Florida GOP Candidate Goes Full Anti-‘Back The Blue’ In Threatening ‘Immigrant’ Cop’s Job Over Traffic Stop
Source: Jeremy Hogan / Getty
A GOP congressional candidate forgot about the whole “back the blue” thing when he got pulled over by a Sarasota, Florida, police officer who stopped him for speeding.
Actually, a better lede would be: A white man in Florida got pulled over and tried to give a cop his white privilege card instead of his license and registration and he got all pissy when that didn’t work so he threatened to call her boss and get her fired. Then when that also didn’t work, he chided her for being an immigrant.
According to HuffPost, the guy from the so-called party of law and order who doesn’t appear to believe the law applies to him is none other than Martin Hyde, who is running in Florida’s 16th Congressional District. On Valentine’s day, Hyde showed he had no love for the po-po when Officer Julie Beskin informed him that he was driving 57 mph in a 40 mph zone and was also seen texting on his phone.
Side PSA: Listen, folks, going 17 mph over the speed limit is dangerous enough, but doing it while texting makes you a vehicular homicide waiting to happen. Drive safe, kids. Also, only you can prevent forest fires and let’s take a bite out of Hyde—I mean, out of crime. (Same thing.)
Part 2: “I just called your supervisor. Is it your Russian immigrant status that makes you treat people like this?” pic.twitter.com/9mhyFVSVCb
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 23, 2022
“I’ll just call your chief. How’s that? You know who I am, right?” Hyde asked Beskin after she explained the entirely legal and perfectly understandable reason why she stopped him.
“Go right ahead, sir,” Beskin replied. “Yes, sir, I do.”
She then told him she was just doing her job, to which Hyde responded, “Yeah, for now.”
I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause to point out that if a Black person tried to get a cop fired over racial profiling, accessive force or unlawful detainment, GOPolice-humpers would fall all over themselves to side with the cop and criminalize the victim. They would tell us all we should have done was comply and be respectful and non-belligerent and we would’ve been fine. Hyde was really out here trying to get an officer fired for doing something as mundane as lawfully pulling him over for speeding while being disrespectful and belligerent AF, but whatever.
Anyway, Beskin returned to give Hyde his vehicle citation and he told her he’d called her supervisor.
“I just spoke to your boss,” he said. “Is it your Russian immigrant status that makes you treat people like this?” (This is pretty much the closest a white person comes to calling another white person the n-word.)
Hyde then refused to take his citation from Beskin, so she placed it on his dashboard.
″Don’t put your hand in my car. You don’t have a warrant,” he told her. (Not how that works, potential legislator, but OK.)
On Tuesday, Mr. Hyde became less Dr. Jekyll when apologizing for the incident via Facebook.
“I’m not going to justify my poor temper on that day or attempt to mitigate it in any way,” he wrote. ”There will be some who will say it’s not the first time I’ve acted out and they’d be right. I have faults and one of them is to be overly aggressive on occasion when I’m challenged. In the political arena that is possibly a good thing but on a personal level it’s not.”
He also said he apologized to Beskin personally and pledged to “do my utmost to behave better going forward.”