A woman and her friend acted poorly at the Frontier Airlines ticket counter at Miami Airport. The sun also rose in the east. But perhaps the most interesting angle of the story is how many police officers it took to arrest her? One? Two ? Three? Four? How about seven? Talk about resisting arrest…
After Women Attack Frontier Airlines Check-In Agent At Miami, Cops Move In To Arrest…A Lot Of Them
The incident took place at Miami International Airport. Need I say more? Two women were late to check-in for their Frontier Airlines flight to Atlanta (ATL). When it was explained to them that they would not be traveling on their original flight, they responded by physically assaulting a ticket counter agent.
You won’t see it in the video below, but 20-year-old Makyan Mercer (on the left in the photo above) allegedly hurled a plastic sign holder at the Frontier staffer, prompting a need for medical attention. Police were dispatched and one appeared to take the woman’s friend, 21-year-old Janaeah Negash, down without much trouble. But seven more surrounded pink-haired Mercer before she finally was pulled to the ground, turned over, and handcuffed (she can be heard screaming in the video that the police officer should get off her while Mercer also screamed, “Don’t touch her!”).
Here’s video of the arrest and some of the language is NSFW:
Something must be in the water at MIA🤦♂️The passengers shown in the video were late for check in and physically assaulted a team member who required medical treatment😳| #ONLYinDADE pic.twitter.com/Nxh9ADkviq
— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) January 25, 2023
The women face charges of battery, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest with violence. Both were released on bail of only $500 and instructed to return to Miami next month for their court date. As View From The Wing wondered, do you think they’ll make their flight on time?
image: Miami-Dade Corrections
Quit defending these adult children. It only empowers more people to think this is how you respond in this situation.
I’m not defending them. I hope they rot in jail.
Matthew, as a Police Department Volunteer, when a person gets into that type of condition, unfortunately, their body goes into “overdrive” (for lack of a better term), and draws amazing strength. Also, the Officer is trying to ensure that as little harm is being done to the perosn, while containing them so that they do not hurt other people. It is a very difficult situation.
“A woman and her friend acted poorly” – Seriously!! “Poorly”? They threw a sign at a Frontier employee and you just say they acted poorly? Their behavior was more like “reprehensible” than just “poorly”.
Matthew is from LA and unaccustomed to observing laws actually being enforced. This is a traumatic time for him. Please be kind.
I’d agree to reprehensible as well. Put another way, they should be sent to work camps to atone.
Do I detect an ounce of sarcasm?
To answer your question, it takes as many officers as necessary to restrain someone. If you agree it’s reprehensible, as you claim in the comments, then you shouldn’t minimize it by saying “The sun also rose in the east” and focus on the number of police officer it took to safely restrain them. Not a good look…
Come on Mike, every day I can write a story about passengers acting poorly in Miami. It is like the sun rising in the East. But the frequency of the poor behavior does not minimize how reprehensible it is. As I said, I would place people who attack airline workers into a labor camp building infrastructure in the USA. That will teach them some self-control.
You have NO IDEA! what it takes to restrain an unruly and escalated person, male or female. I work in a treatment facility where restraints take place and even small individuals can be difficult. Your not supposed to restrain with one person anyway because both individuals can get injured. Stick to what you know.
Dude, it was clickbait. I could not really care less whether it took one officer or 100 to constrain this pathetic excuse for a human.
I wonder if we’re seeing a real increase in this kind of behavior or it’s just getting more attention? Either way I think reprehensible is a pretty accurate description. More importantly people who act like this should be punished harshly and VERY publicly (e.g. seen outside the frequent traveler community); may not deter hard-core jerks but might at least give some of these clowns pause. I make it a point to be extra courteous to any customer-facing employees these days…they’re going through hell.
A blogger could make a living reporting original material from MIA.
Two weeks ago I literally watched the gate door close as I was approaching it on a connection. They refused to open it even though I was seconds late (their fault due to maintenance on prior flight causing delay). I not only had to arrive to my destination much later but I also lost my upgrade and was stuck in a middle seat.
I was naturally upset but I refused to take it out on a gate agent doing their job. Such a selfish act to react as many do.
What does that have to do with Miami? Couple of weeks ago, getting into Denver and connecting to Vail on United. Arriving plane got delayed due to air traffic control so we arrived late in Denver. Many passengers on my flight were connecting to Vail and all ran like maniacs through the airport to make to our gate. We all got there almost at the same time and we saw the gate agent closing the door. We literally made to the gate 10 seconds after she closed the door. There were 9 passengers to get into a very small plane so a high percentage of passengers. Plane was still there. Gate agent simply ignored us all. It was the last flight of the day so basically 9 passengers had to figure out hotels or transportation to final destination. We could not believe it and the agent didn’t speak a single word. She just ignored all of us.
There are bad gate agents, too, for sure. But from what I have heard from those in the business is that flights to and from Florida (and also NYC and Tel Aviv) are known for having some of the worst behavior and most demanding pax, so it’s probably true about the MIA content
Yes, but the crowd that goes to Florida usually is not the easiest to manage. I give some credit to those agents there.
definitely not easy. Some FA’s avoid picking up Florida trips due to the constant chaos between wheelchairs and babies alone
Dade county is not Florida. You may not realize it but Florida’s a very big state. Where I live in Florida nothing like this ever happens. Matthew was correct to identify this as a Miami issue. It’s not a Florida issue.
never mind Daytona for Spring Break and the other party destinations on the Gulf coast
That is your opinion though. FA’s who are friends have repeatedly told me that MIA is not the only problematic FL destination — and that most of them are. Not that hard to believe, lots of demanding entitlement at MIA/FLL, lots of kids where the parents let them wild out to MCO, and lots of demanding retirees to almost everywhere else.
The number of cops who responded to this is not the issue. Who cares?? The issue at hand is how the women behaved.
Of course that is the main issue. I’m just surprised at the number of cops…I’m not even criticizing it.
Yup.
WTF she behaved like a 2 year old who didn’t get a bag of skittles.
I’d like to hope that they both get substantial custodial sentences, but if you’re going to put someone behind bars eventually, you don’t give them $500 bail. They’ll get some kind of fine and sashay away.
Crime in Florida has been on the rise and there are so many serious crimes and serious mental health issues that things like this get a pass. There is a woman in my community who has now punched two people – one resident and her 80 year old elderly mother. A special prosecutor handling elderly affairs was assigned but the cases were dropped and the woman is free and not on outpatient services or anything else. All of this to say, incidents like this are very low on the totem pole due to the severity of other issues.
Today I learned assaulting someone is just acting poorly.
Oh please. Obviously I want the books thrown at them. You must be new around here. It just happens so often it becomes comical.
Florida jails will soon be building the low cost airline “wings”
I just don’t get the laws in the US. There are those who should be taught a lesson and spend time in jail who get away with a $500 bail and others who spend months for not being able to make bail for doing far less than what these morons did. Behavior like this should put them on a global “no fly list” – We need one if we don’t already have one. This would be the best lesson for uncouth uncivilized scums like these two women.
I was waiting for someone to mention the No Fly List.
I’m sure Frontier has them listed front and center.
Some people just don’t know how to behave. Poor parenting or no parents is usually the reason these individuals behave the way they do. They won’t show up in court, but they’ll have warrants issued out for them for the next time they come a-visiting…
The sad state of it is that this behavior is somewhat common. I know this sounds bad, but I say this with the perspective of being station manager for years for a low fare carrier and at one point the police just made it a point to hang out near our ticket counter. Part is that you just get a different clientele when you’re selling tickets for $10. May not have much experience traveling (now, do get more than a fair share of experienced flyers who just know how to get a good deal – at one point a marketing study put the average household income of the airline’s repeat customers in the $80k range). People also like to act out for social media. And in comparison to what I’ve experienced at a legacy carrier, a much higher sense of entitlement from the passengers who believe that as customer they have some power over the employees (many university studies have been made and papers written on this phenomenon – a relatively recent one was titled along the lines of “Why do people walk slower to cross the street in some neighborhoods.” Some of it used to be the third party travel sites… they do a lot better job today of making customers aware of additional fees (like Google Flights showing the little suitcase with an X on it logo right on the front page of results).
But we did see certain markets where the customers were repeat, understood the low fare model, where everyone generally came to the airport with pags paid (or understood the personal item limitation) and never had meltdowns. We knew that flights to like Ft Myers, Myrtle Beach, Minneapolis always were easy and even ready to push back early.
It is a sad state of affairs when, and this is even going back 7-8 years, agents have to fear the passengers. One airport I was at placed poinsettias on every ticket counter for the year-end holidays and made the whole airport look uniform. Everyday, the first thing the agents did when they came in was to take the plant and put it on the floor behind the counter or set them up on the ledge behind the baggage belt. When I first saw this, I asked the agents why. The answer? “It’s one less thing for passengers to throw at us.”
Florida again…..no more to say.
yes but they don’t live here, they are from North Carolina
Well Matthew my first thought was that this happens so often because the offenders are made famous by writers. In their world, making it onto worldstar is a magnificent achievement that can someday make them the next “cash me outside” girl. Or maybe their world is so misshapen I can’t fathom what they see. My second thought is there are 7 cops looking for something to do because this happens so often and the penalty is offset by fame.
You are getting so many bad comments on this article because your title implies that the police response was an over reaction and that too much police force was used to handle the situation.
I think it should be a felony for assaulting any transport worker. Act a fool and get convicted … PERMANENTLY BANNED from ALL public transport. You can just drive your own car. Convicted of a felony … the above plus losing other rights.
They should have been kept in jail without BAIL overnight at least…. $500 is a joke but at least there is still BAIL in FLORIDA!!!!