By Katie Priest, Sept. 24, 2024
A cornerstone of American life is watching a Black American be demeaned and belittled on television through the lenses of those whose very hands are the culprits of such violence.
NFL superstar Tyreek Hill’s traffic stop and subsequent detainment before the season opener between the Miami Dolphins and the Jacksonville Jaguars showed bystanders, fame, wealth and a prominent job cannot save us from this fate, but it might save us from death.
“What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?” was one of the first things he said in the postgame interview about the spectacle captured on cell phones and body cams that happened down the road just hours earlier.
“The criminal justice systems and the ways in which they have failed Black folks, and now we’re seeing that because we have access to phones now,” said Gyasmine George-Williams, an assistant professor of race, sport and social justice in the kinesiology department. “These types of things have been happening for centuries, but now we have access, and there seems to be a boldness that is taking place with those that are able to enact some sort of aggressive force.”
According to body cam footage released by the Miami-Dade County Police Department, Hill was stopped a block away from the stadium for a seatbelt violation. Body cam footage shows an officer walking up to Hill’s McLaren, knocking on the window and demanding to know why Hill was not wearing a seatbelt.
Hill responded, asks for his ticket and said: “Give me my ticket, bro, so I can go. I’m going to be late. Do what you got to do.” Then he proceeded to roll up his window. Afterward, the officers pounded on his window and cited noncompliance. One officer opened his door and pulled Hill out of the car and onto the ground.
Knees on his back, arms pulled behind him, cuffs placed swiftly on — a scene all too familiar and often deadly, as it was for George Floyd and Frank Tyson.
“How many of our Black brothers and sisters don’t have that opportunity to complain?” said George-Williams. “Because they’re dead.”
The inevitable followed: a conversation about whether Hill was respectful, as it always seems to go when a Black man is arrested, detained or stopped by police. Ultimately, Hill said some of his actions could’ve been better, but the first thing questioned by the public should have been the use of excessive force or whether the police’s actions were legal, not whether a Black man was respectful.
When a Black person is subjected to the hands of excessive force by police, or worse, is killed, the conversation turns to what they were wearing and what they were doing, as if we can excuse the police’s part in the name of wearing a wrong hoodie or having an attitude while being Black.
In Hill’s case, the Miami-Dade Police Department took action. One of the officers was placed on administrative leave, but the officer should have been on administrative leave or fired before this incident.
When Black people are accused of not following unspoken rules of respectability, the focus turns to reprimanding them for the actions of the police. The police union protects its officers, and other citizens make it a point to call out the actions of the victim and the perpetrator .
If we wish to move forward as a country, to make amends for the errors of our past and to have heighted visibility and awareness of race related issues — specifically issues that have been in the national consciousness since 2020 — we need to go beyond awareness and change our actions. We need to ask hard questions of those who are enforcing laws, and we need to ask hard questions about ourselves.
“I’ve had these types of conversations where maybe Tyreek, you know, he shouldn’t have said ‘Hey, don’t knock on my window,’ or Sandra Bland should have (acted differently),” said George-Williams. “But with any of those actions, was death the answer?”
We have to stop playing respectability politics with the lives of people for being harmed or even killed by the police. We need to start holding the police accountable for their actions. We need to look at the way they’re trained and why we allow certain officers, like the one involved in this incident, on the street when we know that they’re actively, and perhaps purposely, harming people.
We need to ask ourselves why a hoodie or a tank top is the difference between life and death. We ask our judicial system to uphold the laws and rules that make it just, but when its focus turns to a certain group of people, we allow those rules and procedures to fade away. Existing as a Black person on the street can be a death sentence.
Hill was lucky people knew him. They knew his name once they pulled him out of the car. Two of his teammates stopped and spoke up. The national media attention pressured the police department to take action and release body cam footage. So the question remains: “What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?” It’s the exact thing that enables Hill to have this conversation because if we didn’t know who he was, we wouldn’t see this footage. Without celebrity and fame, the police department could hide behind flimsy PR statements.
Being Tyreek Hill saved him from excessive policing. Being Tyreek Hill saved his life. Being Tyreek Hill allowed him to reach some sense of justice before he got off the field that Sunday.
Feature image courtesy of Ruthie Johns