Tyreek Hill Detained: Body Camera Footage Shows Police Forcefully Dragging NFL Star From His Car
Hill was briefly detained by police on Sunday ahead of the season opener game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Body camera footage of Tyreek Hill’s arrest over the weekend has emerged online.
In the nearly four-minute clip circulating on social media, the Miami Dolphins wide receiver is seen having an exchange with local law enforcement just outside of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida.
An officer is seen approaching Hill’s car and asks him why he didn’t have his seat belt on, but it’s unclear what words were exchanged after. Moments later, the NFL star rolls up his window and the officer tells him to keep it down before ordering him to exit the vehicle altogether.
A different officer then opens the door, pulls Hill out and immediately drags him to the ground. The player, who was on the phone with his agent Drew Rosenhaus, drops his cell phone and shouts, “I’m getting arrested, Drew!”
“When we tell you to do something, you do it, you understand?” the second officer says at the 1:13 mark in the video above.
“I was getting out,” Hill replies.
“Too late.” the officer says back, before another cop places Hill in handcuffs.
Another shocking moment in the video occurs when Hill was moved to the sidewalk. As he tells a police officer that he recently had surgery on his knee, he is forcefully brought to sit down on the curb by a separate officer who approaches him from behind.
“Did you have surgery on your ears when we told you to put the window down?” a police officer can be heard saying.
Shortly after, Hill’s teammates Calais Campbell and Odell Beckham Jr. arrived on the scene but the police quickly ordered them to get back in their car. Campbell also ended up being placed in handcuffs but it's unclear what he was specifically cited for.
Hill was only temporarily detained and later played in the season opening game against the Jacksonville Jaguars that same day.
"In our commitment to transparency and maintaining public trust, we are releasing the body-worn camera (BWC) footage related to the recent incident involving Tyreek Hill,” said Miami-Dade PD Director Stephanie V. Daniels in a statement on Monday shared to Instagram.
She continued “While standard protocol is to release body cam footage after the internal review has concluded, the available body cam footage - a combined 105 minutes 33 seconds - is being released the day following the incident to reinforce the Department's commitment to keeping the public informed.”
“The department is committed to conducting a thorough, objective investigation into this matter, and we will continue to update the public on the outcome of that process," Daniels added.
"They said I was speeding, reckless driving or whatever," Hill told reporters during a post-game interview while noting he didn’t mention who he was during the incident. "I wasn’t raised like that to name-drop. If you said I did something, write me a ticket and do whatever you have to do. But don’t be disrespectful."
Hill also mentioned that he has “a lot of respect for cops” and expressed his desire to become a police officer in the future.
"I want to be a cop one day," he said. "Obviously, everybody has bad apples in every situation. I want to be able to use this platform to figure out a way to flip this and make this a positive on both ends, on my end and Miami-Dade, so we can do something positive for the community."
One of the officers involved in the incident has been placed on administrative leave, per the Miami-Dade PD.
