JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The video attached to this story is from a previous, related report.
A national civil rights legal organization has joined an attorney for Jacksonville resident Le’Keian Woods seeking a federal probe of whether Woods’ rights were violated during an arrest that left him hospitalized.
“In the interests of accountability and to prevent further harm, we urge the Department of Justice to investigate,” the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said in a statement posted to its website Thursday.
The group also argued the Sheriff’s Office gang unit “must be immediately disbanded given the unit’s role in this incident, [and] its history of abusive conduct in Jacksonville.”
Gang unit members performed a traffic stop that led to Woods’ Sept. 29 arrest on charges including armed trafficking in amphetamine and cocaine, which police found in a truck where Woods had been a passenger before running. Video of a bloody Woods being arrested after running went viral last weekend and focused wide attention on the case.
The defense fund is not connected to Jacksonville’s NAACP branch, but branch President Isaiah Rumlin said his organization had already denounced Woods’ injuries.
“We do not condone wrongdoing,” Rumlin said, but said he hadn’t seen any sign that the injuries could have been justified.
Woods’ defense team had argued much the same.
“Nothing warranted the beating that Mr. Woods sustained,” attorney Harry M. Daniels said in a letter to Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Sheriff T.K. Waters said early in the week that officers, who were inverstigating drug shipments and guns tied to recent shootings, appeared to have "acted appropriately." A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said Friday the agency has nothing to hide.
“We welcome any inquiry by the Department of Justice into this case and JSO policy and practices,” the spokesperson said by email. “Likewise, we are confident that federal law enforcement officials will share our conclusion that our officers acted appropriately.”
As debate over the arrest continued, more details came to light about circumstances leading up to the stop.
An arrest report for the driver of the truck Woods had been traveling in, Vontez Wright II, said the truck had been under police surveillance before the stop and that someone whose name had been redacted from the report recognized Woods. The report described Woods as “known to be associated with” a gang known simply as “3,” and also as a “person of interest” for something called Keepshooting, which is not explained further in unredacted parts of the report.
The report said a person watching the truck, likely a police officer, also recognized a second passenger in the back of the truck as person of interest for Keepshooting.
After covertly watching something that police suspected was a drug transaction, officers followed the truck a little less than two miles, from a gas station at 6680 Powers Ave. on the Southside to the 8200 block of Kensington Square off Plaza Gate Lane, where the truck stopped for police. Wright and the passenger offered no resistance to police approaching with guns drawn, but Woods ran from the truck and was chased until a taser caused him to fall face-forward onto pavement and was handcuffed after a struggle with officers.