What If It Wasn’t Tyreek Hill?
A superstar athlete's treatment by police raises troubling questions.
I was half-watching the early NFL games Sunday while waiting for the Dallas Cowboys to kick off in the late afternoon slot and learned that Miami Dolphins star receiver Tyreek Hill had an altercation with police ahead of the game. I hadn’t given the incident much thought but the Washington Post is drawing attention to it.
Columnist Candace Buckner (“Tyreek Hill’s unsettling question should bother us all“) sets the stage.
On Sunday morning, the Miami Dolphins’ star wide receiver was stopped by a crew of police officers. He got pulled out of his black sports car that retails for $300,000, and with the driver’s side butterfly door still propped up, officers placed him in handcuffs. The glittering chain around his neck scuffed against the pavement. The scene was caught on video by passing motorists. A concerned statement from the director of the Miami-Dade Police Department soon followed.
Later, after the cops allowed him to get on to his day job and after he celebrated a touchdown by imitating being placed under arrest, the multimillionaire stood on an elevated platform and addressed reporters. He had the room’s attention as he recounted his brief detainment by law enforcement, and he asked, “What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?”
Do we really have to wonder?
Had this situation not involved one of the best and highest-paid wide receivers in the NFL, and instead just a random citizen stopped outside Hard Rock Stadium for careless driving, here’s an educated guess as to what probably would have happened: He would have been arrested, not simply detained. His car — maybe a Mazda, certainly not a McLaren — would have been abandoned on the side of the road as he was placed face down on the ground for a traffic stop. And with motorists capturing the moment, the police department would not have immediately launched an investigation and placed an officer on administrative leave.
Refreshingly, Buckner makes this about celebrity status and not race. More on the former in a bit.
In the wake of so many awful incidents, it would be natural to go down the race route. Hill, for those unfamiliar with his work, is indeed a Black man. Judging from his accent, I would guess the main officer involved to be Hispanic. Regardless, looking at the body cam footage, though, it’s clearly a case of an entitled celebrity refusing to show a police officer the deference to which he’s accustomed.
Here’s WaPo’s recounting:
In a portion of the footage, an officer is shown pulling a car over and telling Hill, the driver, to roll his window back down. After the officer repeats the request, the situation gets more tense as Hill is pulled from his car and placed in handcuffs, face down on the street.
[…]
The portion of the footage showing Hill getting pulled over begins just before 10:20 a.m., with the 30-year-old driving a black sports car down a street leading to the Dolphins’ stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. An officer on a motorcycle is seen approaching Hill’s car and, after he disembarks, the driver’s-side window can be seen being rolled up.
After the officer knocks on Hill’s window, he rolls it down and tells the officer not to do that. As Hill is asked why he is not wearing a seat belt, he repeatedly tells the officer, “Don’t knock on my window like that.”
After Hill hands his license to the officer, he says: “Just give me my ticket, bro, so I can go. I’m going to be late. Do what you’ve got to do.”
After that comment, Hill rolls his window back up, causing the officer to ask him to keep it down. Soon, the officer raises his voice as he repeats the command, and he tells Hill: “As a matter of fact, get out of the car. Get out of the car right now. We’re not playing this game.”
At that point, another officer can be seen opening Hill’s car door and pulling the player out of the vehicle. Three officers join in pushing Hill to the ground, with one of them telling him, “What part of that don’t you understand?”
Having taken his phone out of the car with him, Hill can be heard telling his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, that he is “getting arrested.”
“When we tell you to do something, you do it, you understand?” an officer tells Hill. “Not when you want, but when we tell you. You’re a little f—— confused.”
As Hill tells them he was “getting out” of his car, he is told, “Too late.”
This is a case where there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Hill was, frankly, belligerent and entitled, repeatedly refusing to follow clear and reasonable instructions. (I’ve been pulled over a handful of times over the years and I’ve always put my window down and obeyed officer instructions; indeed, it would never occur to me to do otherwise.) There was 40 seconds of back-and-forth between Hill and the officer, with the officer repeatedly—and calmly in the early going—telling Hill to put the window down, with Hill repeatedly refusing to comply while saying “Don’t tell me what to do!”
I’m a longtime critic of police culture and the Respect My Authoritay! attitude. Police too often act like bullies rather than public servants. Here, though, the officer had good reason to stop Hill—who was driving 100 mph in a 55 mph zone without a seatbelt and, indeed, still had the seatbelt off when the officer got to the window—was perfectly friendly at the outset of the conversation, issued the perfectly reasonable instruction to roll the window down, and had it repeatedly refused.
That said, the transition from “If you don’t roll the window down, I’m going to pull you out of the car” and then the other officer reaching in and dragging Hill out was instantaneous. Absent a threat from Hill, a visible firearm, or the like, there was simply no reason to escalate to that level for a routine traffic stop.
Back to Buckner:
It’s not unlike what might have happened back in May in Louisville if it wasn’t the two-time Masters champion pulled over and apprehended outside of Valhalla Golf Club and instead was just some regular guy. Following the early-morning arrest of an anonymous driver, would the city’s mayor and chief of police had held a joint news conference to announce discipline for an officer who did not activate his body camera? Highly unlikely.
The traffic stop involving Scottie Scheffler ultimately ended with that same officer wishing Scheffler “all the best,” though he still claimed he had been run over and dragged by Scheffler’s car. By Monday morning of this week, the police union representing the Miami-Dade department offered a more contentious response. To combat the viral cellphone video, the union described Hill as “uncooperative” during the stop and said he had to be “redirected to the ground.” By Monday evening, footage from an officer’s body camera surfaced and showed a handcuffed Hill hesitating to take a seat on the curb before another officer charges in and forcefully takes him down.
The analogy is a good one and, again, one that focuses on celebrity rather than race. (Scheffler is white.) Scheffler, though, was non-confrontational. He wasn’t breaking the law but driving where he’d previously been told he was supposed to drive but met with security personnel who weren’t aware of who he was or that he’d been given those instructions.
All of this makes Hill’s hypothetical even more provocative. We now know what happens when Scheffler or Hill get pulled over for a traffic stop. They’re athletes with loads of fame, armies of adoring fans and more money than they can ever spend. One receives the equivalent of a thank-you note from the detective who arrested him. The other learns after the game about the swift action conducted by the police department in scrutinizing one of its own despite the union’s spin.
But what if it wasn’t the top-ranked golfer in the world? Would another man in an orange jumpsuit get offered a sandwich as Scheffler said he was by a police officer? Would he be released ahead of his tee time? Would he deserve the benefit of the doubt afforded to a successful and likable pro athlete, when so many other times — from certain communities that still hold law enforcement in reverence — the badge automatically receives that trust?
Obviously not. But, again, it’s really a different situation: Scheffler is a model citizen accidentally detained by officers providing security for a huge event in which Scheffler was a major participant.
What if that was not Tyreek Hill? Would Dolphins fans driving by protest on his behalf, yelling toward officers to “Chill out!” once they notice who’s on the ground? Would the director of the police department have “requested an immediate review of all the details surrounding the incident” — releasing that statement before the game even began? Would he receive an outpouring of support from a high-powered sports agent, a sympathetic audience on social media and voices in an NFL locker room?
Again, of course not. But that would be bizarre behavior for a non-celebrity. None of that would have happened if I had been stopped, either.
Waaay down into the piece, inevitably I guess, race makes its appearance:
Though there appeared to be people of color among the arresting officers Sunday, a racial element still hangs over the image of Hill in handcuffs. Just as the nonchalance of his teammates makes clear — this is a real and familiar nightmare for many Black men in America. He might be Tyreek Hill, but even he was grabbed by a police officer just below his neck and forced down.
Again, though, all Hill had to do was comply with perfectly reasonable and politely-delivered instructions from the detaining officer and none of that would have happened.
There’s still something else: the recognition that wealth and fame can level the playing field during encounters with law enforcement, that the rapid delivery of justice becomes a bit more certain when the whole world is watching.
The traffic stops involving Hill and Scheffler were unfortunate, but the subsequent actions were not shocking. The famous athletes received treatment after their encounters that citizens of lesser status and in lower tax brackets would not.
The star wide receiver’s question was on point: What if he wasn’t Tyreek Hill? Would police be hastening to get to the bottom of this? Would he have missed work, vainly telling anyone who would listen that he didn’t understand why officers pulled him to the ground? Had there not been someone holding up a cellphone, would we, the public, have automatically rushed to his defense? Or would we assume he must have done something wrong to get himself put in handcuffs?
Again: He did do something wrong. First, he was driving recklessly in violation of the law. Second, he repeatedly refused reasonable police instructions at a legitimate traffic stop.
But because he is Tyreek Hill, this might get resolved ahead of Week 2. He might even end up filming a public service announcement with Miami-Dade police about safe driving. Hill, a somebody in the NFL, doesn’t have to live with a more disturbing alternative.
One suspects that were Hill not an athlete making millions a year, he’d have been wearing his seatbelt or, if not, would have followed instructions. But we’ll never know.
Police often come across as bullies. You give people power to use force on others, they’re going to want to make use of it, or they will resort to it in short order.
So I’ll cite Niven’s Law: don’t throw sh*t at an armed man.
I’m still shocked and appalled about caught-on-video illegal, extrajudicial execution of Sandra Massey by a corrupt, racist cop earlier this summer.
Maybe if she were Tyreek Hill more people would have cared about this notorious crime.
Hill should know by now that you can’t be an entitled jerk if you are a black man – no matter how much money you have.
That’s reserved only for wealthy white folks.
Policing in this country is abhorrent. Officers are under-trained, under paid, and work in a patchwork of various city, county and state offices and under a multitude of different kinds of leadership. They also have some of the strongest unions which makes accountability more difficult. Add to that the fact that officers can literally run away from their transgressions by simply getting a job in a new town due to a lack of information sharing among all of these authorities.
Throw on top of that the fact that training regimes in the US averages about 20 weeks. Compare that to most other countries were training requires 1 to 3 years and many require collage degrees. Also the emphasis in that training on military tactics like marksmanship and defensive tactics, almost nothing about soft skills, problem-solving, and critical thinking. And we haven’t even mentioned the general corruption and infiltration by white supremacists (something I have direct experience with when I worked a few summers at the county law enforcement gun range as a teenager. And things haven’t changed a lot since then).
While I am fully in agreement that giving police officers grief on a traffic stop is not a great strategy for a smooth traffic stop, police seem to have only two postures, sternly courteous to throwing people on the ground and handcuffs (not all, but way too many). I say this even as the last traffic stop I can recall was a refreshing exercise in law enforcement courtesy (but then again I’m am old white guy). And this isn’t a race thing, I have been a passenger during stops where the driver, usually a friend, would start arguing with the officer right off the bat and doing everything they could to get cuffed (and did on at least one occasion). Hell my dad was one of those guys always arguing and acting pissed off on a stop.
I do understand how frustrating it must be to be an officer who starts to get lip from the word go by an entitled, self involved rich guy, but I would take lessons from those Judges who have to deal with these Sovern Citizen yahoos who pop up form time to time and the Judge just takes it all in stride and doesn’t seem to take it personally before he or she slams down the gavel and says “guilty”. The police should be trained to have a lot more composure with idiots because the USA is full of them.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. The officers violated the first rule which is to de-escalate and defuse the situation, if they cannot follow that simple rule, they should not be police officers. That said, 100 mph is a 5 day jail sentence here in Northern Virginia, just ask Jeyson Werth (former Nats player).
What made me laugh about this story is how fast the police are willing to release body cam footage when it doesn’t make them look bad. IF the police had been power tripping we’d be waiting at least a few more months before the footage would be released.
@Tony W:
God I hate this, and I fear it. I grew up on the south side of Chicago and I can tell you for damn sure that white cops are more than willing to curb stomp a white guy. My white, blond haired, blue eyed, 5′ 4″, 17 year old best friend was beaten so bad for “getting mouthy” I couldn’t recognize him, after one much larger cop held him for another to repeatedly punch him in the face as hard as he could. Of course nothing happened to the cops. I try to tell my daughter this, as she is frequently at protests in NYC. I’m not warning her off protesting but rather trying to get her to realize that “this would never happen if you were white” (which she is) gives her false security. It most certainly can happen if you are white. Such officers are looking for victims they can get away with assaulting. If they put you in that category for any reason, you are in danger.
I’d be ok with the cops arresting him for that, rather than just issuing him a ticket and sending him on his way. You don’t do that unless you’re either a Grade A Asshole or you’re on drugs making you a Grade A Asshole — take him to the station for a drug screen.
Sure, police should be trained to deescalate, but beyond that, fuck this guy.
I have noticed that in terms of police ever actually getting disciplined, that too disproportionately falls on police officers of colour. However, I’m not basing this on any scientific studies and may be incorrect.
The police are just jerks about stupid things, often hoping for a response. I was busted for fare evasion last year after someone held a gate for me while I was carrying a surfboard. The cops came off immediately as patronizing, as if I might learn a lesson from my behavior.
I suspect that Tyreek Hill, regardless of what type of person he is, has a legitimate reason as a black man to be tired of the cops giving the same behavior for things like excessive speeding in a fancy car. He’s undoubtedly been treated worse numerous times. (Given his past, karma-wise he deserves all of this treatment.) But it’s not like the police are better than him in the matter of domestic violence.
The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed a rapist and convicted felon whose thugs attacked police over the course of hours on January 6. Thugs supporting a thug.
That said, don’t drive your $250,000 car at 100 mph in a 55 zone. I’ve been pulled over a few times for speeding. You know how I handle it?
Officer: Do you know why I pulled you over?
Me: I imagine it’s because I was speeding.
Twice of the last three times the cop let me go with a verbal warning because they were shocked I told the truth. The other guy was CHP. We had a pleasant chat and he wrote me a ticket.
@MarkedMan: I think that the addition of “wealthy” (and by extension therefore, adult and “serious looking”) mitigates Tony W.’s statement in ways you are finessing by. Just taking a wild guess, I suspect that 17-y-o you and your 17-y-o friend were in no danger of being mistaken for “wealthy white folk.” Your point about police-ish thugs taking advantage of the weak is a strong point, but it doesn’t obviate the power that whiteness combined with the trappings of wealth and power play in the transaction.
To put it in a slightly different way relative to the white privilege question, perhaps your blond, blue-eyed, 5′ 4″ 17-year-old friend made the mistake of not realizing that he wasn’t “white” enough yet to talk back to police thugs (a bad idea no matter how “white” one is, by the way, but most of us were taught that by our parents). Still, your warnings to your daughter are good, if not effective. I wish you well on not needing to do a “well, I did warn you about this” lamentation. Hopefully, your daughter is smart enough to realize the importance of a strategic retreat just before the smoke grenades and tear gas are deployed. She’ll be fine, trust her.
“Redirected to the ground.” George Orwell, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
I’ve seen the clips (with the sound off) at a sports bar with some friends. Hill was “redirected” from behind by an officer who shoved him hard to the pavement. And the Miami-Dade police have moved fast to contain the PR damage which tells me right there they want this over with fast.
I think the message this might send to cops around the country is that the public is getting increasingly fed up with these kind of events, whether someone was “uncooperative” or not, and that they can no longer count on automatic support. About time. Maybe hire decent cops and these kind of problems won’t happen.
Wrong. Scheffler was arrested for second-degree assault of a police officer, a class-C felony, and three misdemeanors: third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving, disregarding traffic signals from an officer directing traffic and should have been charged with contempt of cop and obstruction. Far worst than misdemeanor speeding, not wearing a seat belt, contempt of cop and obstruction.
Prosecutor dropped the case because he has tens of millions of dollars and the US legal system favors the rich. Oh and the video showed the cop was a liar.
Tyreek Hill was Insufficiently Servile and didn’t show complete, unquestioning obedience that cops demand excusing bad cops abusing their authority to show a rich black guy who is boss.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is on topic because? Can I bring up the Miami cops who attacked and arrested someone recording them in a hotel?
FWIW, NPR and the AP have reported he was going 60. I think it was either a 40 or 45 zone.
Where was 100 MPH reported?
Via the AP:
TMZ has the ticket: 60 in a 40.
@Michael Reynolds: I’ve been pulled over for speeding a few times, like about once a decade. Except for one stop, I’ve just played the game. You got me fair and square, my role is to look whitebread and unthreatening and be respectful, his job is to give me a ticket, or if I get lucky, a warning. It’s Kabuki. I did bite my lip a bit while one guy gave me a lecture on safety while he was riding a Harley in the rain wearing a toy helmet.
On one occasion with an Indiana state cop, I hadn’t been speeding. He asked if I knew how fast I was going. I replied only, “Yes, I do.” He eventually said I had a bad attitude but he was going to let me off with a warning anyway.
@Paul L.:
Fine by me, and if you can link it somehow to the police fraternity supporting Trump being all okie dokie, more power to you.
@gVOR10: Once upon a time, we had live traffic school in CA, and I went to one because of a speeding ticket. The instructor gave us this advice: “if an officer asks you how fast you were going, it’s because he doesn’t know.” I have found this to be true. When I am stopped, they tell me what was wrong, mostly. They don’t ask. You do not have to incriminate yourself. One answer said instructor (who was a black truck driver, by the way) said he gave once was, “Well, it must have been too fast, or we wouldn’t be talking.” Which doesn’t come off as defiant, but doesn’t incriminate one’s self, either.
Only once has an officer asked me if I knew why he was stopping me, and in that instance, I honestly didn’t know. It was for failing to yield to pedestrians. I would have liked to talk to the judge about it, but I couldn’t afford (in points, not money) an adverse judgement, so I took the traffic school (which was now online) route instead.
@Steven L. Taylor: Pretty sure I saw fox news and some others report it was 100 in a 55. There’s some youtube “news videos” reporting it too.
@Jay L Gischer:
I wonder if replying, “No, but I can tell you where I’ve been,” would elicit a chuckle or a psychiatric hold.
I can’t remember the last time I got a ticket, and there have certainly been times when I deserved one, but got a pass. Could be due to the detailed instructions my attorney father gave me on “how not to have problems with cops” when I was a teenager. Being white and having a desireable zip code on my drivers licence does not hurt.
@Jay L Gischer:
I belive that has been banned in CA.
@Jay L Gischer: Asking how fast == doesn’t know must be an LA or Cali thing. The times I was asked, the officer had a made-up number of his own that was about 10 or 15 above what I was doing. (For the record, my answer was always “about the speed limit according to my speedometer.” In one particularly egregious case where I was guilty of “driving while teenaged,” the officers account was that he clocked me doing 65 in a 30 zone, but he was going to give me a break and say it was only 50. 🙁 )
@Paul L.:
Because it’s never a bad time to remind culties like you that your messiah is a rapist, a convicted felon, a con man, a nepo baby, a pathological liar and the kind of all-around POS that only another POS could like. Also he evidently smells like his diapers.
@gVOR10:
I look at it as a game. I am running down the field at a certain speed. I’m trying to score a touchdown by reaching my destination un-tackled. When I get tackled, it’s a part of the game. I took a chance, I lost.
“We tell you do something you do it!”
@Michael Reynolds:
Got it off. Off topic is something that upset the narrative. BTW to answer your question in a previous post after adjudicated rapist and convicted felon Trump is imprisoned, I plan to continue following my queens Sarah Palin and Lauren Boobert.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Don’t encourage this guy. This whole thread will be about how the bitches be lyin’ when they cry rape…
First, it doesn’t matter whether the cops were “perfectly reasonable and politely-delivered” (they weren’t). They didn’t have a legal reason to manhandle any citizen.
Second, Hill himself had a perfectly reasonable reason to not keep his window rolled down – trying to minimize this being “an issue” by preventing being recognized and filmed.
Bottom-line, the cops didn’t try to deescalate – which is THEIR JOB. In fact, they dramatically and unnecessarily escalated the situation.
Hill wasn’t uncooperative with being stopped and complied with providing his license and registration. Being irritated and telling them to just get this over is protected speech.
First, the claim 100 mph is unsupported by the facts. It is implausible given the road and the traffic. 60 in a 40 is the reported ticket and aligns with experience.
Second, the claimed reason that they insisted he unrolled his window is because his windows were tinted and therefore it is a safety issue*, then how the hell did they see well enough while he is driving to claim that he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt?
* Again, if that is their reason, they should have explained it to him why they wanted the window open. Instead of a dialogue, they escalated into violence. It isn’t ok.
This post was wrong about the Scottie Scheffler arrest and Tyreek Hill detainment in trying to justify the Police misconduct in both cases.
To quote Dr. James Joyner military academic expert colleague Dr. Tom Nichols.
@Michael Reynolds: people today have lost respect for other folks, no matter what color that they are or their status in the community.
@Gustopher:
100 mph Do you know what the citation that took 20 minutes to write said? Visual estimation of 60 mph. I.e. Officer Danny Torres pulled it out of his butt.