Body camera video released Monday showed how a dispute over a raised car window led officers to handcuff Miami Dolphins star Tyreek Hill, a confrontation that the team lambasted as a “despicable” police action.
In an unusually harsh statement issued late Monday night, the Dolphins came down squarely on the side of their wide receiver and blamed Miami-Dade Police Department officers for allegedly violating the public’s “trust to protect our community” with “such unnecessary force.”
While the Dolphins said they have a “strong and positive relationship with the Miami-Dade Police Department,” the team strongly objected to the officers’ treatment of Hill, who was pulled over near Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, hours ahead of the Miami-Jacksonville Jaguars game.
“However, as is on full display in the videos released tonight, there are some officers who mistake their responsibility and commitment to serve with misguided power,” the team said.
“While we commend MDPD for taking the right and necessary action to quickly release footage, we also urge them to take equally swift and strong action against the officers who engaged in such despicable behavior.”
The video shows Hill’s car pulled over and an officer on a motorcycle telling him he was speeding and to pull forward, which he does.
The officer knocks on the driver’s side window and asks why Hill does not have a seat belt on, and Hill tells him several times, “Don’t knock on my window like that.”
“Why do you have it up? I have to knock to let you know I’m here,” the officer says in the video.
Hill then says he is late and tells the officer to give him a ticket. The window then goes up, prompting the officer to knock on the rolled-up window again and tell Hill to keep it down.
The window goes down a crack, and Hill appears to say, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Keep your window down, or I’m going to get you out of the car,” the officer replies. “As a matter of fact, get out of the car.”
A second officer threatens to break the window, and the first officer tells Hill: “Get out of the car right now. We’re not playing this game.”
Hill appears to tell the officers that he’ll get out. As the door opens, an officer reaches into the car and pulls him out. That officer and another put Hill face-down on the pavement.
“When we tell you to do something, you do it. You understand?” an officer — not the one who pulled Hill over and knocked on his window — appears to say as Hill is on the ground, the video shows.
“You understand? Not when you want but when we tell you. You’re a little f—ing confused.”
In the video, Hill is saying something while he is on the ground, but the audio of what he says is hard to make out. The officer can twice be heard saying, “Too late.”
After Hill is stood up, he says the officer “was beating on my window like he’s crazy,” the video shows.
The video then shows an officer telling Hill to sit down, and then another officer grabs his shoulders and seems to force him to a seated position on the sidewalk. Hill shouts, “I just had surgery on my knee.”
Later, as Hill is still seated on the sidewalk, another officer tells the officer who pulled him over: “You know who that is, right? That’s one of the Dolphins’ star players,” to which the officer says, “Oh, yeah?”
Hill, 30, told NBC News in an interview that aired Monday that he was opening his door to get out. He said the incident “went from 0 to 60.”
“A simple speeding ticket turned into something like me lying face-down on my stomach for a simple speeding ticket,” Hill said.
Hill said that he gave the officer who pulled him over his ID and that he was cooperative. “I already had my ID ready, so I gave him that,” Hill said. “Which is crazy — so I was being very cooperative from the get-go.”
Dolphins tight end Jonnu Smith and defensive lineman Calais Campbell, who were driving by, saw Hill being detained and stopped to help, Hill said.
Campbell ended up getting handcuffed. A different officer from the one who knocked on Hill’s window is seen in body camera video handcuffing Campbell.
Campbell said Monday that he was trying to defuse the situation.
He said on ESPN‘s “First Take” that he thought: “I don’t know if I have the ability to de-escalate this, but I’m going to try, because this is someone that I care about. It’s a friend of mine.”
“Of the officers there, it was really one guy that was extreme,” he said. “Everybody else, it seemed like they were just going with what they were supposed to do.”
Hill was cited for reckless driving, his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, told NBC South Florida on Sunday. Those violations shouldn’t have led officers to detain Hill, he said.
The Dolphins said in their statement Monday that they were “saddened by the overly aggressive and violent conduct directed towards Tyreek Hill, Calais Campbell and Jonnu Smith by police officers before yesterday’s game.”
The team called the situation “maddening.”
“It is both maddening and heartbreaking to watch the very people we trust to protect our community use such unnecessary force and hostility towards these players, yet it is also a reminder that not every situation like this ends in peace, as we are grateful this one did,” the team said. “‘What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill?’ is a question that will carry with resounding impact.”
Miami-Dade Police Director Stephanie Daniels said Sunday that she has ordered an internal affairs investigation and that one of the officers had been placed on administrative duties pending the outcome.
The police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Dolphins’ statement Monday night.
Ignacio Alvarez, of the ALGO law firm, is representing the unidentified officer who was taken off frontline duties and said in a statement Tuesday morning that the decision to place his client was “premature,” although he respected calls for a thorough review.
“We call for our client’s immediate reinstatement, and a complete, thorough, and objective investigation, as Director Daniels has also advocated. Our client will not comment until this investigation is concluded and the facts are fully revealed,” Alvarez said.
First appeared on www.nbcnews.com