The Football Player and the Police Officer

NYPD police car. (Credit: Michael Förtsch on Unsplash)

All Tyreek Hill needed to do was either keep his window rolled down or exit his car when instructed by police. But no, he could not do this. After all, he is a professional football player. Rules do not apply to him. 

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He is a rich and famous Black NFL player. They are the same players who bad mouth police, the USA, and capitalism — all while living the lifestyle of the rich and famous. They are the same athletes who cry racism about police shootings based on statistical racial disparities while they themselves are the very essence of a statistical racial disparity. The canard is that police are racist because Black men are shot more by police in proportionately higher percentages than their percentage of the population. 

But Black men are also professional athletes in higher percentages than their percentage of the population. Funny how nobody claims this is because of racism. 


ESPN Race-Baiters Descend After Tyreek Hill Is Stopped for Speeding and Forcibly Detained

Sports Pundits Jump in, Proclaim Tyreek Hill Is Lucky He Didn't Die Because...'RACISM!'


Hill tried to claim he was stopped because he was Black. This is another canard trotted out by the civil rights tort lawyers. The civil rights version of ambulance chasers. Hill’s car was so heavily tinted that no one could tell his race, let alone a police officer following him. The window tint was why he was asked to keep his window rolled down. The officer could not observe Hill’s actions when the car window was rolled up. 

An officer's safety is in doubt when conducting a car stop of a heavily tinted vehicle. 

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Here are some simple questions that the media — hungry for a racial controversy to increase its audience — did not ask. 

What would have happened if Tyreek Hill had kept his window rolled down as instructed by the officer several times?

What would have happened if Tyreek Hill exited the car after being told several times to do so if he was not going to keep his window rolled down? 

Here are some simple facts that your average pompous journalist does not know. 

Florida law requires drivers to roll their windows down when the police attempt to pull them over. Cooperation with the police ensures that everybody involved is safe. But that does not matter to the sanctimonious and supercilious American buonista. The callow and sciolistic Leftists and libertarians are not concerned about the safety of police officers. Indeed, these Americans loathe the police. 

The General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago is a prestigious survey. They ask Americans if they approve of a police officer striking a citizen when they are being assaulted by that citizen. It is incredible to learn that in 2022, the survey found that 20.6 percent of Americans would not approve of a police officer striking a citizen who was attacking the police officer with his fists! Think about this one in five American citizens would not approve of police officers striking a citizen even to protect themselves. 

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While I cannot prove it, I would suggest most of these people are journalists, members of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Cato Institute. 

Where is it written that the onus of proper conduct rests solely with police officers and not offenders? 

Where is it written that offenders have no obligation to conduct themselves appropriately, cooperate with lawful instructions, and to act with appropriate respect?

Where is it written that citizens have no responsibility to submit to authority in exchange for which the social order is maintained? 

Whoever answers, "Nowhere is it written, nor should it be," believes Tyreek Hill is responsible. 

Those who answer, "It is written, or it does not need to be written," clearly have different views of the responsibilities of a citizen in a free republic, a fellow human, a good co-worker, a good neighbor, a good classmate, a good relative, a good spouse, and a good friend. 

When I was a Philadelphia police officer in a high-crime, Black neighborhood and a working-class White neighborhood full of "cop fighters," I always told recalcitrants that there were two ways of doing things — the easy way and the hard way. I further told them I preferred the easy way. Then, I would ask which way they preferred. 

Last year, I proposed an experiment at a local prestigious university. I said, "Get some students and have them role-play car stops based on actual events, just as we did in the academy. See what happens." They refused. This was the same experiment I proposed as a criminology graduate twenty-plus years earlier. There were no takers. 

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The minority and poor are already paying the price of White liberal pontificating and Black tort lawyer manipulation. The lenient criminal justice policies they advocate will eventually move the crime wave in the minority community to the Whitebread suburbs that currently are replete with BLM lawn signs.



Michael P. Tremoglie is a former Philadelphia police officer, retired columnist, and author of the critically acclaimed fiction novel “A Sense of Duty.” His bylines include the Philadelphia Inquirer, FrontPage Magazine, The Philadelphia Bulletin, and others.

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