A superstar athlete's treatment by police raises troubling questions.

I was half-watching the early NFL games Sunday while waiting for the Dallas Cowboys to kick off in the late afternoon slot and learned that Miami Dolphins star receiver Tyreek Hill had an altercation with police ahead of the game. I hadn't given the incident much thought but the Washington Post is drawing attention to it.

Columnist Candace Buckner ("Tyreek Hill's unsettling question should bother us all") sets the stage.

On Sunday morning, the Miami Dolphins' star wide receiver was stopped by a crew of police officers. He got pulled out of his black sports car that retails for $300,000, and with the driver's side butterfly door still propped up, officers placed him in handcuffs. The glittering chain around his neck scuffed against the pavement. The scene was caught on video by passing motorists. A concerned statement from the director of the Miami-Dade Police Department soon followed.

Later, after the cops allowed him to get on to his day job and after he celebrated a touchdown by imitating being placed under arrest, the multimillionaire stood on an elevated platform and addressed reporters. He had the room's attention as he recounted his brief detainment by law enforcement, and he asked, "What if I wasn't Tyreek Hill?"

Do we really have to wonder?

Had this situation not involved one of the best and highest-paid wide receivers in the NFL, and instead just a random citizen stopped outside Hard Rock Stadium for careless driving, here's an educated guess as to what probably would have happened: He would have been arrested, not simply detained. His car -- maybe a Mazda, certainly not a McLaren -- would have been abandoned on the side of the road as he was placed face down on the ground for a traffic stop. And with motorists capturing the moment, the police department would not have immediately launched an investigation and placed an officer on administrative leave.

Refreshingly, Buckner makes this about celebrity status and not race. More on the former in a bit.

In the wake of so many awful incidents, it would be natural to go down the race route. Hill, for those unfamiliar with his work, is indeed a Black man. Judging from his accent, I would guess the main officer involved to be Hispanic. Regardless, looking at the body cam footage, though, it's clearly a case of an entitled celebrity refusing to show a police officer the deference to which he's accustomed.

Here's WaPo's recounting:

In a portion of the footage, an officer is shown pulling a car over and telling Hill, the driver, to roll his window back down. After the officer repeats the request, the situation gets more tense as Hill is pulled from his car and placed in handcuffs, face down on the street.

[...]

The portion of the footage showing Hill getting pulled over begins just before 10:20 a.m., with the 30-year-old driving a black sports car down a street leading to the Dolphins' stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. An officer on a motorcycle is seen approaching Hill's car and, after he disembarks, the driver's-side window can be seen being rolled up.

After the officer knocks on Hill's window, he rolls it down and tells the officer not to do that. As Hill is asked why he is not wearing a seat belt, he repeatedly tells the officer, "Don't knock on my window like that."

After Hill hands his license to the officer, he says: "Just give me my ticket, bro, so I can go. I'm going to be late. Do what you've got to do."

After that comment, Hill rolls his window back up, causing the officer to ask him to keep it down. Soon, the officer raises his voice as he repeats the command, and he tells Hill: "As a matter of fact, get out of the car. Get out of the car right now. We're not playing this game."

At that point, another officer can be seen opening Hill's car door and pulling the player out of the vehicle. Three officers join in pushing Hill to the ground, with one of them telling him, "What part of that don't you understand?"

Having taken his phone out of the car with him, Hill can be heard telling his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, that he is "getting arrested."

"When we tell you to do something, you do it, you understand?" an officer tells Hill. "Not when you want, but when we tell you. You're a little f -- -- confused."

As Hill tells them he was "getting out" of his car, he is told, "Too late."

This is a case where there's plenty of blame to go around.

Hill was, frankly, belligerent and entitled, repeatedly refusing to follow clear and reasonable instructions. (I've been pulled over a handful of times over the years and I've always put my window down and obeyed officer instructions; indeed, it would never occur to me to do otherwise.) There was 40 seconds of back-and-forth between Hill and the officer, with the officer repeatedly -- and calmly in the early going -- telling Hill to put the window down, with Hill repeatedly refusing to comply while saying "Don't tell me what to do!"

I'm a longtime critic of police culture and the Respect My Authoritay! attitude. Police too often act like bullies rather than public servants. Here, though, the officer had good reason to stop Hill -- who was driving 100 mph in a 55 mph zone without a seatbelt and, indeed, still had the seatbelt off when the officer got to the window -- was perfectly friendly at the outset of the conversation, issued the perfectly reasonable instruction to roll the window down, and had it repeatedly refused.

That said, the transition from "If you don't roll the window down, I'm going to pull you out of the car" and then the other officer reaching in and dragging Hill out was instantaneous. Absent a threat from Hill, a visible firearm, or the like, there was simply no reason to escalate to that level for a routine traffic stop.

Back to Buckner:

It's not unlike what might have happened back in May in Louisville if it wasn't the two-time Masters champion pulled over and apprehended outside of Valhalla Golf Club and instead was just some regular guy. Following the early-morning arrest of an anonymous driver, would the city's mayor and chief of police had held a joint news conference to announce discipline for an officer who did not activate his body camera? Highly unlikely.

The traffic stop involving Scottie Scheffler ultimately ended with that same officer wishing Scheffler "all the best," though he still claimed he had been run over and dragged by Scheffler's car. By Monday morning of this week, the police union representing the Miami-Dade department offered a more contentious response. To combat the viral cellphone video, the union described Hill as "uncooperative" during the stop and said he had to be "redirected to the ground." By Monday evening, footage from an officer's body camera surfaced and showed a handcuffed Hill hesitating to take a seat on the curb before another officer charges in and forcefully takes him down.

The analogy is a good one and, again, one that focuses on celebrity rather than race. (Scheffler is white.) Scheffler, though, was non-confrontational. He wasn't breaking the law but driving where he'd previously been told he was supposed to drive but met with security personnel who weren't aware of who he was or that he'd been given those instructions.

All of this makes Hill's hypothetical even more provocative. We now know what happens when Scheffler or Hill get pulled over for a traffic stop. They're athletes with loads of fame, armies of adoring fans and more money than they can ever spend. One receives the equivalent of a thank-you note from the detective who arrested him. The other learns after the game about the swift action conducted by the police department in scrutinizing one of its own despite the union's spin.

But what if it wasn't the top-ranked golfer in the world? Would another man in an orange jumpsuit get offered a sandwich as Scheffler said he was by a police officer? Would he be released ahead of his tee time? Would he deserve the benefit of the doubt afforded to a successful and likable pro athlete, when so many other times -- from certain communities that still hold law enforcement in reverence -- the badge automatically receives that trust?

Obviously not. But, again, it's really a different situation: Scheffler is a model citizen accidentally detained by officers providing security for a huge event in which Scheffler was a major participant.

What if that was not Tyreek Hill? Would Dolphins fans driving by protest on his behalf, yelling toward officers to "Chill out!" once they notice who's on the ground? Would the director of the police department have "requested an immediate review of all the details surrounding the incident" -- releasing that statement before the game even began? Would he receive an outpouring of support from a high-powered sports agent, a sympathetic audience on social media and voices in an NFL locker room?

Again, of course not. But that would be bizarre behavior for a non-celebrity. None of that would have happened if I had been stopped, either.

Waaay down into the piece, inevitably I guess, race makes its appearance:

Though there appeared to be people of color among the arresting officers Sunday, a racial element still hangs over the image of Hill in handcuffs. Just as the nonchalance of his teammates makes clear -- this is a real and familiar nightmare for many Black men in America. He might be Tyreek Hill, but even he was grabbed by a police officer just below his neck and forced down.

Again, though, all Hill had to do was comply with perfectly reasonable and politely-delivered instructions from the detaining officer and none of that would have happened.

There's still something else: the recognition that wealth and fame can level the playing field during encounters with law enforcement, that the rapid delivery of justice becomes a bit more certain when the whole world is watching.

The traffic stops involving Hill and Scheffler were unfortunate, but the subsequent actions were not shocking. The famous athletes received treatment after their encounters that citizens of lesser status and in lower tax brackets would not.

The star wide receiver's question was on point: What if he wasn't Tyreek Hill? Would police be hastening to get to the bottom of this? Would he have missed work, vainly telling anyone who would listen that he didn't understand why officers pulled him to the ground? Had there not been someone holding up a cellphone, would we, the public, have automatically rushed to his defense? Or would we assume he must have done something wrong to get himself put in handcuffs?

Again: He did do something wrong. First, he was driving recklessly in violation of the law. Second, he repeatedly refused reasonable police instructions at a legitimate traffic stop.

But because he is Tyreek Hill, this might get resolved ahead of Week 2. He might even end up filming a public service announcement with Miami-Dade police about safe driving. Hill, a somebody in the NFL, doesn't have to live with a more disturbing alternative.

One suspects that were Hill not an athlete making millions a year, he'd have been wearing his seatbelt or, if not, would have followed instructions. But we'll never know.