According to college junior Samir Hill, the only reason he was taken down to a police station and handcuffed to a chair for nearly two hours while police officers searched his car is that a video went viral showing Hill, 21, and his ankle-breaking moves on the police officers during a pickup basketball game days prior, Complex reports.
Hill, a Philadelphia native and student at Allegany College of Maryland, explained how he was home from college and playing basketball with some little kids outside on the court, when two police officers approached and started to talk smack about how Hill wasn’t that good. Hill challenged the officers to a game and told Complex that he crossed up the officers every chance he got.
Onlookers whipped out their smartphones to record the 2-on-2 matchup between the two police officers and Hill and his friend.
“The first cop, I crossed him and laid it up,” Hill said. Hill said the cop then got his partner to guard Hill, but the footage shows that the other officer didn’t stand a chance, either.
“So he put his partner on me—the second one, the one I made fall. Everyone went crazy,” Hill described.
The videos circulated widely on social media, with NFL superstar Chad Johnson reposting the video as well.
But then, in a third video, Hill is seen with handcuffs on, being arrested by the same cops with whom he had played basketball days earlier.
In the video, onlookers speculate that the cops were retaliating against Hill because of the pickup game.
“All because of a f—king basketball ball video, man. That s—t crazy,” one man is heard saying in the video.
Hill told Complex that the officers said they arrested him because they “thought they saw something” in a car Hill and his friend were in. Hill said the officers took him down to the precinct and held him for an hour and a half while they searched the car.
“They didn’t find nothing, and they let me go. The whole time they were telling me how they weren’t gonna lock me up, that they were targeting my friend,” Hill told Complex.
Hill said that he and the officers agreed to meet for a rematch the next day, but the cops never showed. “I was at the courts and everything. … They said they were bringing their basketball stuff, but they never showed up,” Hill explained. “I don’t wanna play them anymore, though. There’s no point. I did what I had to do to them.”
Read more at Complex.