GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The state attorney's office has dismissed charges against Florida linebacker Antonio Morrison, who was arrested early Sunday morning after allegedly barking at a police dog and resisting arrest.

State attorney William Cervone said Tuesday that he made the decision after watching police video of the arrest. He believed Morrison did not do anything that warranted being arrested and that pursuing charges would be inappropriate.

"To be fair, law enforcement officers are not lawyers or fully aware of what the courts require. Nonetheless, and fair or not, their decisions must meet those standards," Cervone said. "The charge of interfering with a police animal requires malice, and none exists. lt also requires that the animal be engaged in some official duty, and it cannot be said that sitting in the back of a police cruiser in case he is needed constitutes being engaged in such activity by a police dog.

"As to the charge of resisting an officer, I challenge anyone who looks at the video of the incident to find any resistance, physical or otherwise, beyond questioning the actions of law enforcement, which is not illegal. Certainly, I see nothing that would allow or persuade a jury to convict."

Cervone also said that Alachua County Sheriff's officer William A. Arnold should have used better judgment in the situation even if, as he said on the video, he was frustrated at what happened.

"In my office, I teach and we attempt to practice restraint," Cervone said. "The power to do something as profound as depriving another person of liberty and subjecting him to all of the consequences of an arrest or prosecution cannot be abuse, even when one's patience is thin. After nearly 40 years as a prosecutor l understand the pressures that officers on the street deal with. Those pressures simply cannot be allowed to override common sense and the law, as they may have in this situation."

Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell agreed with Cervone and said Arnold shouldn't have arrested Morrison.

"Our deputies deal with chaotic situations daily and have to make quick, on-the-spot decisions," Darnell said in a statement. "While I believe the deputy's actions were technically correct, due to the obscure nature of the law a warning would have been more appropriate."

According to an Alachua County Sheriff's Office report, Arnold responded to a suspicious incident and disturbance call at 3:43 a.m. ET Sunday at a Gainesville hotel adjacent to an after-hours sports bar. While Arnold was investigating the vehicle that was the subject of the call, one of a group of several men walking along the street approached Arnold's patrol car and began barking at his police dog through the open window.