A video that surfaced last Friday on TMZ shows an early-morning brawl outside a nightclub in South Beach. Not all that unusual -- except this one involves Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie wide receiver Mike Evans. And the two Miami Beach cops who appear in the frame do little more than stand around and let the melee play out.
Brown, clearly a very tall, athletic man, is seen arguing with a bouncer outside Dream nightclub in March; the scrum really erupts after a different bouncer forcefully pushes a member of Brown's entourage. Several men then begin to fight, shoving and wildly throwing punches. At one point Brown leapfrogs a car and circles back to the action.
In the video, first reported locally by Random Pixels, two uniformed Miami Beach cops are present throughout the sequence. One gently tugs on Brown's arm before the fight takes off, but other than that, the two are essentially spectators.
See also: Miami Beach Cops Made $300,000 Working Off-Duty for Nightclubs Before Chief Banned Practice
According to WTSP, which spoke with Evans' agent, the NFL rookie, who was 20 years old at the time, was asked to leave the club's VIP section for not wearing a wrist band proving he was 21. The arguing began, the station reported, when the club wouldn't let Evans back in to find his girlfriend.
"The incident in question happened during spring break in March while I was vacationing with friends in Miami," Evans said in a statement reported by ESPN. "The issue occurred at the end of the night when someone in my party was approached by a member of the security staff. The situation escalated very quickly from there, but fortunately no one was injured."
Evans, now 21 and a native of Galveston, Texas, was drafted seventh overall by the Bucaneers. A spokeswoman for Miami Beach Police said that no arrests were made during the incident and that a report was not yet available.
Earlier this summer, Miami Beach Police Chief Dan Oates suspended the city's longtime practice of allowing off-duty cops to patrol nightclubs, although the police spokeswoman said the two officers seen in the video were on duty at the time.
[H/T Random Pixels]
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