GOP Candidate Martin Hyde Threatened Sarasota Cop’s Career Over Traffic Stop: Video

SARASOTA, FL — A congressional candidate challenging U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan for his District 16 seat threatened to end a Sarasota police officer’s career after she issued him traffic tickets.

Officer Julia Beskin pulled over Martin Hyde on the morning of Feb. 14 for speeding — he was going 57 mph in a 40-mph zone, she said — and texting while driving in the area of Euclid Avenue and Fruitville Road.

As Beskin wrote tickets for Hyde's reported actions, he said she would lose her job, according to police video of the stop. In a Facebook post, Hyde said that he's since apologized to the officer for being rude, and said he can be aggressive when challenged. He also told Patch that he's "paid the tickets," but wouldn't comment further.

Hyde is running against Buchanan in the Republican primary for the District 16 House seat in August. He also previously ran twice for the Sarasota City Commission, losing to Jen Ahearn-Koch and Hagen Brody in a bid for an at-large seat in 2017, and dropping out of the District 2 race in 2020.

The outspoken and at-times controversial candidate recently made headlines during the holiday season after angering his homeowners’ association when he hung lights that read “Let’s Go Brandon” — a profane euphemism against President Joe Biden — above an American flag outside his home.

As Beskin explained her reasons for pulling him over on Feb. 14, her bodycam footage captured Hyde telling her, “I’ll just call the chief. How’s that? You know who I am, right?” (Watch full bodycam footage from the traffic stop below.)

When she asked for his license and registration, Hyde asked her, “You gonna do this?”

“I still have a job to do, sir,” Beskin responded.

“Yeah, for now,” he said.

He then asked how long the officer has worked for the Sarasota Police Department.

After she told him she has been with the agency for about seven years, Hyde said, “I don’t think you’ll make eight.”

During the stop, Beskin asked him for his vehicle registration multiple times, but he wouldn’t hand it over at first.

“You gonna arrest me?” he asked, before saying he didn’t have it.

Hyde also told her, “Go call the chief. Tell him how rude you’ve just been to me. Play him this (bodycam) video. Then call (City Manager) Marlon Brown. Then you call the mayor.”

As she continued to ask for his registration, he went on to tell her, “You’re making career decisions. Why are you doing this?”

“Sir, because you were speeding and you were texting,” she said.

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In the bodycam video, Beskin went to her police car to process his tickets — one for speeding, one for failing to present his registration and one for texting while driving — and when she brought them to his vehicle, he said, “Call your supervisor. I just spoke to your boss.”

As she handed Hyde his three tickets, he tried to hand her his registration, though she had already printed a citation for not presenting his registration, which angered him.

While Beskin reviewed his tickets with him, the candidate continued to talk over her.

“I’m a law-abiding citizen and you’re being bloody rude to me,” he said. “Do you think you’ll win? Do you?”

Hyde added, “Keep talking to a congressional candidate like this.”

He also accused her of lying about his failure to present his registration and demanded she call her supervisors.

Beskin called two sergeants — Sgt. Rob Morrison and Sgt. Anthony Frangioni — to the scene to assist her. While waiting for them to arrive, Hyde left his vehicle and the officer kept asking him to either get back in his vehicle or stand on the sidewalk for his safety. She got on the radio in her car and told police dispatch that the “driver (was) being extremely uncooperative.”

When Frangioni arrived, Hyde told him Beskin lied about “the cell phone thing” and his not producing his vehicle registration.

“She’s being funny,” the candidate said, adding, “I back you guys left, right and center, and I don’t expect better treatment, but I don’t expect worse treatment. If that’s how you treat people, that’s unacceptable.”

Hyde told Frangioni that during his interaction with the officer, she was “straight away writing the tickets. Why?”

“She’s a traffic officer. That’s what we do,” the sergeant said.

Frangioni promised to review the bodycam footage to see if there were any problems, adding that if he later handed over his registration, Beskin “probably should have taken that ticket away.”

“She had a bee in her bonnet because she thought she was on a big power trip,” Hyde said. “Guess what? She’s been there seven years. She ain’t gonna make eight. I’ll make sure of it.”

Hyde told Patch he has since paid the tickets. And in a post shared on his campaign’s Facebook page Tuesday, he said he has apologized to Beskin for being “belligerent and rude” to her.

“I’m not going to justify my poor temper on that day or attempt to mitigate it in any way,” he wrote. “There will be some who will say it's not the first time I've acted out and they'd be right. I have faults and one of them is to be overly aggressive on occasion when I'm challenged.”

This trait “is possibly a good thing” when it comes to “the political arena,” Hyde said, “but on a personal level, it’s not. I've apologized to the officer in question, and now I'm apologizing to the community as a whole. I'm going to do my utmost to behave better going forward. I'm not running away though, as that's not in my nature. There is nothing more I can say, or will say on this subject other than I'm sorry for any offense caused to anyone.”

Watch Beskin's full bodycam footage from Hyde's traffic stop below:

Morrison's and Frangioni's bodycam footage can be found here.