Attorney McCracken Poston said William Alexander Floyd, the young man seen in the recently published “viral” video who is seemingly engaged in a boxing match with a Chattanooga police officer, started out trying to break up a fight.
The attorney said, "Things are not always as they appear. There is a much more interesting story in the seconds leading up to the events that were captured and widely shared by social media."
He said his client was as surprised as anyone to find himself "squared up" with a police officer, who he first saw from behind and thought was someone trying to start a fight with another man he knew.
The attorney said, "He tried to separate the two men who he thought were going to fight.
Instead, he suddenly found that one of them was an officer and who was now offering to fight him."
Attorney Poston said he hopes that the Chattanooga Police Department Internal Affairs Division "will fully investigate the matter of the procedures and behavior of its officers last Saturday on Station Street. There seemed to be a lot of encouragement going on for people to fight, including some goading by uniformed individuals."
The attorney said he is receiving videos from persons around the scene that he hopes will paint a fuller picture of the events that evening.
He stated, "A man is to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, notwithstanding the rush to judgment that accompanies a video posting that has been reposted hundreds or thousands of times. In any event, the fact that there were multiple officers standing around seemingly enjoying what looked to be a loosely organized contest, and not acting within their training to immediately assist to subdue a suspect, makes this a very curious case."