Admin September 10, 2024
Tyreek Hill bodycam: Police detain Dolphins star outside stadium
Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill was pushed to the ground by an officer when being detained by Miami-Dade police just outside Hard Rock Stadium.
Video of Miami-Dade police detaining Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill was released Monday night and it showed what many of us believed it would: belligerent cops escalating the situation far beyond what they needed to.
What you see on the footage is an immensely dangerous situation that did not have to go the way it did. It did because of the police. They made this unnecessary. They made this scary. They made this ugly. We see the officers on a power trip and going to extremes they didn’t need to.
That is why the officers involved in this disgrace need to lose their jobs. It needs to happen immediately. But something else needs to occur. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has to condemn what happened in the strongest possible terms. He’s a high-profile conservative voice who could use his power and influence to effect change.
The team released a powerful statement but that’s not enough. We need to hear from Ross.
If there was one mistake Hill made, as the video shows, it’s that he believed his wealth and status would protect him from belligerent officers. He’s Black. He’s not part of the protected class. Far from it. As we’ve seen with the murder of George Floyd and many, many other Black men killed by police, we are targets.
TYREEK HILL DETAINMENT: What we know, what we don’t about incident with police
The video shows police in Miami Gardens, Florida, pulling the Dolphins player over during a traffic stop for what the police say was speeding.
“Don’t knock on my window like that,” Hill told the officer repeatedly, at least seven times. “Give me my ticket, bro, so I can go. Do what you have to do.”
Hill rolls his window up again, and after one of the officers knocks on it twice more, the cop gets unnecessarily belligerent. This is where things get highly problematic and escalates to a point where people need to be fired.
“Keep your window down or I’m going to get you out of the car. As a matter of fact, get out of the car. … Get out of the car right now. We’re not playing this game. Get out. Get out!”
The door of Hill’s McLaren 720S coupe raises and at least three officers start pulling him out of the car and he is violently thrown to the ground.
Later, Hill can be heard saying in the background: “I’m just being a Black man, that’s it. I’m just being Black in America, bruh … I’m just being a Black man in America, bruh, with a nice car.”
And in that moment, Hill is stripped bare. No big contract. No wide receiver. No wealth. Nothing. And that, to me, was the point all along. The hE ShULd jeSt coMplY crowd will say if Hill had just rolled his window down and spoke nicely to the cops, none of this would have happened.
All of that is just wrong. First, Black Americans comply all the time and still end up dead. We get shot while our hands are up, holding a cellphone, walking home from a store, handcuffed on the ground, asleep in our own homes, walking around our living rooms, shot 20 times while standing in a backyard eating ice cream and on and on it goes.
Second, do you think Hill is the first person to ever mouth off to a cop? People do it all the time and they don’t end up face down on the street. Not to mention that officers detained teammate Calais Campbell who, unlike the cops, attempted to de-escalate the situation, approaching the scene holding his hands up, signaling his intent was nonviolent. He was also handcuffed for … for … what? All Campbell did was stand on the sidewalk, video footage shows.
What’s the reason for detaining him exactly? What did he do?
One of the officers responded to Hill’s comment about being Black, saying: “We’re dark too, brother. We’re people of color, too. Don’t play (it like that).”
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But, to me, they were playing it like that. There’s decades, if not centuries, of proof that police are more hostile to Black Americans. Cops adapt to the racism of the system. Multiple Black police officers are accused of killing Tyre Nichols. Overly violent and aggressive police are the issue, not their race.
We got to this place because police overreacted. Badly. Hugely. People need to be fired.
Now.