September 10, 2024
Police Union Says Tyreek Hill Was ‘Uncooperative’ During Traffic Stop
Hill discussed the incident in an interview with NBC Nightly News, saying that he thinks that if he wasn't Tyreek Hill, NFL wide receiver, he could have ended up dead.
As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, Tyreek Hill was violently detained ahead of the Miami Dolphins home opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sept 8. After the release of the bodycam video to the public on Sept. 9, both the police union and the Miami Dolphins released statements. The Dolphins characterized the officer who pulled Hill out of his vehicle as overly aggressive and violent, while the police union said that the star wide receiver was uncooperative.
According to The Athletic, after the police approached Hill, he rolled his window up. The police told him to keep his window down, and when Hill didn’t roll it down to their liking, one officer opened his car door, grabbed him by the neck, and pulled him out of the vehicle. Hill was placed face down on the street and handcuffed.
“It is both maddening and heartbreaking to watch the very people we trust to protect our community use such unnecessary force and hostility towards these players,” the Miami Dolphins organization said in a statement released on Sept. 9.
Hill discussed the incident in an interview with NBC Nightly News, saying that he thinks that if he wasn’t Tyreek Hill, NFL wide receiver, he could have ended up dead.
“If I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, Lord knows, I probably would have been, like, worst-case scenario, I would have been shot or would have been locked up” and “put behind bars, you know, for a simple speeding ticket. And that’s crazy that officers would take it, you know, to that level.”
Hill continued, “It just went from 0 to 60, man, from the moment that those guys pulled up behind me, knocked on my window, it went from 0 to 60 immediately.” Some of his teammates, notably defensive lineman Calais Campbell, came out to watch the arrest, and Hill said that Campbell was likely arrested because he was a large Black man.
“When I saw Jonnu (Smith) and Calais pull up … I didn’t feel alone anymore,” Hill said. “They ended up handcuffing Calais for just being 6 ‘8, I think. But it was crazy. It was crazy how that same officer who took me down handcuffed Calais for just standing on the side. That officer was really on a power trip,” he said. “He felt like he just needed to…do something that day, you know. But like I said, I’m glad nobody was hurt.”
Hill’s attorney, Julius Collins, released a statement to ESPN indicating that the wide receiver’s legal team was beginning to explore their options. “Mr. Hill’s legal team is exploring all legal remedies that may be available to Mr. Hill as we believe that the officers’ actions on September 8, 2024 were excessive.”
Steadman Stahl, the president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association (a police union), said, in part, in a statement that Hill only had himself to blame for the escalation of the situation.
“If Mr. Hill would have just complied, it would have just sped the process up. He chose not to, he chose to escalate the situation and turn it into something bigger than the Dolphins’ win itself,” Stahl said.
Collins disputed this assessment of the situation in his statement to ESPN, “To be clear, the traffic-stop of Mr. Hill by officers of the Miami-Dade Police Department originated as a traffic infraction but was then escalated after Mr. Hill provided officers his driver’s license and then rolled his window back up,” Collins said.
Collins continued, “One of the officers then knocked on Mr. Hill’s driver side window and advised Mr. Hill to keep his window rolled down otherwise he was going to get him out of the car. Mr. Hill had his window rolled down and that officer then demanded Mr. Hill out of the vehicle even after Mr. Hill complied with that officer’s request to keep his window down. Immediately after, another officer then aggressively approached Mr. Hill’s vehicle and stated something to the effect that ‘if we have to break that f—ing window we will.’ Mr. Hill rolled down his window each time he was requested to do so by the requesting officers.”
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