Former Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez is weighing in on the police takedown of Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill during a traffic stop.
Speaking with 7News on Tuesday, Perez said that Hill being pulled from his car, being handcuffed on the concrete, and then being pushed to the ground is not the look the department, which he’s still very connected to, needed to show the community.
“Whatever he was thinking at the time, that probably wasn’t the right thing to do, and then officer reaction, that wasn’t the right thing to do because that’s not the look that you want at any time,” Perez said. “It wasn’t the right thing. You don’t want to see that occur on a regular traffic stop, that’s for sure.”
Perez spent 30 years in the Miami-Dade Police Department, with his last four years as the department’s director.
Based on what he saw from the altercation, Perez said Hill could have been more cooperative early on.
“Why Mr. Hill felt that he needed to have the window closed, and he didn’t trust the officer enough to engage through an open window when they were talking?” he said.
Perez also said that the officers have to maintain control in those situations.
“Both sides did do stuff to escalate rather than de-escalate the matter. However, we have to do better, right?” he said. “We have to be the ones that come above the fray.”
Perez said it’s unclear to him why Hill was forcefully removed from his McLaren.
“I don’t know if they felt he was resisting coming out of the car,” he said.
He said that oftentimes, officers want people sitting when they’re sorting things out in chaotic situations, but he wonders, like so many, whether pushing Hill down was necessary.
“When you look at it, it looks a lot worse than what it was, and there’s no way that they’re ever going to be able to explain, ‘Oh, it wasn’t really that bad when I forced him down right to the ground to sit,'” he said. “Maybe ask him twice or three times, right, if it takes four times because of the optics of it.”
On Tuesday, Miami-Dade Police identified Danny Torres, a 27-year veteran, as one of the officers involved in the incident. Torres has since been placed on administrative duty.
An internal affairs investigation is now underway.
“They’re going to be able to give their perception as to what was going through their mind, what they were thinking at that time,” Perez said.
Perez knows firsthand how far back the relationship between the team and the department goes.
He hopes that all those years working together can help the community learn from the incident and move forward.
“Incidents like this can roll out of control where now there’s a level of mistrust in the community, so now it’s important that we all kind of get back together and hopefully leave out of this with a better understanding of why people reacted the way they did and fix it for the future,” he said.
The incident remains under investigation.