Martin Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Florida, is so confident of his power that he openly threatens a cop pulling him over for speeding—after she warns him her bodycam is on.
"I'll just call your Chief. You know who I am, right? You're going to do this? Big mistake. You're making career decisions."
Immediately after being pulled over, Beskin in the video walks to Hyde's vehicle window and speaks to him about why she pulled him over. She had tagged Hyde driving 57 miles per hour in a 30-mph zone.
"You don't need to point at me, officer," Hyde tells Beskin. "I'll just call the Chief. You know who I am, right?"
Beskin says she does, and later in the video is seen privately saying his name to dispatch.
"The driver is being extremely uncooperative," she states. "Martin Hyde. I just gave him three tickets."
Hyde during the stop not only alludes to calling Rex Troche, but says he will call Marlon Brown, the city manager, and then the Mayor. He at one point asks "Is it your Russian immigrant status that makes you talk to people like this?" Beskin is originally from Latvia and speaks both Russian and English.
He apologized once the footage started making him famous, and said "he never intended to literally call the chief of police, and said that's simply a phrase he says in moments of conflict."
Perhaps Sarasota police chief Rex Troche can fill us in on why a local wannabe congressman is in the habit of blurting out threats to call him in "moments of conflict."
