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 on Monday evening after initially delaying its release pending an internal affairs investigation into the officer’s actions. The investigation is ongoing.
Mr. Hill’s brief detention — he was later released and went on to score a touchdown in the Dolphins’ season opener on 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Hill, a 30-year-old star player for the Dolphins, being placed on the ground by officers and handcuffed.
The body camera footage from the detaining officer was partially redacted but still much longer, comprising the 27-minute traffic stop. It began shortly before an unidentified officer on a motorcycle pulled over Mr. Hill’s black sports car, apparently for speeding, at around 10:17 a.m. on Sunday, not far from the entrance of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.
Mr. 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,” Mr. Hill said, handing the officer his driver’s license. The officer asked Mr. Hill why his seatbelt was not on and why he had put up his window.
“Give me my ticket, bro, so I can go,” Mr. Hill said. “I’m going to be late.”
As Mr. Hill closed his window again and put on his seatbelt, the officer kept knocking on it. Two more times, the officer instructed Mr. 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 did 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.”
The officer swung open the car door and pulled Mr. Hill out of the car, with the help of a second and then a third officer who approached. They placed him on the ground. Mr. Hill, who had been on the phone, could be heard saying: “I’m getting arrested. I’m getting arrested.”
By then, people were watching, including Calais Campbell, a defensive lineman for the Dolphins who got out of his own 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 S.U.V., according to the body camera video, asked questions and was told by the officer who detained Mr. Hill to hand over his own driver’s license so that Mr. Smith could be given a ticket.
When the officer went to his computer to run Mr. Smith’s license, one of the other officers moved closer.
“You know who that is, right?” the second officer asked, apparently gesturing toward the handcuffed Mr. Hill. “That’s one of the Dolphins’ star players.”
A little later, while the officer was on his computer, a voice that sounded like Mr. Hill’s could be heard in the background saying, “I’m just being Black in America, bro.” The detaining officer eventually was heard saying that he was citing Mr. Hill for careless driving and failure to wear a seatbelt.
Steadman Stahl, the president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, said earlier on Monday that Mr. 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,” Mr. 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.”
The body camera footage shows a flurry of activity after Mr. Hill’s detention, with a gaggle of officers and other people arriving to the sidewalk outside the stadium. The audio of some of the conversations between the detaining officer and other officers was redacted.
By 10:43 a.m., Mr. Hill was no longer in handcuffs. He shook several police officers’ hands as he returned to his car, this time climbing into the passenger seat. “Hey, I’ll see you all in court,” Mr. Hill said.
After the Dolphins beat the Jaguars 20-17, Mr. Hill told reporters that he “wasn’t disrespectful” after officers told him he had been speeding. He added that he did not know why they had handcuffed him.
“It happened so fast that it caught me off guard,” he said.
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.”
Mr. Campbell said after Sunday’s game that he spotted Mr. Hill in handcuffs and to try to “de-escalate the situation.” The police told him he was “disobeying a direct order,” Mr. Campbell said.
“They were trying to yank him down to the ground,” Mr. Campbell said on ESPN on Monday. “I saw them kick him and pull him down, I mean, pulling the cuffs — shoulders looked like they were messing up. They kind of got him down. I felt like one officer was pushing on his head. It just was, like, completely unnecessary.”
Drew Rosenhaus, Mr. Hill’s agent, told The Herald on Sunday that Mr. Hill’s representatives were considering taking legal action against the Police Department. “What happened today to Tyreek at the stadium is completely unacceptable,” Mr. Rosenhaus said.
Mr. Rosenhaus did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Off the field, Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Hill slapping a marina worker on the back of the head. Mr. Hill and the man eventually settled the matter.
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