Police officers in Florida quickly escalated their confrontation with Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, pulling him from his car and forcing him to the ground during a traffic stop this weekend, according to body camera footage released Monday.
Hill, 30, was detained Sunday on his way to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium for the NFL season opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Video footage shows officers speaking to Hill as he sits in his McLaren sports car. As he hands over documentation to an officer, he can be heard saying: “Don’t knock on my window like that.”
“Just give me my ticket, bro,” Hill says in the footage . “So I can go. I’m going to be late. Do what you got to do.”
As officers step away, Hill rolls up his window before the officer tells him to keep it rolled down.
“Keep your window down,” the officer says in the footage. “Keep your window down or I’m going to get you out of the car. As a matter of fact, get out of the car.”
You can watch footage of the encounter between Hill and the Miami-Dade Police here.
Police body camera video shows an officer dragging Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill out of his sports car by his arm and head and then forcing him face first onto the ground after Hill put up the window of his vehicle. (Miami-Dade Police Department)
Another officer steps in and says he’s going to “break that fucking window” before opening the door, pulling Hill out of the vehicle by his neck and forcing him to the ground. The football player appears to speak to someone on the phone letting them know he is being detained.
A minute later, the officers walked Hill to the curb in handcuffs. As one officer attempts to seat him on the curb, Hill asks him to “hold on” before another rushes forward to force him to sit down.
“I just had surgery on my knee, bro!” Hill yells.
“Really? What a coincidence,” the officer says in the clip. “Did you have surgery on your ears when we told you to put your window down?”
The president of South Florida’s police union defended the officers’ actions in a statement Monday, saying the football player was detained and placed face down on the ground because he was not “immediately cooperative.” They said he was never under arrest and only placed in handcuffs as part of department policy.
“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 handcuff,” Steadman Stahl, the president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement, per The Associated Press . “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.”
Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill looks on before the start of an NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday.
Miami-Dade Police released the full bodycam footage in a “commitment to transparency,” despite saying earlier it would not do so until it had finished an investigation into the matter.
“In our commitment to transparency and maintaining public trust, we are releasing the body-worn camera footage related to the recent incident involving Tyreek Hill,” Stephanie Daniels, the department’s director, said in a statement. She added the police force was focused on reinforcing its commitment to “keeping the public informed.”
The officer who detained Hill has been placed on administrative duty during an internal investigation, as is typical procedure. The decision came after reviewing body camera footage.
The Dolphins shared a statement after the bodycam footage was released, calling the encounter “overly aggressive and violent,” saying the team was both angry and heartbroken “to watch the very people we trust to protect our community use such unnecessary force and hostility.”
“It is also a reminder that not every situation like this ends in peace, as we are grateful this one did,” the team said. “… While we commend MDPD for taking the right and necessary action to quickly release this footage, we also urge them to take equally swift and strong action against the officers who engaged in such despicable behavior.”
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