Tyreek Hill incident should frighten everyone who drives on America’s roads…
Joe
Unless you’ve been locked away somewhere without any means of communicating with the world y’all have some knowledge that Miami Dolphins star wide receiver Tyreek Hill got pulled over by Miami-Dade cops and wound up getting handcuffed and his face mushed into the ground.
Miami-Dade police “detaining” Tyreek Hill.
Essentially a basic traffic stop (for whatever supposed violation he was being pulled over for) escalated way the fuck out of control and could have wound up a lot more serious than it eventually did become.
And the thing is what transpired with Hill is exactly what goes on between hundreds of thousands s of people across America. Every day… right now, this very moment… I guarantee y’all there are countless numbers of we the peoples being pulled over for minor traffic violations and then because some police officer doesn’t think he is being shown the proper respect… no “yes sir” or “officer” or proper amount of groveling in deference to the badge… and seemingly out of nowhere the shit hits the fan.
And understand this, since the incident happened Sunday morning, Tyreek Hill has come out and said he “could have been better” in terms of how he handled the situation. In fact this is exactly what Hill said… “My whole life is all about accountability. How can I get better? I will say I could have been better. I could have let down my window in that instant. But the thing about me is, man, I don’t want attention. I don’t want [there] to be cameras out, phones on you in that moment — but at the end of the day, I’m human. I’ve got to follow rules. I got to do what everyone else would do.”
And then immediately followed that with…
“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 a bit differently.”
And…
Hill is 100% correct.
Because he wasn’t all “officer, sir” with the proper tone, obeisance, gives no cop anywhere in the United States of America the right to literally beat the dog out of him or anyone else.
Despite the Miami-Dade cops union issuing a statement that essentially said that the situation escalated the way it did was due to Hill being “uncooperative,” the released body camera footage shows Hill cooperating… doing it with a “Give me my ticket bro, so I can go. I’m going to be late. Do what you’ve got to do.” Attitude. Still… he was cooperating.
Miami Police Union release statement calling Tyreek Hill “Uncooperative” and say “He initiated the unfortunate incident.”
For this incident to from basic traffic stop to “Get out of the car right now. We’re not playing this game” and Hill being grabbed by the neck, yanked from his car and thrust him facedown to the pavement with knees in his back, as his elbows get twisted across his back and then handcuffed.
There’s other stuff that goes on in the body cam film… stuff that is frankly kinda scary.
Stuff that includes the fact that as Hill was being “detained” by the Miami-Dade police officers two other Dolphin players… Jonnu Smith and Calais Campbell… stopped at the scene Sunday to find out what was going down with their teammate when one of the cops get aggressive toward the two and actually detaining Campbell for what he said the cops told was for “disobeying a direct order.”
And here is the really scary part of it all… this entire scenario unfolded because a person did not act the in accordance with a cop’s expectations and do it with the right amount of respect and speed.
They got offended, pissed off. And decided something needed to be done to right the situation and prove who was in charge of the situation that was going down.
It ultimately was.. and is… all about power. And obedience. An obedience of bowing before a power that is supposedly backed by law. Being obedient with just the right “Yes, Master” tone of voice.
Hill also told reporters “… obviously, like I said, I can be better, but it’s shell-shocking, man. It is really crazy to know that you have officers in this world that will literally do that with bodycams on. It’s sad. It’s really sad. Which brings up another conversation and leads into what would they do if they didn’t have bodycams? Which is even crazier. So, it’s a lot to unpack, man.”
And again I point out… How often does that what went down with Hill, that eventually included two teammates play out from one end of the country to the other?
Cops on power trips, armed to the teeth, and especially armed with the attitude “I am entitled to do whatever I please because I can. I am a cop.”
Yeah, cops have hard jobs and there are bad people out there but the overwhelming amount of the time people who get pulled over for traffic violations are not hard, bad-ass criminals out to get cops.
And yeah what happens if Hill didn’t get off a call to one of the Dolphins’ front office peeps who somehow must have intervened to calm the situation down so Hill and his mates could be released and sent on their way in time for the kickoff of the Dolphins’ season opener Sunday against the Jaguars.
Essentially Hill told the cops write me a ticket and let me get on my way.
A cop didn’t like the tone he delivered the message with and took upon himself, along with his cop buddies, to assert his authority and teach the rich guy in the fancy sport car a lesson in manners and respect.
According to what I know about general police procedures for forcibly removing a person from a vehicle is “fear of life or death.”
In the cops own body cam films that was never shown… there is no evidence the cops, or anyone else’s, lives were in danger, or a death was imminent. Hill may have been somewhat surly, but he was obeying the cops orders, and he was never resisting.
Why do so many police traffic stops turn deadly?
And had not the other players arrived on the scene… how quickly could the entire scenario had gone from go from “traffic stop” to “get out of the car and do what we tell ya to do” to a George Floyd scenario with the cops saying he “resisted arrest” and “they feared for their safety.”
Simply put…
There is no excuse for Hill… or anyone in America who has ever been in, or is in, or will be in a similar situation… to be treated as he was treated in what was shown on the Miami-Dade cops body cam footage.
No one wants to defund the police… or in my way of thinking… no one should want to defund the cops.
Instead we should want to… we need to… reeducate the police. And do it by having policies and procedures in place to weed out the bad cops and hopefully prevent those of that ilk from becoming cops in the first place when they are in training to become police/peace officers serving and protecting the communities they work within.
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