After Tyreek Hill’s run-in with police, we still have to give our sons ‘The Talk’ | Opinion

After looking at the video when Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill was detained by Miami-Dade Police last Sunday, it appears that our young Black men are never too old for their parents to give them “The Talk.”

For those who don’t know, “The Talk” is what many of us Black parents have given to our children as they were growing up Black, during the Jim Crow era and beyond. It is a set of instructions we gave our children on how to survive if they were stopped by white police officers. It goes something like this:

“If you are ever stopped by the police, always be polite. Never, ever ask the officer why you were stopped. Always keep your hands where the officer can see them.

“If the officer calls you the ‘N’ word, just ignore it. You know who you are. And if he becomes violent with you, try to get his name and badge number, if possible. Try very hard to never give the officer or officers a reason to beat you up, or worse, kill you.”

Hill, 30, was stopped last Sunday morning by Miami-Dade Police in a traffic stop only a block from Hard Rock Stadium, where he and the Dolphins were scheduled to play in the season opener that afternoon against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

According to a story in The Herald, Hill was driving a McLaren 720S, which can cost up to $350,000, and was pulled over for speeding.

Cellphone footage shot by passing drivers, and the body-cam footage released Monday night by Miami-Dade Police, shows that Hill was given only a moment to comply with a warning to keep his window down before police forcefully yanked him from the car, pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him.

The footage shows that an officer, whom Miami-Dade Police later identified as Danny Torres, dug his knee into Hill’s back as he lay prone on the pavement. Miami-Dade Police Director Stephanie Daniels placed Torres on paid administrative duty after she said she reviewed the body camera footage from that day.

Torres, a 27-year veteran, earned about $171,000 as a county police officer last year, including $39,000 from overtime pay, according to a county database.

Hill’s crime? Speeding and a seat belt violation. Hill was traveling about 60 mph in a 40-mph zone near the 2600 block of Northwest 199th Street, according to his traffic citation.

I believe in law and order. But in my opinion, Hill’s treatment didn’t match the crime.

As his lawyer Julius Collins of Atlanta said, the incident was the result of “overzealous officers attempting to impose their authority on Mr. Hill because they were not pleased with how fast he complied with their request and that Mr. Hill did not roll down his window far enough to their liking,” Collins wrote in a statement he emailed to the Herald.

Hill said that he was not disrespectful to the officers, and he had “no idea” why he was cuffed. At a press conference after the game (which the Dolphins won), Hill noted, “What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill? Lord knows what those guys would have did.”

Hill’s brush with the law brought back a flood of memories about how we Black parents prepared our children, especially our sons, for the inevitable encounter they would have with the police, simply because they were Black.

Back then, I thought I was the only parent who did such preparation with her children. That is, until I shared my fears with other Black parents. They let me know that I was not alone. We all gave our children the same talk. It seemed to be in our DNA.

“The Talk” was mandatory in my house when my sons were growing up during the late 1960s and 1970s. Back then, it was often commonplace for white police officers to stop young Black males just because. (Today, it’s called profiling or Driving While Black).

There often would be trumped-up charges if the Black person simply asked the question, “What did I do wrong, officer?” The question often resulted in a beating from the arresting officer, who deemed the question as “resisting arrest.”

And they dare not run, as my late former neighbor’s son did. Marge and I were both mothers of sons. She had six, I had two. We lived next door to each other, and our sons grew up like brothers.

When her son was finally caught, the officers beat him unmercifully. I remember trying to comfort Marge, as she cried out when she saw that her son was beaten so badly his eyes were swollen shut.

His crime? He was driving with an expired tag. Because he was afraid, he first tried to outrun the police but decided to stop and face the music. When he stopped, the officers dragged him from the car, threw him on the ground and handcuffed him before beating him.

He was 18 at the time and had never been in trouble.

As my sons grew up and started driving, I knew a simple traffic violation could get them killed. And I was never able to sleep until they were safely back home.

While they were out, every time I heard a siren, my heart skipped a beat. I listened for the phone to ring, bringing me the bad news that one of my sons had been arrested, or killed by the police.

The scene of Marge’s son and the stories of countless other parents who shared with me the same fears for their sons and daughters came rushing back to me last Sunday. I am so glad that Hill was not beaten. And I am sorry that he was humiliated the way he was.

In December 1979, Arthur McDuffie, a 33-year-old Black insurance agent and former Marine was beaten by white Metro-Dade police officers — including cracking his skull with a police baton — over what started with McDuffie running a red light. McDuffie died from his beating a few days later.

In May 1980, an all-white Tampa jury acquitted the four white officers charged in his death. The verdict led to three days of rioting in Miami, resulting in the deaths of 18 people and about $100 million in property damage.

Thankfully, that kind of horrific police brutality hasn’t happened again in South Florida, although George Floyd’s murder in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was painful to watch on national television.

It’s why Black parents must still be relentless in having “The Talk” with their children.

While I believe the majority of white police officers are decent human beings and are indeed doing their very best to keep our communities safe, there are still some who do not belong among the ranks.

Could Hill have prevented what happened to him? Maybe. At a press conference Wednesday at Dolphins headquarters, Hill acknowledged that he should have followed police orders to roll down his window, but added that the police yanking him out of his car, handcuffing him and forcibly pushing him to the ground were not justified.

But even if he had rolled down his window quickly, he still may not have escaped the officers’ wrath. First and foremost, Hill is Black. And then he had the audacity to be driving an expensive car.

I’m just saying ...

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