(Miami-Dade Police Dept.)
Tyreek Hill wouldn’t keep his sports car window down when a police officer asked him to do so after the Miami Dolphins star receiver was pulled over for a traffic violation before Sunday’s NFL season opener at Hard Rock Stadium.
Body-cam footage released by the Miami-Dade Police Department showed that the incident quickly escalated into Hill being forcibly removed from his black McLaren 720S, pushed to the ground face first and handcuffed by officers.
Hill, who is Black, was pulled over for speeding en route to the stadium by an officer on a motorcycle. The footage shows the officer knocking on the car’s driver’s side window and telling Hill to put it down. Hill complied and handed the officer his driver’s license while repeatedly telling the officer not to knock on his window. Hill put the window back up and the officer responded by raising his voice and repeatedly telling Hill to keep the window down.
By then other officers had arrived and Hill was pulled from his car and pushed to the ground with an officer placing his knee in Hill’s back while handcuffing him. “When we tell you to do something, you do it. You understand?” one officer said. “You understand? Not what you want, but what we tell you. You’re a little f—ing confused.”
Officers led the handcuffed Hill to the sidewalk and one of the officers kicked him.
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After the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars — during which Hill scored an 80-yard touchdown and celebrated by placing his hands behind his back while teammate Jaylen Waddle pretended to handcuff him — Hill said he wanted to keep his window up because he was “embarrassed” and didn’t want people in passing cars to recognize him.
“If I let my window down, people walking by, driving by, they’re going to notice that it’s me,” Hill told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday night. “And they’re going to start taking pictures, and I didn’t want to create a scene at all. Like, I just really wanted to get the ticket and then go on about my way.”
One of the officers apparently had no idea Hill was an NFL player.
An officer who was looking at Hill’s driver’s license asked another officer about Hill’s behavior, saying, “Why is he acting up like that? You know who that is right?
“No,” an officer who was off camera replied.
“That’s one of the Dolphins’ star players,” said the officer who had Hill’s license.
“Oh, yeah? F—,” the off-camera officer responded.
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The Dolphins issued a statement after the body-cam video was released, saying they were “saddened by the overly aggressive and violent conduct directed towards Tyreek Hill, Calais Campbell and Jonnu Smith,” and adding that “there are some officers who mistake their responsibility and commitment to serve with misguided power.”
A little over a minute elapsed from the time Hill was pulled over and dragged from the car.
“It just went from zero to 60, man, from the moment that those guys pulled up behind me, knocked on my window, it went from zero to 60 immediately,” Hill said Monday in an interview with “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”
“I was opening my door and I was going to get out, you know what I’m saying, but it felt like they was wanting me to move fast.”
Hill was on the phone with the Dolphins’ director of security, Drew Brooks, as he was dragged from the car while repeatedly saying, “I’m getting arrested,” as officers handcuffed him. After being moved to the sidewalk, Hill told officers he’d recently had knee surgery, and the officer who had pulled him from the car wrapped his arms around Hill’s shoulders and forced him to the ground again.
The officer responded sarcastically when Hill mentioned his knee surgery.
“Oh, really? What a coincidence,” he said to Hill. “Did you have surgery on your ears when we told you to put the window down?”
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Hill responded by shouting, “Bro, chill!”
Campbell, Hill’s teammate and a 17-year veteran who was the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year in 2019, also was handcuffed after he stopped his car and asked the officers what was happening with Hill. Campbell, who is shown on the body-cam footage slowly approaching the scene with his hands in the air, told Fox Sports that one officer in particular was “elevated and hostile.”
“He’s the one guy who was agitating everything, extremely excessive,” Campbell said. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘All the other cops are pretty cool, chill. He’s the one you have to be careful.’ It was definitely one guy.”
Other Dolphins teammates also stopped their cars and were told by officers to leave. Smith was given a citation, even though he kept his distance from the scene.
“I’m just glad that my teammates were there to support me in that situation because I felt alone,” Hill said. “When they showed up, it made me realize that we got a good team this year, dawg, for them to put their life on the line. It was amazing to see.”
Miami-Dade Police Department Director Stephanie V. Daniels said in a statement an investigation into the incident was underway and that one of the officers involved had been placed on administrative duty. Later Tuesday, Miami-Dade police identified the officer as Danny Torres, a 27-year veteran of the department.
The body-cam video shows that Torres was the officer who pulled Hill out of his car and pushed him to the ground. While Hill was lying on his stomach, Torres pressed his palm onto the back of his neck and later wrapped his arm around Hill’s throat.
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In a separate statement pertaining to the body-cam video, Daniels said: “While standard protocol is to release bodycam footage after the internal review has concluded, the available bodycam footage — a combined 105 minutes 33 seconds — is being released the day following the incident to reinforce the Department’s commitment to keeping the public informed.”
Attorneys representing the officer who was placed on administrative duty issued a statement Monday saying their client should be reinstated to active duty, calling the swift action by the Miami-Dade Police Department “premature.”
“We call for our client’s immediate reinstatement, and a complete, thorough, and objective investigation, as Director Daniels has also advocated,” attorneys Ignacio Alvarez and Israel Reyes said in a statement.
During an interview on “The Dan Le Batard Show,” Hill’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, called for the officers to be fired.
“I believe the police officers that did that to Tyreek shouldn’t be in that position — they should be let go,” Rosenhaus said. “That was horrendous how they treated him. They didn’t treat him like a human being.”
Hill was cited for careless driving and a seat belt violation. The citation alleges a “visual estimation 60 mph” and that there was “high traffic” of pedestrians and vehicles. Campbell was not charged.
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