Audio By Carbonatix
The traffic stop looks ordinary enough. Miami Police Officer Marcel Jackson pulls over a silver Chevy for speeding and walks up to the driver’s window. And when the driver leaps from his car, Jackson reacts like any other cop: He throws the driver to the ground and tries to cuff him. Unfortunately for Jackson, the driver apparently wasn’t just anyone: He was a lieutenant on the same force.
That’s according to Al Crespo, who obtained video of the conflict. A Miami PD spokesman declined to comment on the video to Riptide but confirmed that an internal affairs case has been opened because of the footage.
The footage exists, Crespo reports, only because Jackson had a GoPro camera running on his dashboard; when officers later began hounding him for a cell phone he was also recording with, he hid the camera in a seat cushion.
The first clip shows the tussle with a man whom Crespo identifies as Lt. David Ramras, who works in internal affairs.
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Another video reputedly records Jackson calling a friend and explaining what just went down. Jackson tells the friend that the scuffle began when Ramras asked him: “What’s that on your face?” — a reference to a skin condition that makes it impossible for the officer to shave — and then jumped from the car.
“I pushed him back, like ‘Stay in the car,'” Jackson says. “And he’s like, “I’m lieutenant of police! I’m lieutenant of police!’… I’m like, ‘I don’t know who you are, but you don’t jump out on me.'”
Jackson, in the call, goes on to explain that he pulled the car over only because “he was flying” through a pedestrian area and that when he ran the plate, it didn’t come up as any kind of police vehicle.
Because of the ongoing IA probe, Miami PD has declined to comment on Crespo’s version of events. Other officers have apparently been discussing the incident for some time on LEO Affairs, a message board for police officers, where some posters now claim Jackson has been relieved of duty over the affair.
The whole situation adds up to an ugly mess for Chief Manuel Orosa to sort out. We’ll update this post with more details if Miami PD decides to comment further.
In the meantime, Crespo also uploaded Jackson’s full video to show both the previous incidents in context:
(H/T to Random Pixels)
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