Let’s Take A Moment To Appreciate The Shittiness Of This Police Union Statement On The Tyreek Hill Traffic Stop

Say That Again

from the cop-words-cop-words-cop-words dept

Some of you may have heard about this. It made all the papers (at least in the United States). Tyreek Hill, wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins, was pulled over about a block away from the stadium by Miami-Dade police officers. What started as a simple situation involving a speeding/seat belt ticket escalated quickly when Hill was dragged out of his car and thrown on the ground by officer Danny Torres.

Now, everyone is going to have an opinion about how Hill handled this traffic stop. What’s tough to explain is why Officer Torres decided it was necessary to drag Hill from his car and throw him on the ground. Even the Miami-Dade government can’t explain it, which is probably why Officer Torres is now on “administrative duty” and has been publicly reprimanded for this needless escalation.

Miami-Dade County Chief of Public Safety James Reyes said the actions in the body camera footage released by the department were “deeply concerning” and “clearly do not meet the standard we expect from law enforcement.”

The whole thing was captured on body cam. The footage can be seen multiple places, but if you want to see the entire recording free of commentary, your best best is the version uploaded by PoliceActivity.

Feel free to watch the whole thing and draw your own conclusions about Tyreek Hill’s behavior. (Also, keep an eye out for the invocation of Florida’s 25-foot cop halo law, which happens about 13 minutes into the recording.)

So, the cop has been taken off the streets and pretty much everyone has offered up their opinion on the stop and the officers’ behavior. What can’t be argued are the facts: Hill was dragged from his car and pinned down on the ground by an officer who couldn’t handle being momentarily (and directly) ignored by the Dolphins wide receiver.

But the most ridiculous response comes from the most ridiculous of quasi-public institutions: the local police union. Despite no one asking the South Florida Police Benevolent Association (SFPBA) to weigh in on the incident, it has chosen to do so anyway, resulting in this exonerative-tense word salad that highlights everything that’s ridiculous about police unions and copspeak. Here’s SFPBA president Steadman Stahl, coming to us via Courthouse News Service.

“Before the Dolphins game yesterday, an incident occurred where Tyreek Hill was placed in handcuffs before being released,” Stahl said in a statement. “First, to be clear, at no time was he ever under arrest. He was briefly detained for officer safety, after driving in a manner in which he was putting himself and others in great risk of danger.

“Upon being stopped, Mr. Hill was not immediately cooperative with the officers on the scene who, pursuant to policy and for their immediate safety, placed Mr. Hill in handcuffs. Mr. Hill, still uncooperative, refused to sit on the ground and was therefore redirected to the ground. Once the situation was sorted out within a few minutes, Mr. Hill was issued two traffic citations and was free to leave.”

Glorious. Just truly a masterpiece of quasi-English. Stahl pins down the time (“before the Dolphins game yesterday”) before distancing cops from their actions and his words from reality.

“An incident occurred,” an occurrence that apparently involved no one or any actions, but one “where Tyreek Hill was placed in handcuffs” by some unknown handcuff wielder.

“Mr. Hill was not immediately cooperative.” “Immediately cooperative” means nothing more than a cop used force and needed to justify it after the fact. In many cases, people who are not “immediately cooperative” are trying to be the adults in the “occurring incident.” They’re trying to de-escalate and calm down the cops (and there’s always more than one — there were at least 10 officers “involved” in this “occurrence”) who are shouting or pointing guns at them or both. People trying to do nothing more than talk to cops who want them to shut up are considered “not immediately cooperative.”

The thing is, Hill was immediately cooperative. After being told why he was pulled over (speeding, no seat belt), his first response was “Write the ticket. Do what you got to do.” That’s “immediately cooperative.” What the officers didn’t like was that this was followed by Hill rolling up his window while putting his seat belt on. That’s when things escalated because Hill did not “immediately cooperate” with demands he roll his window back down, despite the officers having his license and Hill’s verbally expressed preference that they get busy with the ticket writing.

When he was finally ordered to exit the car, he was never given a chance to “immediately cooperate.” In fact, there wasn’t really even an order. The officer simply said “We’re not doing this” (referring to Hill being argumentative) and dragging him from his car.

Finally, there’s this bit of copspeak shittery: “redirected to the ground.” That’s what cops (and cop reps) use when they’re talking about someone being dragged out of their car and thrown to the ground, before being pinned down while being handcuffed, despite cooperating fully with the handcuffing process. Calling this “redirection” is like defending tripping someone by claiming you did nothing more than move them more in a groundwards direction, possibly without any malice aforethought.

Whether or not you think Tyreek Hill handled this stop well, you can’t deny this is any extremely stupid and self-serving statement that pretends things just happen on their own and if any bad things happened, it was because someone other than a cop caused it to happen.

But this statement is even more meaningless in context: the officer who dragged Hill from the car has been publicly admonished and taken off active duty. He also has a long history of misconduct that might have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t chosen to do his usual thing during a traffic stop involving an NFL star.

The Miami-Dade Police Department released the employee profile of officer Danny Torres showing he was suspended for as many as 50 days between 2014 and 2019.

The first suspension was for five days in February 2014, the records show. He received three more five-day suspensions in 2016; one in February and two in September. In October 2018, he received a 20-day suspension and 10 days in June of the following year.

Records also show that Torres, a 27-year veteran, received four written reprimands between March 1999 and September 2020.

Now, if you’re thinking this doesn’t seem like much for a 27-year veteran, that only means you’ve set your standards lower than the Miami-Dade PD. I don’t expect every officer to have a clean record for the entirety of their career, but I’d prefer that an officer who was suspended 50 days over a five-year period was no longer a police officer. The goal should be the perfect record. Anyone who violates the rules annually (as Torres did from 2014 to 2019) shouldn’t still be collecting a paycheck from the public. If he wants to try violating company policies in the private sector, he should definitely be given that option.

And the next time a police union rep calls up reporters to offer a statement, they should be given a firm “no, thanks.” It doesn’t even need to be a polite “no.” They have nothing to offer but excuses, mangled English, and hasty white-washings of the truth. They have nothing to add to the conversation and we all get just a little bit dumber every time they open their mouths.

Filed Under: copspeak, danny torres, miami dade PD, miami dolphins, police misconduct, south florida police benevolent association, steadman stahl, traffic stop, tyreek hill