Dave Hyde: No defending police’s handcuffing Tyreek Hill after body-cam video release

The emotion belonged to Mike McDaniel. But it should be everybody’s emotion right now. The words he chose should be everyone’s words when considering Tyreek Hill’s incident with Miami-Dade police now that an officer’s body-camera video has been released.

“Really, the time since (Sunday) to now I think for me personally, it’s been hard for me not to find myself more upset the more I think about it,” the Miami Dolphins coach said Monday.

Everybody loses. That’s the saddest part of this incident. Everybody comes out looking bad or feeling worse because Miami-Dade police overreacted, specifically one unnamed policeman who yanked Hill from his car and, moments later, shoved him to the ground in handcuffs as Hill pointed out his knee just had surgery.

The police lose as a stereotype of overreaction gets underlined. Hill loses for being in the middle of a mess. Teammates lose for getting involved.

The most disturbing part is any common sense could have prevented this. This wasn’t some shadowy setting late at night. This was Sunday morning outside Hard Rock Stadium. Fans are stopping on the road to video the scene as the policeman walks to Hill’s car.

Hill isn’t perfect in being signaled to stop for speeding. He repeatedly tells the officer not to hit his window as he puts it down and hands over his drivers license.

“Give me my ticket so I can get on my way, bro,” Hill says.

He then puts up his window.

“Keep your window down,” the police officer said.

You or me — you put the window down, right? The windows were tinted, too, meaning the policeman couldn’t see into the car and see if there was anything to be wary of.

Hill cracked his window, later saying he didn’t want to open it wide and have fans to start taking video of him. It was too late for that. But that only adds to the larger issue, the one about this not being some threatening scene of danger.

Again, it was Sunday morning outside the stadium, not late at night in some sketchy area.

“Keep your window down or I’ll get you out of your car,” the officer said. “As a matter of fact, get out of the car.”

It was then a second officer came to the car and talked of, “breaking the f—— window.” He opened the car door, pulled Hill out and shoved him to the pavement.

“We’re not playing this game,” one officer said.

Again, Hill wasn’t perfect. But was there anything to suggest it needed to escalate this moment to this level?Was anyone being threatened in the late morning scene outside Hard Rock Stadium? Was there any sense of danger at all?

Beyond the danger the police brought.

It can be a thankless job, being a policeman. It can be an uplifting one when done properly, too. And then there are moments like this where everyone loses.

The police, who underline a stereotype of angry aggression. Hill, who is embroiled in a mess. Veteran Calais Campbell, too, the former NFL Player of the Year for his good community work who suddenly found himself in handcuffs after coming to, “de-escalate the situation,” as he said.

Instead, when Campbell didn’t get back in his car and drive away, as police told him, he was put in handcuffs.

There are situations where that would be understandable for police to do all of this, to throw their legal weight around. But, again, as you watch the video, was anyone in danger at all? Was no officer able to take the temperature of the moment?

Dolphins issue statement supporting Tyreek Hill, calling for action against cops involved

There’s an Everyman quality to this, too, as Hill related after Sunday’s game in saying, “What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?” What if this incident wasn’t recorded by fans driving by or demanding a closer inspection by media?

“Call Drew,” Hill kept saying to Campbell and another teammate, Jonnu Smith.

It’s not clear if he meant his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, who was at the game, or the team’s head of security, Drew Brooks. At one point, when pulled from the car, Hill was saying into his phone, “Hey Drew, I’m being arrested.”

Brooks is a former policeman. Another Dolphins employee is a former police chief. The team has hosted events to smooth relations between police and communities. So this isn’t an us-versus-them mentality inside the organization. It’s quite the opposite.

Sports, like the larger society, is full of people who wish they could erase one moment from their lives. Maybe this is that for these involved police officers. Maybe this is something they end up regretting.

Hopefully, someone turns all this bad into something good.

But, first, there are some things to work through. No, Hill wasn’t perfect. But McDaniel’s emotion should be everyone’s emotion. Part of it, he said, was because, “I don’t know exactly what that feels like.”

Most of us don’t. But watching the video you don’t have to be face down on the street, in handcuffs, to wonder why it ever reached that point.