Tyreek Hill started his game day in handcuffs and ended it with 130 yards, a touchdown, and a team win. But there'll be more clarity required to understand why the All-Pro wide receiver was detained by Miami-Dade police Sunday morning as he made his way to the Dolphins' season opener.
In a traffic incident that felt somewhat reminiscent of pro golfer Scottie Scheffler's encounter with police in May, Hill was pulled over and detained near the Dolphins' stadium. ESPN's Jeff Darlington—who coincidentally was on the scene for Scheffler's arrest—reported that Hill was cited for reckless driving and handcuffed after a "verbal altercation." Multiple passersby took video, recognizing Hill as a group of cops forced him to the ground and cuffed him. After "the situation was deescalated," in Darlington's words, police released the receiver, who finished his commute to the Week 1 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Video of Tyreek Hill’s arrest today: pic.twitter.com/Kope2Ma6tk
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 8, 2024
By 11 a.m. ET, the Dolphins put out a statement on the matter and said Hill would play in the 1 p.m. game. The receiver got through the game with no issue. Late in the third quarter, Hill scored an 80-yard touchdown and celebrated by putting his hands behind his back; his teammate Jaylen Waddle served as the fake cop.
In a presser after the game, Hill said he still didn't understand why police escalated his traffic stop to the extent that they had. Here were his comments, via Marcel Louis-Jacques of ESPN:
"Right now, I'm still trying to put it all together ... I still don't know what happened," [Hill] said after the game. "But I do want to use this platform to say, 'what if I wasn't Tyreek Hill?' Worst-case scenario, you know? ... Everybody has bad apples in every situation, but I want to be able to use this platform to figure out a way to flip this and make it a positive on my end and Miami-Dade and do something positive for the community.
"It's hard. I don't want to bring race into it, but sometimes it gets kind of iffy when you do. What if I wasn't Tyreek Hill? Lord knows what those guys would have done. I just wanted to make sure I was doing what my uncle always told me to do whenever you're in a situation like that—put your hands on the steering wheel and just listen."
ESPN
(Given his prior, more serious legal issues, if Tyreek Hill weren't Tyreek Hill, he probably wouldn't be in the NFL. But point taken in this specific case: It feels unnecessary for that many cops to conduct a traffic stop. The only thing they do in increased numbers is escalate.)
Hill's teammates Calais Campbell and Jonnu Smith were driving by and stopped to make sure that Hill was OK. Campbell said after the Dolphins' 20-17 win that he was also briefly detained for disobeying a direct order. "I didn't understand what the issue was, but for him to put handcuffs on me, I felt some kind of way," Campbell said in a postgame interview.
By 4 p.m., Miami-Dade Police Department Director Stephanie V. Daniels released a statement on Hill's detainment, saying that she had "initiated an Internal Affairs investigation to ensure a thorough review of the matter." Daniels added that one officer involved in the incident had already been "placed on administrative duties" amid the investigation.
