Officer appears to pull his gun while trying to detain unruly traveler at Miami International Airport

MIAMI – An incident between police and travelers at Miami International Airport was caught on cell phone camera.

It happened early Monday evening as holiday travel continues to pick up.

Officials are expecting 165,000 passengers to pass through through Miami International Airport every day for the next several days.

One of those travelers became quite upset when their flight was delayed, leading to a physical altercation with police in which a Miami-Dade police officer briefly pulled out a weapon.

Cell phone video shows the officer attempting to restrain a man as a crowd of people surrounded him.

At one point, the two separate, and the video shows the man then charge at the officer with his arms flailing.

Eventually the officers breaks free and pulls out what appears to be his gun.

“An unruly passenger on a flight to Santo Domingo was upset about something,” said witness Mike Mailak. “I wasn’t sure if it was his class of travel, his check bag fees, a delay, something.”

Ad

Mailek is who captured the incident on his cell phone camera.

He said when officers arrived and tried to detain the upset traveler, he refused to go quietly.

“He got into an altercation with a police officer, who eventually pulled his gun,” said Mailek.

Local 10 News reached out to Miami-Dade police, who said it was just after 6:30 p.m. near Gate H8 when an unruly passenger got upset over a delayed flight and took a set of golf cart keys from an airport employee, refusing to give them back. When officers arrived, they got into a physical confrontation with the traveler when they were surrounded.

Officials at Miami International Airport released a statement Monday night that read, in part:

“MIA is seeing record-high passenger numbers this winter travel season. Unfortunately, that passenger growth has come with a record-high increase nationwide in bad behavior as well, such as the incident this evening at MIA.”

Ad

Two people have since been taken into custody, and police said they are detained and being questioned.

Authorities did not say what the two’s involvement was.

There were no injuries reported in the incident.