation much more dangerous than it needed to be for himself and for the police officers.”
Waters insists the responding officers acted appropriately and said investigators found cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and a handgun in the truck.
At the time of the incident, Woods had been on probation after pleading no contest to a 2017 robbery in Tallahassee, Florida, in which he and his roommate allegedly attempted robbing a marijuana dealer at gunpoint.
According to online records, Woods is charged with armed traffic of methamphetamine, armed traffic of cocaine, armed possession of a controlled substance, resisting an officer with violence and violation of probation, among other charges.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.