Charles Barkley slams media for playing race card in Tyreek Hill’s incident

Since his days in the NBA, Charles Barkley has been known to speak his mind. The Turner basketball analyst had some harsh words for the way the media has elected to cover the incident involving Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill’s brush with law enforcement.

Barkley wanted people to remember the incident which took place in April 2024, where accomplished PGA golfer Scottie Scheffler was detained by police.

Barkley told Fox Sports 910 radio, “Wait a minute, they just did the same thing to Scottie Scheffler.”

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The former NBA star said, “I hate that we’re gonna throw it in the media because you know the guys are gonna quickly go to race, and it bothers me. We got so many fools in the media who love to play the race card.”

A few hours before the Dolphins’ opening game of the NFL season, Miami’s Tyreek Hill was detained and handcuffed by Miami Dade police officers near Hard Rock Stadium.

The officer grew frustrated with Hill’s responses and speed of reaction to his questions, which prompted him and his partner to physically remove the NFL player from the car. At one point, Hill was lying face-down on the ground, with his hands cuffed behind his back.

One of the officers’ body camera footage was eventually released to the public, and Hill could be seen pleading with law enforcement not to use excessive force on him. Hill proclaimed that he had just had knee surgery and did not want to be injured in the incident.

Calais Campbell, Hill’s teammate with the Dolphins, would stop his car and ask the officer what was going on. Eventually, Campbell himself was placed in handcuffs after seemingly asking one too many questions.

Charles Barkley seemed to be less than accepting of the way Hill conducted himself during the incident. He told the radio show, “The one thing you can’t do as a celebrity, you can’t say ‘do you know who I am?’ You say, ‘yes sir’, cooperate 100 percent.”

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On the body camera footage that was released, Hill appeared to refuse to roll down his window when the police officer asked him to, which may have been something that Barkley was alluding to.

Barkley would say, “When we let these fools on TV and radio start talking about it, they go straight to ‘was it racism?’ I’m like ‘wait a minute now, we don’t know that.’ I saw the police report say he was uncooperative.”

ESPN sports personality Stephen A. Smith wasn’t happy with the manner in which the police treated Hill over what was a relatively minor traffic violation, but also said that Tyreek Hill wasn’t completely blameless.

Smith said, “You pull over, they tell you to roll down your window. What’s the first thing Shannon Sharpe just talked about? The thing they do when they pull us over. They pull me over, all my windows are down. My hands are on the steering wheel. That is not what Tyreek Hill did.”

Smith said, “Yo, Tyreek, yo, bro, you didn’t deserve that. I’m not implying that you did. But the police officers do have the power. When they pull up on you, and they tell you to roll down that window, and they tell you to give them your driver’s license, and they tell you to get out of the car, that’s what you gotta do.”

Former NFL player and current Fox Sports analyst Emmanuel Acho called the treatment of Hill “about as disgusting as you would expect.”

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Miami Herald writer Greg Cote told the Dan Le Batard radio show, “Tyreek Hill was caught driving while black. That was his crime. It was a gross overreaction by the police. I thought it was a plain abuse of power.”