NFL star Tyreek Hill’s handcuffing detention revives fears of racist police excesses against Black Americans

After Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill scored an 80-yard touchdown against Jacksonville Jaguars earlier this week, the NFL star subtly put both his hands behind his back to ridicule his handcuffed detention a few hours earlier.

The American football star had been pulled out of his car by a police officer and pushed to the ground after refusing to roll down the car window fully when stopped for a speeding violation.
The television cameras cut away quickly from the celebration, but Hill’s mocking of being restrained just outside the stadium capped off an eventful day for the thirty-year-old Black athlete.

“What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, bro, worst-case scenario,” he asked after the game on Sunday. Would his predicament have become worse if he wasn’t a famous Black man and a well-known sports star with resources, was the deeper question an emotional Hill was bringing up. Or would he have been treated differently if he belonged to a different race?

Here is the body cam footage from Tyreek Hill’s detainment before the Miami Dolphins game. This level of aggression and demeaning behavior was not necessary. This is an excessive overuse of power. pic.twitter.com/yrLifkdRle

— Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) September 10, 2024

Police body-cam videos give a clearer picture of how things unfolded and escalated and have divided opinion about who was in the wrong.

Hill was pulled out of his car, pushed to the ground and handcuffed after he had handed his driving license through the partially open car window. In police body-cam videos, the officer can be heard threatening to ‘break the freaking window’ after Hill rolls it up. Hill does not comply when the officer asks him to ‘keep his window down’.

Hill’s teammate Calais Campbell, also a Black man, who stopped by to try and defuse the situation was also put in handcuffs.

Hill’s family was also traumatized. When he went out to the grocery after the incident, Hill said his wife called him 10 times to check if he was ok. Hill is lucky things didn’t go from bad to worse for him.

#Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill says he wants officer Danny Torres to be fired.

“Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. He’s gotta go, man. You… OUTTT.”

Hill says it’s not even just about him. He says Torres mistreated his teammates, “who ain’t even do nothing.”pic.twitter.com/SvX6Kzm5Qo

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) September 11, 2024

A research paper called ‘Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex’ published by PNAS, a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences, found that ‘Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the life course than are white men. Black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than are white women.’

Three years ago, the Los Angeles Times cited a study based on analysis of body camera footage which concluded that police officers spoke to black men in a less friendly tone when compared to white men during traffic stops.

Another study showed that sleeplessness increased among black people after incidents of mistrust between them and the police which led to deaths. “Sleep health among Black adults worsened after exposure to officer-involved killings of unarmed Black individuals,” a study published in 2021 in the Jama Internal Medicine journal said.

Haunting recollection

Hill admitted that he could have handled the situation better when he was asked to pull over but wondered how the police would behave if they didn’t have body cams on. The cops also mockingly asked him if he needed an ear surgery; a reference to Hill not rolling down the car window. This was just after he told them the knee on which he had surgery in the off-season had been hurt when they handcuffed him.

“I got to follow rules… you know like everyone else would do…Now does that give them the right to literally beat the dog out of me? Absolutely not. But at the end of the day I wish I could go back and do things differently,” Hill said.

Hill isn’t going to take a knee in future games nor was he going to call for defunding the police nor was he going to protest. “Football is my therapy, this is how I get away from a lot of stuff. This is how I separate myself from past traumas in my life,” Hill said during a press conference on Wednesday.

When asked to talk about what he experienced at the hands of the police, Hill likened it to ‘being in a movie’.

“I don’t know bro like… choked, pinched, all of that man. I am just glad to be here so I can tell this story man. This is truly shocking to me. It is embarrassing because I got kids and when I FaceTime my kids they are like ‘dad are you all right’.?

Hill wanted one of the officers involved in the incident Danny Torres, moved to administrative duty this week by the Miami-Dade police department, to be fired.

“Gone. Gone. Gone. He’s gotta go, man,” Hill said when asked about Torres. “In that instant right there, not only did he treat me bad, but he also treated my teammates with disrespect.”

Did the officers use excessive force and was their behavior too aggressive for a case of speeding? Or was it a pure case of racial profiling by the officers? Or did Hill aggravate the situation by not rolling down the car windows despite being asked to? Were the police on a power trip? The debate will rage on for a few weeks.

Hill, however, wants to see change on both sides. “I don’t think we should use this as a moment to separate people or divide people or make it a battle or anything like that.”

The body cam footage contains lessons that could help in course correction, he felt. “In football how we get better from things is we watch the tape and we get better from it and this instance we should do the same, a lot of people want to criticize. I think this could be a learning tool for everybody… civilians… officers around the world.”

He’s one of the luckier ones. He’s lived to tell the tale.

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