MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Tyreek Hill’s teammates and coaches used words like “triggering” and a “shame” to describe body camera footage showing a police officer yanking the Miami Dolphins receiver out of his sports car and forcing him face-first onto the ground during a traffic stop.
The incident outside the Dolphins’ stadium has drawn national attention. It has also led to conversations in the locker room among Hill’s teammates, some of whom privately shared their own personal experiences with police, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said.
“It was a little emotional for me, hearing Tyreek’s voice in the footage,” Tagovailoa said Tuesday.
The video released by the Miami-Dade Police Department on Monday evening showed that the traffic stop hours before Miami’s season opener escalated quickly after Hill put up the window of his car.
Hill rolled down the driver’s side window and handed his license to an officer who had been knocking on the window. Hill then told the officer repeatedly to stop knocking before rolling the darkly tinted window back up.
After a back and forth about the window, the body camera video shows an officer pull Hill out of his car by his arm and head and then force him face-first onto the ground. Officers handcuffed Hill and one put a knee in the middle of his back.
“It’s a shame that had to happen that way,” said Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith. “When you spend all your time with these guys, you want to be there for them all the time to help. For me, like many guys, you wish you were there to help as well.”
Hill said in a CNN interview that he was embarrassed and “shell-shocked” by what happened, and that he thought he followed the officers’ directions.
The video shows that officers stood Hill up and walked him handcuffed to the sidewalk. One officer told him to sit on the curb. Hill told the officer he just had surgery on his knee. An officer then jumped behind him and put a bar hold around Hill’s upper chest or neck and pulled Hill into a seated position.
Police Director Stephanie Daniels launched an internal affairs investigation the same day, and one officer was transferred to administrative duties.
The department on Tuesday identified the officer who was placed on administrative duties as Danny Torres, a 27-year veteran of the department. Ignacio Alvarez, Torres’ attorney, issued a statement calling for his client’s immediate reinstatement while respecting Daniels’ call for an investigation.
The South Florida police union’s president, Steadman Stahl, released a statement Monday saying Hill was not “immediately cooperative” with officers and that the officers followed policy in handcuffing Hill.
The altercation shown on six officers’ body camera videos has brought to the forefront conversations surrounding the experience of Black people with police.
“It’s been hard for me not to find myself more upset the more I think about it,” said Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, speaking Monday before the footage was released. “I think the thing that (messes) me up, honestly, to be quite frank, is knowing that I don’t know exactly … know what that feels like.”
McDaniel, who is biracial, said his life experience has left him “aware” of conversations about race, while never having been in a similar situation to Hill’s.
Safety Jevon Holland said what he saw in the footage did not surprise him.
“I’m 24,” Holland said. “There’s been a bunch of very unsettling and disturbing videos, body cam footage over and over again since Twitter has been a thing, really since Rodney King. I would like to be more shocked and surprised, but I’m not.”
Holland also condemned those who used Hill’s past allegations of violence to justify any excessive use of force.
“Doing something in the past, whether it be wrong or right, does not justify or condemn you to be treated in such a way when the situation has nothing to do with that at all,” Holland said.
Many players were confused after seeing Hill’s teammate, Calais Campbell, get handcuffed. Campbell, a widely respected defensive tackle who just began his 17th NFL season, stopped to help when he saw Hill in handcuffs, but ended up briefly handcuffed as well. Hill and Campbell were eventually released and allowed to go into the stadium. Hill received citations for careless driving and failing to wear a seatbelt,
“If I’m Calais Campbell and I’m 38 years old and you’re going to work, whatever personal innocence that you have relative to — you’re a gigantic, strong, just a miraculous man that has done right in all ways, shapes and forms. There’s just elements to that that is very triggering,” McDaniel said.
Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, who is Black, also referred to the video footage as triggering and reflected on his own life.
“It’s unfortunate in this day and time,” Weaver said, “when I have two boys — my wife is Mexican American — and both the times that they were born and they were light-skinned, there was almost a sense of relief in that they were going to avoid some of the same issues that I’ve had to deal with throughout my life.”
Drew Rosenhaus, Hill’s agent, appeared on the Dan Le Batard show Tuesday morning and called for at least one of the officers involved to be fired.
“For me personally, I think the police officers that did that to Tyreek shouldn’t be in that position. They should be let go,” Rosenhaus said, as footage of the encounter was shown. “Look at the guy that just kicked him right there. That guy should be fired. That’s out of control.”
Tagovailoa said Hill gathered some of his teammates together to turn the situation into something that could benefit the community.
With a pivotal game coming up Thursday against division rival Buffalo, the Dolphins will have to push past the week’s distraction, while also not losing perspective, Tagovailoa said.
“We don’t avoid the obvious. It’s a thing. Let it be what it is. Let it take its course,” Tagovailoa said. “I think when we start to brush that away and think that this football thing is the most important thing to us, when this isn’t just something that Tyreek (has) gone through.
“This is something that people in general go through. That’s a life thing. Football, we’re blessed to do this. We’re blessed to be able to play this sport. We’re blessed to make all this money to do what we love and it’s for fun. But that’s really life. No games in that.”