Police release body cam footage of man who pulled gun on black teens in Miami
Police body camera footage taken after a man was arrested for pulling a gun on a group of black teens on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Miami shows the man in disbelief that he was the one who wound up handcuffed.
Mark Bartlett, 51, and Dana Scalione had been stuck in traffic near the Brickell Bridge as the teens protested the lack of affordable housing in their neighborhood. An activist caught Bartlett on cellphone approaching the group with a gun and another video showed him shouting racial slurs. Bartlett claimed to police after the incident that he was merely protecting his girlfriend Scalione, whose foot he said had been run over by one teen’s bicycle.
“Oh my God, this is crazy. How am I arrested now and all these little black kids aren’t?” Bartlett asks one officer in the video. “They hit my wife and ran over her foot. I came out there to protect her. They left, thank God and I went back to my car. We even called 911, twice. I pay taxes. Do they? It’s amazing.”
Miami-Dade state prosecutors released the body camera footage this week from several officers at the scene. One video shows police ordering Bartlett to the ground, then handcuffing him from behind after officers stopped his SUV just outside the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Biscayne Boulevard.
Another video shows police ordering Scalione out of the truck and onto the sidewalk and her placing her hands in the air. A third video catches the interaction between Bartlett as he’s seated in the back of a patrol car and an officer standing on the street.
Bartlett was initially charged with carrying a concealed weapon. A month later the state upped the charges to include three counts of aggravated assault with prejudice, which are second-degree felonies and a single count of improperly exhibiting a firearm, a third-degree felony. The state’s crime bill allowed prosecutors to increase the charges a notch. It could mean a longer sentence.
Bartlett never apologized for pulling the weapon. He apologized for the language he used. A separate video taken during the Jan. 21 holiday caught Bartlett hurling racial slurs at the teens and telling one of them, “Get out of here you piece of s---,” His attorneys argued that Bartlett’s actions didn’t amount to a hate crime and they accused prosecutors of succumbing to political pressure “rather than obeying the tenants of the law.”
At least four of the teens have since filed a civil rights lawsuit arguing the couple’s actions amounted to a hate crime and claiming Bartlett and Scalione intentionally emotionally distressed and assaulted the teens and are asking that a jury award damages.
The teens were part of a movement they call “Bikes Up Guns Down,” which is an offshoot of the “Wheels Up Guns Down” movement that has become prevalent in South Florida during the holiday.
This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 5:02 PM.