On May 30, a white man, Mark Bartlett, was sentenced to probation in Florida for drawing a weapon and yelling derogatory slurs at a group of Black teenagers during a traffic confrontation in 2019.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2019, a group of teenagers was protesting housing inequality by blocking traffic in Brickell using bicycles when then-51-year-old Bartlett approached them, WSVN reports. Cellphone footage shows Bartlett brandishing a gun and yelling,
“Get the [expletive] outta here, you [expletive] losers!” Bartlett’s then-fiance also exited the vehicle and confronted the teens, yelling, “Don’t touch me, you [expletive] thugs!”Soon after, Bartlett was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. The charges were later elevated to a hate crime. AP News reports that Barlett’s fiance, who was a passenger in the car, was not charged with a crime. According to AP News, in a 2021 hearing, Bartlett claimed that he had acted in self-defense, alleging that he was being held hostage because his SUV was stuck in traffic and that he was goaded into using a slur. However, Miami-Dade County Judge Alberto Milian rejected this claim and concluded that Bartlett had not acted reasonably by exiting his SUV and drawing a firearm on the teenage protesters.
On May 30, 2023, four years following the initial encounter, Bartlett was sentenced to probation in South Florida, avoiding jail time, The Miami Herald reports. As part of his deal with the prosecution, Bartlett, now 55, pleaded guilty to committing a hate crime and aggravated assault. Bartlett must also complete 300 hours of community service, attend anger management classes and racial sensitivity training, and cannot possess a firearm for 10 years. Bartlett previously faced over a decade in prison but avoided a formal conviction through a withhold of adjudication granted by Milian.
According to WPTV, the 2019 protest was against private development set to occur in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, which would displace affordable housing.
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