American Football: The Tyreek Hill Case

Officers from the Miami Dade Police Department (MDPD) pull a black man out of a sports car. They force him to the ground, one knee pressed against his back. They handcuff him. Why? Unclear.

Sunday's incident would hardly have been a single item on the local Miami news. There are about 300,000 cases of suicide in the United States each year. police violence. Black people are twice as likely to die in police operations as white Americans.

But this case is different, the man on the ground was football player Tyreek Hill, a superstar of the Miami Dolphins. A face of the biggest sports league in the world, the NFLBut because this face was pressed onto the asphalt of Miami, just outside the Dolphins' stadium, on the way to the first game of the season, and because even after the police officers' body cameras were released, it was not clear what behavior on Hill's part justified such an aggressive reaction from the police, it was reported.

Hill admitted mistakes – and demanded consequences

Hill is probably the best wide receiver in the league. There is hardly any disagreement about his athletic ability. There also seemed to be no disagreement about the incident. “It's hard for me not to get angrier the more I think about it,” said Mike McDaniel, head coach of the Dolphins. He tried to put himself in Hill's shoes. “What's bothering me is the fact that I don't know exactly how that feels.”

The player himself said: “What if I wasn't Tyreek Hill? God knows what those guys would have done.”

But there are also irritated voices about the star's behavior and some of his comments. Also because Hill himself used to be violent.

The reason for the stop was allegedly Hill's reckless driving and he was also said to not be wearing a seatbelt. This cannot be independently verified at the moment. The Dolphins are calling it a minor traffic violation. The situation apparently escalated when the police asked Hill to roll down his car window. He apparently did not comply with this request.

“When he was stopped, Mr. Hill was not immediately cooperative with officers, who handcuffed him as required by law and for their immediate safety,” said Steadman Stahl, president of the local police union.

Hill admitted mistakes on Wednesday. If he could go back in time, he would behave better, like rolling down the window, he said at a press conference. “Does that give them the right to beat me up? Absolutely not,” said Hill. The police check was certainly brutal, but Hill was not beaten up. He was on the field at the football game.

And so there were also critical voices afterwards. Hill had behaved exactly the way black men should be taught not to behave. Jonathan Isaac, the striker of the NBA team Orlando Magic wrote on X: “Every black boy should be shown how not to behave when stopped, and how to do so respectfully. It is immature for us black men to put our lives in the hands of police officers in this way!” That may sound like a reversal of the roles of perpetrator and victim, in the USA but this is apparently a valid opinion.

The police officer who pulled Hill out of the car, Danny Torres, has been transferred to inside duty for the time being. The football player himself is now demanding that Torres be fired. “Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. He has to go,” Hill told reporters on Wednesday. A demand that provoked opposition.

Hill himself has his own history of violent incidents. In 2014, while in college, he beat his pregnant fiancée so badly that she had to be hospitalized. Hill pleaded guilty in court and was sentenced to three years' probation.