Anyone feeling any remorse/bad for Tyreek Hill and his altercation with police officers yesterday?
Officers did force him down on the ground face-down with one knee down on his back. On the other hand, Hill wasn't cooperating immediately and was lagging it. He also didn't wanna roll down his windows.
Based on his history though, he was the infamous woman and child-beater.
They probably didn't have to drag him out, but he kind of asked for it. He was being a smartass. "Don't knock on my window like that...do what you gotta do, I'm late" like he's some kind of VIP. Then rolls his window up when the cop is talking to him. Then he wonders why things escalated? All he had to do was do what the majority of people do - follow instructions - and they probably would have waived the ticket and given him a warning when they realized who he was.
Incidentally, I feel this is why we have traffic stops that end badly - because they get escalated when people get mouthy or don't follow instructions. I get it, I'm sure you have the cops that pick on racial minorities and go on power trips and bully them, but from most of the reporting of these traffic stops that escalate it's because people don't follow instructions to begin with. You put a police officer in a difficult position when you do that and even if they do the wrong thing and overreact it's not going to end well for you - you may even end up getting shot by some overzealous officer. Yes he might be arrested and charged, but you'll be dead.
Just be polite, comply, do what they tell you, and if you feel you got disrespected or the cop infringed on your rights you can go to the station, complain, and sue them after. If he had complied with them and they acted like that, then Tyreek would have grounds to sue IMO, particularly the second cop...but unfortunately his actions escalated the situation to begin with.
If anyone wants to see the video and make their own judgment, here it is.
https://x.com/AndySlater/status/1833273674033463799
Agreed, with the caveat that dealing with pricks is part of the job. Police who routinely engage in power struggles shouldn't be cops. In this case, it's the shouting and the F-bombs that make the cop look out of control.
My own personal bias: I think the police profession tends to draw two classes of people: 1. those who want to protect and serve, and 2. those who want to be "in charge". Too many LEOs fall into the second category, and view those they interact with as beneath them.
This probably belongs more in the police/crime thread, but it brings up an interesting point - how police should deal with non-compliance to orders. As amonkey and Neurotic Guy said, people will react to officers in different ways, which may include non-compliance. If people refuse to comply, officers need to know how to deal with this without necessarily having to resort to violence, or shooting someone. Obviously how they do this influences the police response - if you act mouthy or condescending or disrespectful to a police officer I think you're complicit in any overreaction that might occur. On the flip side power trips on the police side, which happen all too frequently, are also wrong. But how should police officers handle someone who is being polite, unthreatening but non-compliant? We all agree they shouldn't be violent. Should they end up dragging them out of their car and hauling them down to the station? What should they do?
In nonthreatening situations, cops should be able to tolerate noncompliance without shouting, swearing, or assaulting people. Hundreds of millions of parents deal with noncompliant people (children) every single day without acting like so many bad police do.
Be patient, calm, and clear. Identify consequences that are appropriately tied to the person's non-compliance. Follow through on those consequences without anger.
Completely agree. There are strategies used every day by people who care for, or are called to respond to, volatile, dysregulated, non-cooperative people. They don?t always work but police should be trained to respond by being low and slow, acknowledging the stress or challenge of the current situation, giving some space and some time. Ultimately a deescalated situation will take less time to resolve than a situation that was escalated by a police officer who says they don?t have time to deal with this.
Without trying to defend the baddies who are on power trips, the difference is probably that kids or your average uncooperative person doesn't present a risk of suddenly drawing a weapon and firing at you. That's the consequence we pay for living in an armed country with an armed populace. I'm sure that informs how the police respond to some extent. You have your clear over the top responses like
Sonya Massey being shot by Officer Sean Grayson in Springfield Illinois for holding a pot of boiling water, or
Daniel Shaver being shot by Officer Philip Brailsford while crawling toward him with his hands held up sobbing for his life, or
Philando Castile being shot by Officer Jeronimo Yanez after a traffic stop after Castile told him he had a weapon but was trying to reach for his drivers license and Yanez panicked and shot him - those, along with many others, were clearly egregious.
But I was talking to a friend of mine who is with the Toronto police on a recent trip to Canada and he said he would find it really tough to work in the US because you never know if a routine stop or incident will turn deadly so you have to always be on your guard, always. There's a reason why it's only traffic stops in the US that have this possibility of escalating to tragic circumstances due to non-compliance. Gun crime is low in other countries as it is but the chance of someone getting shot due to non compliance at a traffic stop? Hardly ever happens. Cops in other countries don't have to worry about that. The cops here don't know if the non-compliance will extend to being shot. Nonetheless, they have that responsibility so they have to figure it out.
Now back to Tyreek's case - I would be amazed if the officers didn't know it was him. McLaren, bling, surely they knew it was him and he wasn't going to shoot them. He wasn't even going to hit them. He was just non-cooperative. I feel like the first cop had a genuine grievance because Tyreek didn't roll his window down, which gave them the opening to escalate, but then the second guy (Danny Torres, the tattooed guy) went over the top and yanked him out and then put him on the floor with a knee to his back, not once but twice. That was a "I'm going to teach this uppity NFL player who's in charge, I'm going to put him on the floor like a common crim" moment. I think he definitely has a case to answer.
