The video begins with a motorcyclist waving a ticket he's just gotten from veteran Miami Beach Police Officer Kenneth MacLeod. "God bless you," the man says. Is there sarcasm in that remark? MacLeod certainly thinks so.
"You want to be a sarcastic bitch?" the cop asks, wheeling back around and getting in the man's face. "I'll be fucking a bigger bitch."
MacLeod is now under investigation over the profanity-laced tirade caught on video, Det. Vivian Thayer, a department spokeswoman, tells Riptide.
The video, which was uploaded to YouTube Monday by a user named Albert Valdes, shows the moments after the motorcyclist was pulled over for a license plate problem. Here's Valdes' short description of what went down:
Cop loses it when I say "God Bless You". Atheist or Asshole? - Miami Beach police officer pulled me aside after I had already gotten off my motorcycle for my license plate being folded up and flipped.
Thayer says the department has opened an investigation into the video, although the man who shot it has yet to file an internal affairs complaint.
"The person in the video has yet to file a formal complaint against the officer," Thayer says. "The department is being proactive and is investigating the video and everything that led up to the officer's reaction."
More than two decades ago, MacLeod survived one of Miami's most tragic bursts of violence against police. In January 1992, four robbers fatally shot veteran North Miami Officer Steven Bauer; MacLeod was later hit multiple times in a shootout with the killers on Collins Avenue.
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