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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.
