Video shows police confrontation with Tyreek Hill escalating quickly

MIAMI — A traffic stop that led to Tyreek Hill, a wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins, being handcuffed outside the team’s stadium on Sunday escalated quickly after a police officer knocked on the player’s car window and he objected, body camera footage of the incident shows.

The Miami-Dade Police Department released the video Monday evening after initially delaying its release pending an internal affairs investigation into the officer’s actions. The investigation is ongoing.

Hill’s brief detention — he was later released and went on to score a touchdown in the Dolphins’ season opener Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars — prompted concerns about police use of force. The president of a local police union countered those accusations by saying that the officers had followed policy after Hill was being “uncooperative.”

One of the officers involved was temporarily reassigned to administrative duties. Stephanie V. Daniels, the Miami-Dade police director, told The Miami Herald on Monday that the officer was reassigned after a review of at least part of the footage.

Brief videos captured by passing drivers and posted on social media before the police body camera footage was released showed Hill, a 30-year-old star player for the Dolphins, being placed on the ground by officers and handcuffed.

The body camera footage from six officers was partially redacted but still much longer, comprising the roughly 27-minute traffic stop. It began shortly before an unidentified officer on a motorcycle pulled over Hill’s black McLaren, apparently for speeding, at around 10:17 a.m. Sunday, not far from the entrance of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Hill’s car window, though initially open, appeared closed or nearly closed by the time the officer knocked on it a few moments later.

“Hey, don’t knock on my window,” Hill said, handing the officer his driver’s license. The officer asked Hill why his seat belt was not on and why he had put up his window.

“Give me my ticket, bro, so I can go,” Hill said. “I’m going to be late.”

As Hill closed his window again and put on his seat belt, the officer kept knocking on it. Two more times, the officer instructed Hill to keep the window down.

By the third time, less than two minutes after the interaction began and with the window nearly closed, the officer said, “Keep your window down, or I’m going to get you out of the car.”

Then, almost immediately, he said he would do just that. “As a matter of fact, get out of the car,” the officer said. “Get out of the car right now. We’re not playing this game.”

A second officer then threatened to “break that freaking window,” swung open the car door and pulled Hill out of the car, with the help of the first officer and then a third who approached. They pushed him on the ground and grabbed his arms.

Hill, who had been on the phone, said: “I’m getting arrested. I’m getting arrested,” and added that his knee had been hurt. “Stop crying,” the more aggressive officer said.

By then, people were watching, including Calais Campbell, a defensive lineman for the Dolphins who got out of his car as he passed the scene, approached the police and was later also placed in handcuffs. Jonnu Smith, a Dolphins tight end, pulled over in an SUV, according to the body camera video, asked questions and was told by the officer who detained Hill to hand over his own driver’s license so that Smith could be given a ticket.

When the detaining officer went to his computer to run Smith’s license, one of the other officers moved closer.

“You know who that is, right?” the other officer asked, gesturing toward the handcuffed Hill. “That’s one of the Dolphins’ star players.”

A little later, while the detaining officer was on his computer, Hill, now sitting on the curb, said, “I’m just being Black in America, bro.”

“We’re dark too, bro,” an officer replied, apparently referring to several of the officers being Hispanic. “We’re people of color.”

Hill was ultimately cited for careless driving and failure to wear a seat belt, according to the video.

Steadman Stahl, the president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, said earlier Monday that Hill was not arrested but “briefly detained for officer safety after driving in a manner in which he was putting himself and others in great risk of danger.”

“Upon being stopped, Mr. Hill was not immediately cooperative with the officers on the scene who, pursuant to policy and for their immediate safety, placed Mr. Hill in handcuffs,” Stahl said in a statement. “Mr. Hill, still uncooperative, refused to sit on the ground and was therefore redirected to the ground. Once the situation was sorted out within a few minutes, Mr. Hill was issued two traffic citations and was free to leave.”

In an interview on CNN on Monday night, Hill said that he had done what the officers had asked of him, and that he was “shellshocked” and “embarrassed” about what had happened.

“I was following rules,” he said. “I didn’t want to create a scene at all. I just really wanted to get the ticket, and then just go on about my way.”

In a statement Monday night after the release of the body camera footage, the Dolphins said it was “maddening and heartbreaking” to watch police officers use “unnecessary force and hostility” against players.

“There are some officers who mistake their responsibility and commitment to serve with misguided power,” the team said. It urged the Police Department to take “swift and strong action against the officers who engaged in such despicable behavior.”

Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County, whose administration oversees the Police Department, said in a statement that the internal investigation was appropriate.

“In recent years, our nation has confronted important conversations on the use of force,” she said, “and the internal review process will answer questions about why the troubling actions shown in public video footage were taken by the officer.”

Drew Rosenhaus, Hill’s agent, told The Herald on Sunday that Hill’s representatives were considering taking legal action against the Police Department. “What happened today to Tyreek at the stadium is completely unacceptable,” Rosenhaus said.

Rosenhaus did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Off the field, Hill has had several brushes with the law.

In 2014, he pleaded guilty to domestic assault and battery by strangulation, after an incident with his pregnant girlfriend that got Hill kicked off the Oklahoma State college football team. In 2019, prosecutors outside Kansas City declined to charge him after his involvement in an apparent domestic violence incident.

Last year, the police in Miami-Dade County investigated him after a video appeared to show Hill slapping a marina worker on the back of the head. Hill and the man eventually settled the matter.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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