Dolphins rally around Tyreek Hill as agent calls for officers to be fired

Tyreek Hill’s teammates and coaches used words like “triggering” and a “shame” to describe body camera footage showing police officers yanking the Miami Dolphins receiver out of his sports car and forcing him face-first onto the ground during a traffic stop, while Hill’s agent called for the officers involved to be fired in an interview Tuesday.

The Miami-Dade Police Department also publicly released the traffic citations that Hill received, including one stating that his car was “visually estimated” to be driving around 60 mph before he was stopped.

The road near Hard Rock Stadium where Hill was driving reportedly has a posted speed limit of 40 mph. Hill’s teammate Calais Campbell, who was also briefly detained after stopping near the scene to offer support to Hill, said on FS1’s “The Facility” on Monday that Hill told him he was going roughly 10 mph over the speed limit when pulled over.

Hill, 30, was pushed onto the ground face-first, handcuffed and then was again forced to the ground despite his complaint that sitting on the curb caused pain in his surgically repaired knee. He was eventually released after receiving citations for careless driving and failing to wear his seat belt. Hours later, he caught an 80-yard touchdown pass that sparked the Dolphins’ comeback win over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Police Department Director Stephanie Davis put one officer on administrative leave, and an internal affairs investigation is underway.

Drew Rosenhaus, who represents Hill as well as several other high-profile NFL players, said on the Dan Le Batard show Tuesday that the officers involved should be “let go” after bodycam footage of the incident was released Monday night.

“Personally, I think that the police officers who did that to Tyreek shouldn’t be in that position,” Rosenhaus said. “The guy who [pushed Hill to the ground], that guy should be fired. The guy who put him in a chokehold, there’s no place for a police officer to have a badge that operates like that when Tyreek wasn’t being aggressive or violent or fighting back in any capacity. That was horrendous how they treated him. They didn’t treat him like a human being. There’s no place for [those] officers to be on the force.

“I think he deserves an apology from each and every one of those police officers involved … His conduct by no means warranted the extreme reaction that they [had].”

Hill is heard throughout the video attempting to talk to someone named “Drew” on the phone and then later asking Campbell to “call Drew” when Campbell and fellow Dolphins veteran Jonnu Smith arrived on the scene. It’s unclear if Hill was attempting to contact Rosenhaus or Dolphins head of security Drew Brooks, who both showed up at the scene soon after.

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 seating position.

Police Director Stephanie Daniels launched an internal affairs investigation the same day, and one officer was transferred to administrative duties. The South Florida police union’s president, Steadman Stahl, released a statement saying Hill was not “immediately cooperative” with officers and that the officers followed their policy in handcuffing Hill, who was “putting himself and others in great risk of danger.”

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.

Many players were confused after seeing Campbell also 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.”

[Related: Dolphins’ Calais Campbell recounts being detained with Tyreek Hill]

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.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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