After pulling up a black driver for not wearing his seatbelt and telling him, “This is how you guys get killed out here, man,” a white Miami police officer was sent to desk duty.
On June 15, the driver, Gerardson Nicholas, captured the tense interaction in North Miami Beach and afterwards shared it on his TikTok account.
He claimed he was driving to work when the officer asked him to pull over. Nicholas admits to not being buckled up during the traffic encounter.
‘You’re not going to work,’ the unidentified Miami-Dade police officer tells Nicholas, who adamantly responds: ‘I’m going to work!’
‘You’re going to give me your driver’s license, registration and insurance,’ the cop then orders. ‘If not you will not be going to work today.’
‘Listen closely,’ an automated voice on TikTok can be heard saying before the cop adds: ‘Simple thing man. This is how you guys get killed out here man.’
‘What? Say that again? Say what you just said,’ Nicholas counters in the video, before the police officer sighs: ‘My God. Registration and insurance.’
The pair then get into a heated argument, in which Nicholas can be heard shouting: ‘What do we get killed for?’ before the cop slams his car door shut and walks away.
‘Make sure you stay over there,’ the police officer later tells Nicholas, who was by his car at the time, while checking his information on a police mobile data terminal — the type of computing equipment traditionally found in patrol cars.
‘Threaten to kill me, yeah,’ Nicholas answers while filming himself and the cop. ‘What you got on me? What you got on me?’
‘You’re going to be famous. You’re going to be famous though,’ he adds later in the video. ‘Look at him. Got nothing on me, pulls me over and threatens to shoot me. Threatening to kill me. We’re going to court man.’
After the incident, Nicholas later told NBC Miami that he filmed the escalation due to being fearful for his life.
‘I was scared, I was scared. I didn’t think my life was going to make it,’ he told the local outlet on Monday.
‘When he asked me for my license, open the door, I started recording. I was looking for my stuff, my license because I didn’t see my wallet. I was looking for my wallet and that wasn’t my car, that was my mom’s car and I didn’t know where the registration was, I was looking, looking. He got mad.’
In response, Miami-Dade Police Interim Director George A. Perez issued a statement indicating that after being told about Nicholas’ TikTok video by a cyber detective, he began an internal affairs investigation.s.
‘It’s exactly what the inference is that bothers me,’ Perez said, adding that he had also seen 31 minutes of the unidentified police officer’s body cam footage.
Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, told the Miami Herald that before passing judgment, he needs to see the complete police body cam footage of the escalation.
He also refuses to believe that the cop’s remark was racially charged.
Instead, he believes the officer was attempting to indicate that Nicholas’ failure to wear a seat belt could result in his death.
‘People die from not wearing seat belts every day,’ Stahl said.
Nicolas received a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt, as well as for not having a valid license tag and insurance. He was also driving with a suspended license at the time of the traffic stop.
Nicholas was not arrested, and his car was not towed.
Nicholas’ car was eventually retrieved by a family member.
Nicolas reported the incident to authorities on Monday and spoke with officers before submitting a formal complaint.
He argues that body camera footage from the traffic encounter will reveal that he was “respectful” of the officer during the whole stop.
Miami-Dade Police Department has yet to share any footage from the event as of Tuesday.