Seems like they could’ve just given him a ticket. Would have been safer for all involved. Instead cops escalated, making the situation more dangerous for all involved.
Don’t know why cops insist on escalating these situations and making them more dangerous.
I think I said as much in the other thread.
When you break the law and draw the attention of law enforcement, the burden is on you/us to act accordingly. That means comply with reasonable, lawful demands. He didn’t. He was removed from the vehicle and detained. Whether the amount of force used was excessive is debatable given the above context.
What isn’t debatable is that the Dolphins statement is biased, unbalanced, misrepresentative, inflammatory, and irresponsible.
Seems like they could’ve just given him a ticket. Would have been safer for all involved. Instead cops escalated, making the situation more dangerous for all involved.
Don’t know why cops insist on escalating these situations and making them more dangerous.
Yes, Just give him a ticket if he complies with LEO directives. Yes, compliance would have been safer all around. Hill escalated. LEO’s responded to non-compliance. Yes, Hill increased danger for all.
Yes. You do know why cops escalate these situations. We all look at the event from our screen. The cops look at the tinted window of a Lambo that may have a 33round clip Glock on the other side. The last thing cop may see in the reflection is himself dying. I don’t blame LEO’s at all for their aggressiveness. You want to call it violence? Be my guest. I don’t want our world to be this way, but given these circumstances, I call it a job well done. Nobody died.
Felony speeding in Florida means 50 mph above the speed limit. Unless they had a radar, I doubt they can just eye ball that. I thought the report (cited elsewhere in the thread) was that he was going 45 over the limit. That’s a misdemeanor and still empowers the police to take action. But, it’s not a felony, unless some other component of recklessness was present.
There is a separate question whether he could be arrested for refusing to obey a police order. Given the short amount of time that passed between the order and his getting pulled out of the car, that would be a tough charge to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Attitude always gets you a comeback attitude. How about the cops pull the just wait him out attitude. He was in a dangerous hurry. But, he isn’t going anywhere fast after being pulled over until the warning or ticket is issued. “I got all day son, do you?”
So why would he call his agent after getting pulled? Does he think that talking to his agent is a better strategy than talking to the officer?
His agent is a lawyer. Talking to the officer would have been a better strategy, but speaking with a lawyer is understandable.
From an optics point of view, speeding in your Ferrari, talking back to the officer about tapping on your window, rolling the window back up to avoid photos, and calling your agent instead of remaining engaged with the police all scream “entitled professional athlete.”
Unfortunately, those optics are being glossed over by media, the Dolphins, and Hill himself who are leaning into the “fire the racist cops” line of argument.
If you aren’t familiar with Tyreek’s off field drama, he isn’t exactly the best of decision makers.
Babies, on the other hand, is a different story.
Hill made a bunch of poor decisions, the most serious of which was speeding that much. I’d give him 75-80% of the fault.
Henry Ruggs IV out there, at least this one was prevented and hopefully a good lesson to all public figures that there should be a zero tolerance for driving irresponsibly.
Scottie Scheffler assaulted and dragged a police officer 20 feet who was hanging onto his car after refusing to stop at the scene of an accident. Scheffler was NOT yanked out of his car by 4 officers and shoved to the ground.
That is the context that the Dophins and Hill speak from.
That description of the event lacks a bit. And Scottie Scheffler apparently didn’t talk back to the officer, refuse to get out of his car, call his agent, roll up his window, etc. Both sides seem to have agreed that there was a miscommunication that led to confusion, and an overly zealous cop trying to hold onto the car. Contrast that with the response that screams “I’m a rich NFL player, get out of my face civil servant.” and that’s the context the Dolphins and Hill might want to consider.
Fascinating video.
Tyreek is paid to be a professional idiot (running around getting brain injuries and/or career ending injuries in front of an audience for money). And, in this video, he most definitely does not disappoint.
But the police officers in the video are paid to be calm, highly-trained professionals. (That said, if a gun was shoved in their faces, I would understand if they lost their professional demeanor.) But nothing remarkable happened in the video other than they ran into a member of the public who was a complete idiot. But how the officers reacted to this mundane event was highly, highly disappointing.
To be pedantic, his car was a McLaren and not a Ferrari. Not that it changes anything, but do not want people to have something to find a foothold to argue upon.
According to the video, one of the officers replies to Hill “we are brown too, bro” in response to something Hill said with regards to race.
This was an example of poor policing and poor decision making by the Miami officer. Hill’s actions have little bearing on the expected behavior of the officer(s). People are going to be speed and be a’holes when stopped. Entitled millionaire superstar athletes are going to be who they are.
Hill should have been allowed to run his mouth, call his agent, roll the window up, exhibit all of his poor behavior while the officers issued him a summons and sent him on his way. It seems apparent that they knew who he was. They had him stopped. He wasn’t presenting a threat and there was no reason to believe that he would present a threat.
I see no reason to pull him from the car and hadncuff him. Are the officers legally covered in their actions? Yes, they most likely are (I’m no expert in FL law but in my state this would be legally allowed). The better question is ought they to have done that and was it the best course of action? No, it was not. Though legally authorized it was not smart and it was not necessary.
The best police work is police work that effectively gets the job done and does not make the news.
And for those that feel that HIll was mostly to blame, I disagree. Criminals are going to criminal; speeders are going to speed. Cops have to expect and anticipate that. Criminals are going to be assholes. They are going to try to push your buttons. Cops can’t and shouldn’t (but too often do) get caught up in the emotion of the moment and let their egos dictate their actions instead of their brains.
@just_jack > And for those that feel that HIll was mostly to blame, I disagree. Criminals are going to criminal; speeders are going to speed.
This is nonsense. The fact that criminals will do criminal things doesn’t mean they aren’t at fault for doing those criminal things. The fact that criminals are going to be assholes doesn’t mean they’re not at fault for acting that way.
Stop trying to wish away the initial bad actor’s responsibility for their actions which instigated the entire encounter.
Of course cops should respond properly to assholes being assholes. That doesn’t remove the fault of the asshole for acting that way. It just means both the asshole and cop has fault.
Thanks for the valuable perspective.
On the question of blame, perhaps we are answering different questions. If we start the calculus after Hill has been stopped, I’d give the police the majority of the blame. But, if we look at the totality of behavior, including the moral culpability of the speeding itself, things look quite different (to me). That culpability may not matter if we are talking about police discipline, training, or even a lawsuit. OTOH, if we are judging Hill’s behavior in its entirety, the fact that he was going 90 in a 45 (if true) is a big negative on his side of the ledger.
It’s not nonsense at all. It’s the expectation - cops must expect criminals (and yes, I’m lumping HIll into this catergory because of his reckless driving) to act like asshole but they can’t act like assholes back.
I never once said Hill was not responsible for his actions, he’s clearly responsible for his driving behavior and his assholery - he has no responsibility for the cops’ actions, which were in my educated view largely improper but legally justified. Perhaps I could have been clearer in my response.
A driver may roll up their windows and make a phone call during a traffic stop. An officer may order a driver out of the car. An officer may use force to remove a driver from a car, but you better have a damn good reason.
It is the cops duty to stabilize and de-escalate. Sometimes (frequently) that means putting up with shitty behavior. That didn’t happen here. And for no good reason.