An Ormond Beach woman who was caught on camera being thrown to the floor inside the city’s police station during a December 2024 DUI booking has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the officer who arrested her. The complaint, filed Monday, says the takedown left her with a deep head wound, permanent scarring and a stack of medical bills. The suit names former patrol officer Jacob Ryan Cannon and seeks damages for what the filing describes as constitutional violations and a failure to train.
According to the court filing and body-camera footage, Cannon grabbed DUI suspect Shanna McRee after she briefly stood up during a breath test and hurled her so that her head smashed into a glass partition, opening a gash that required seven stitches, according to FOX 35 Orlando. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, says Cannon did not try to render aid and that nearby officers failed to step in. McRee is asking a federal judge to hold both Cannon and the City of Ormond Beach liable for her physical pain, emotional distress, and lasting scars.
The lawsuit tracks closely with the video the department later released, which shows blood on the station floor and medics treating McRee after other officers lifted her, ClickOrlando reports. The filing also notes Cannon had been hired in February 2023, was placed on administrative leave after the Dec. 6, 2024, encounter, and then resigned before later pleading no contest to a felony battery charge.
Sentencing and criminal case
Cannon’s criminal case wrapped up last year when he entered a no-contest plea to felony battery and was adjudicated guilty. A judge sentenced him to six months in county jail with credit for time served and imposed two years of supervised probation, according to Court TV. As part of that sentence, he surrendered his law-enforcement certification and can no longer possess a firearm. At the hearing, the judge turned down defense requests for a softer sentence and said she would not offer special treatment just because Cannon had been a police officer.
What the lawsuit says
The federal complaint accuses Cannon of using excessive force while McRee was handcuffed and claims the City of Ormond Beach failed to properly train and supervise its officers on when and how force can be used, FOX 35 Orlando reported. McRee’s attorneys say she is still dealing with severe physical pain, ongoing emotional distress and growing medical expenses. The suit seeks both compensatory and punitive damages tied directly to the injuries shown on the department’s body-camera video.
City response
City officials had not issued a fresh response to the new lawsuit by the time of publication; a spokesperson instead pointed reporters back to an earlier statement, according to ClickOrlando. In February 2025, after the booking-room video became public, Ormond Beach Police Chief Jesse Godfrey apologized for what viewers saw on the footage and said the officer’s conduct “does not represent the way we police our community,” a line repeated in local coverage at the time.
Background
Body-camera footage from the December 2024 booking was released to the public in mid-2025 and triggered both a criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and an internal affairs review, WFTV reported. The video appears to show McRee bleeding after her head hits the glass partition, with paramedics treating her on scene before she later received stitches for a forehead laceration.
What happens next
The case will move forward under federal civil rights procedures in the Middle District of Florida. The city will be formally served, then given a deadline to either file an answer or try for an early dismissal. Civil-rights suits against cities often turn on whether the plaintiff can show a pattern, a departmental practice or a failure to train that led to the injury; McRee’s complaint puts those claims at the center of her case.
