TYREEK HILL MISTREATED THE POLICE AND IS DEAD WRONG IN A DEBATE-MAD STORY
The body camera video was conclusive — he was stopped for speeding his McLaren, on a street outside the stadium — and his rudeness and refusal to keep his car window open exacerbated his crime issues
Welcome to a monstrous story that will divide Americans, as a presidential debate convenes, with Donald Trump destroying Tyreek Hill and Kamala Harris defending him. It’s also a fanboy tale of sports nutballs defending the NFL’s hottest gamebreaker while the rest of us want tranquility. Again, for the second time, Hill is a man with a long-term evil streak who should have avoided the Sunday mess outside Hard Rock Stadium.
He did not. And I will be called a racist and a superstar-hater, though I am neither and just want Hill to be an upstanding gentleman when it isn’t possible.
Now we’ve seen the body camera video. He was a superstar in a sports car. The police stopped him with concerns about his speeding as traffic was gathering before a Miami Dolphins game, in vehicles driven by fans who pay his $120 million contract. Hill could have circumvented his problems — just as he could have avoided domestically assaulting a pregnant girlfriend, just as he could have avoided a second allegation of domestic violence, and just as he could have avoided being sued by a social media influencer who said he “forcefully” broke her leg in a football drill.
All he had to do was comply with the officers. He chose to be a smartass, which is why he was detained and pulled to the ground in a wild story. He spent the next two days trying to pull together the people of south Florida, which is insane, when he said, “I’m a good ole country boy from south Georgia, man. I’m not a big believer in dividing people.” He has done precisely that, giving this country another “racial” story about cops picking on a Black player — when back in May, golfing star Scottie Scheffler was arrested for driving in the wrong direction at the PGA Championship and spent time in a Louisville jail.
He is white.
Enough with the enmity. If the person in Hill’s car happened to be you or me or most others in America, we would not have been speeding at 60 mph on a street outside the stadium in Miami Gardens. That was Problem No. 1 for Hill, who drove past two officers in his McLaren 720S. They stopped him, as they should have, and they did not care that his speed as a human being is a prime reason why the Dolphins are playoff contenders. One knocked on his driver’s window, which makes sense, and he was told to open the window, which also makes sense. When Hill gave him a license, he could have said nothing or apologized for going too fast. He did not. The window was shut.
“Don’t knock on my window like that,” Hill said, again and again, as if bothered by an incident that he initiated.
“I have to knock to let you know I am here,” said the officer, who also wondered why Hill wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. That was Problem No. 2 for Hill, who exacerbated the mess with his tinted window — allowing him to ignore speaking to the police — and said in the same tone, “Just give me my ticket, bro, so I can go. I am going to be late. Do what you gotta do.”
“Keep your window down,” said the officer — again, doing his job.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” said Hill, opening the window briefly and closing it.
One more time, the officer told him to open the window. Another officer appeared, and rather than letting Hill proceed to the players’ parking lot, he wanted action. Do we blame him? How many criminals are driving with guns in a car in suburban Miami? The officers simply would give him a break because they’re Dolphins fans with a fantasy team? That’s what the sports crowd wants — screw the law, protect Tyreek.
It wasn’t happening. “I am going to get you out of the car. As a matter of fact, get out of the car right now. We’re not playing this game,” said one officer, followed by a second who said, “Get out of the car or I will break that ... window.” That is where the police weakened, using an obscenity, but how many creeps do they deal with on roads? An officer reached into the car, grabbing Hill by the arm and the back of his head and pulling him to the ground.
“I am getting out,” Hill said.
He challenged the police. They bit back. With a knee in the middle of Hill’s back, an officer told him, “If we tell you to do something, do it.”
“You’re a little f—ing confused,” another officer said.
“Take me to jail, brother, do what you gotta do,” Hill said.
“We are,” an officer said.
“You crazy,” Hill said.
They didn’t take him to jail, pulling him up and walking him to a sidewalk. “I had surgery on my knee, bro,” said Hill, who was positioned with a bar around his upper chest. This is what the police do to people who don’t behave. It would have happened to you or me, with a likely visit to a station. Hill was detained and entered the stadium, where he caught seven passes for 130 yards, including an 80-yard touchdown in a 20-17 win over Jacksonville. After which, Hill reenacted his detainment in a gag as teammate Jaylen Waddle held his hands behind his back.
The incident should have ended there. Hill starred. The Dolphins won. But Hill and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, turned this into an ugly national story. “I hate talking like this, man, because I have a kid fan base,” Hill said. “But the reality of it, yeah, it’s the truth. If I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, worst-case scenario, we would have had a different article — ‘Tyreek Hill got shot in front of Hard Rock Stadium.’ That’s worst-case scenario. Or ‘Tyreek Hill put in handcuffs and taken in and booked.’
“It felt like I was a threat, and I don’t see why they felt like I was a threat.”
No, Hill played football after speeding and refusing to wear a seatbelt. Yet the Dolphins, who don’t need this headache, said they were “saddened” by developments. Did owner Stephen Ross, general manager Chris Grier and coach Mike McDaniel notice the bad acts in the front seat of the McLaren? Apparently not when they have eyes on the Kansas City Chiefs, claming Hill was subjected to “overly aggressive and violent” tactics — when he was the one who initiated and prolonged the confrontation.
“As is on full display in the videos released tonight, there are some officers who mistake their responsibility and commitment to serve with misguided power,” the team said. “While we commend MDPD for taking the right and necessary action to quickly release this footage, we also urge them to take equally swift and strong action against the officers who engaged in such despicable behavior.”
Said McDaniel: “It’s been hard for me not to find myself more upset the more I think about it. Trying to put myself in that emotion or that situation that they described emotionally and then knowing more than that. The thing that f— me up, honestly, to be frank, is knowing that I don’t know what that feels like I think it’s supremely important to wait for information to be gathered before any rush to judgment. Regardless, I know the feelings expressed to me are … unsettling. Two things did come from the adversity. I’m super proud of teammates being teammates and super proud of our guys understanding the civic responsibility of a platform and intending to do right by it.”
McDaniel is wrong. I was right when I wrote it Monday. I’m right today. We are not involved in sports to protect Tyreek Hill from himself, but apparently, the police are supposed to let him break laws with too much jibber-jabber.
The officers, from Miami-Dade, are represented by a union that criticized Hill for being “uncooperative.” You think? “An incident occurred where Tyreek Hill was placed in handcuffs before being released. He was briefly detained for officer safety, after driving in a manner in which he was putting himself and others in great danger,” said Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association. “Upon being stopped, Mr. Hill was not immediately cooperative with the officers on scene who, pursuant to policy and for their immediate safety, placed Mr. Hill in handcuffs. Mr. Hill, still uncooperative, refused to sit on the ground and was therefore redirected to the ground. Once the situation was sorted out within a few minutes, Mr. Hill was issued two traffic citations and was free to leave.”
How nice if Trump and Harris ignored Hill. They won’t. Already, we have the one and only Jemele Hill writing, “A reminder that Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins, is a huge Donald Trump supporter — the same Trump who supports giving ALL police immunity from prosecution. Do with that what you will.” Yep, Ross was responsible for the McLaren and the speeding and the cops. It’s all on him. Never mind Scheffler.
This is the biggest story in a nation that might decide a presidential favorite based on their comments. If Trump does what Tyreek didn’t do — keeps his cool — he’ll simply state the facts. Ain’t that America, straight from south Georgia.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.