Hill a Victim of Abuse of Power - Bodycam video shows officers drastically escalated a routine traffic stop.

Bodycam video shows officers drastically escalated a routine traffic stop. Tyreek Hill, who referenced his interaction with police after scoring on Sunday, wants to stage a community forum that includes local police.

- By Greg Cote

Police officers wear body cameras for many reasons. One of them is to perhaps record incriminating evidence against the bad guys. But sometimes the police turn out to be the bad guys, and the incriminating evidence is on them.

“What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?” will stand as one of the most important quotes from this NFL season newly underway — words important beyond football.

The bodycam footage from the Miami-Dade Police Department itself, augmented by phone camera videos shot by early arriving Miami Dolphins fans who saw it happen outside Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday, includes one especially telling snippet.

This was after the police had stopped Hill for speeding, pulled him forcibly from his car and soon had him face down on the pavement, handcuffed behind his back. They had just run the licence plate on Hill’s black sports car.

You hear one cop say, “He’s one of the Dolphins’ star players.”

You hear another say, “F--k.”

The Dade cops knew at that moment they had been caught.

They knew at that moment this was not a routine traffic stop, not the kind of excessive force and abuse of power that might go unnoticed if the “perpetrator” was some Joe Nobody as opposed to an athlete recently voted the best player in the NFL. Somebody famous. A “detainment” that would make national news and is still making it even as the Dolphins prepare to host the rival Buffalo Bills on Thursday.

Tyreek Hill didn’t deserve special treatment or a celebrity favour Sunday. What he also didn’t deserve was to be treated like a criminal when, at worst, he had done something they give you traffic tickets for.