“He could have died.” Tyreek Hill’s detention highlights a very real problem in the United States

In the aftermath of one of the most memorable days in Miami Dolphins history, safety Jevón Holland expressed his frank opinion that some of his teammates danced around the bush.

“Excessive use of force on a black man is not uncommon,” Holland said Sunday afternoon. “It’s a very common thing in the United States. This is a problem that needs to be addressed nationally.”

What happened to star receiver Tyreek Hill, who Miami-Dade police handcuffed, threw to the ground and kneed in the back just outside Hard Rock Stadium before Sunday’s 20-17 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars, is all too familiar and frustrating in black communities from Miami to Los Angeles and everywhere in between.

That’s probably why David Long Jr. wasn’t particularly surprised by the police’s treatment of his teammate.

“It’s something I’m used to seeing,” the Dolphins linebacker said Monday morning. He added: “It’s crazy that he was able to, mentally, look back and play the game that he had.”

Or why Stephen A. Smith convincingly explained the problems many black Americans have with the police on Monday’s episode of “First Take.”

“This is what we’re talking about when we talk about how easily dehumanization sets in when it comes to black men,” he said. “Why are you doing this? Why was it necessary? He clearly wasn’t a threat at that point.”

The president of the Miami-Dade police union denied that race played a role in Hill’s arrest, despite several studies showing that race has a disproportionate impact on encounters with police.

Black drivers are three times more likely to be ticketed than white drivers under a Florida law that makes it illegal to play loud music that can be heard more than 25 feet away or that is louder than necessary to be heard when a vehicle is near a church, school, hospital or home, according to a 2023 University of Florida study.

A 2016 report from the ACLU of Florida found that law enforcement stopped and ticketed black drivers for seat belt violations at nearly twice the rate of white drivers. To dispel any notion that black drivers were getting more tickets for not wearing seat belts, the study cites the Florida Department of Transportation, which showed that black and white drivers wore seat belts at similar rates — 85.8 percent and 91.5 percent, respectively.

These data give credence to a popular expression in communities of African origin: “driving while black.”

“The Florida data are not the only ones showing this overrepresentation of stops,” said Alex Piquero, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Miami. He cited cities like New York, which notoriously uses stop-and-frisk policies. “The question we need to answer is: Are these stops simply due to a disparity in numbers due to different driving or some other cause, or is this active discrimination in who gets stopped?”

Brother Lyle Muhammad, executive director of the Circle of Brotherhood, a South Florida nonprofit that provides black men with the tools to solve problems in their community, believes the problem ultimately comes down to fear. To help alleviate that problem, Muhammad and the Circle of Brotherhood are running a class called “Community and Police Relations 101” that aims to repair a relationship that has been plagued by tension from the beginning.

“There has never been a level of understanding of race relations, cultural relations and also urban America that allows officers to work in our community with a deeper understanding of appropriate relationships and also the presence of fear that is not there,” said Muhammad, who has been nationally recognized for his advocacy of community policing. The course, which he said has been attended by Miami and Miami-Dade police officers, begins by stating the principle that “we are all still operating under the paradigm of white supremacy” in hopes of mitigating the mindset “that they are better than the people they are supposed to serve.”

Although Muhammad was not sure whether any of the officers involved in the Hill incident graduated from his class, he was clear on one thing.

“Even though we are providing training,” he added, “there still needs to be a complete transformation of policing in America.”

Part of Muhammad’s point relates to the origins of the police, which stem from the “slave patrols,” a position designed to “establish a system of terror and crush slave revolts with the ability to pursue, apprehend and return escaped slaves to their owners,” according to the NAACP.

In Miami in particular, the first law enforcement officers were racially biased Southerners, historian Marvin Dunn writes in his seminal book “Black Miami in the Twentieth Century.” The other part of Muhammad’s argument concerns real-life examples of police brutality. That’s how “the talk,” a discussion parents have with their driving-age children about how to behave around the police, became a staple in many black homes.

“I’ve seen this scene with McDuffie before,” Dunn said of the Hill incident, referring to Arthur McDuffie, who was brutally beaten to death by Metro Dade police officers during a traffic stop in 1979. An all-white jury found the officers not guilty, and the McDuffie riots began as a result. “Same scenario: A black man unlawfully arrested, handcuffed, on the ground, a police officer standing over him — he could have died. If he had resisted at all, they could have beaten him.”

Dunn added: “He did everything we fathers tell our boys to do in ‘the talk’ – don’t talk back, don’t resist – and it still happened to him,” Dunn continued.

Hill has faced numerous legal troubles over the years over alleged violent incidents, but Julius B. Collins, Hill’s attorney, said the star wide receiver did not say anything disrespectful or threatening to the officers. Collions blamed Sunday’s pregame traffic stop outside Hard Rock Stadium on officers trying to impose their authority on Hill.

The precise reasons why Hill was handcuffed remained unclear Monday. Miami-Dade Police Department Superintendent Stephanie Daniels reviewed the body camera footage, which was released early Monday night, and placed one of the officers on administrative leave within 12 hours of the incident.

In a statement, Police Benevolent Association President Steadman Stahl pointed to the star wide receiver’s initial reaction as the trigger, saying Hill “did not immediately cooperate with officers on scene who, consistent with policy and for their immediate safety, handcuffed Mr. Hill.”

“Mr. Hill, still uncooperative, refused to sit on the floor and was therefore directed to the ground,” Stahl said in his statement.

Hill received two tickets, one for reckless driving and one for not wearing a seat belt, according to ESPN. His attorneys have not yet decided whether to pursue legal action. Race, however, was not a factor in the arrest, according to Stahl.

“Because of the dark tint of the windows, they had no idea who was in the car and that’s why they asked him to roll down the windows so they could see who was in the car,” Stahl told the Miami Herald. “I don’t think that had anything to do with it.”

After Sunday’s game, Hill said he still wasn’t sure about the details that led to his detention. He didn’t necessarily want to address the issue of race, but he did ask a thought-provoking question.

“What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?” he said. “God knows what those guys would have done.”

The issue particularly resonated with Miami-Dade NAACP President Daniella Pierre, who couldn’t help but think of Antwon Cooper, a Black man who was fatally shot by Miami police during a traffic stop in 2022. No one has been charged, and Cooper’s mother filed a federal lawsuit in 2023, alleging that the city and the officer played a role in her son’s death. Pierre and his accomplices have continued to call for more transparency in the case.

“This is not new: We’ve been talking and advocating for decades for police reform,” Pierre said. She criticized the language used in these situations: “Antwon Cooper died because of a traffic stop. So when Tyreek said, ‘What if he wasn’t Tyreek Hill,’ what if he was Antwon Cooper?”