The Miami-Dade cop who is under fire for his rough detainment of Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill earlier this year had been suspended multiple times from his position for aggressive behavior that violated several police department policies, including use of force procedures.
According to investigative reports obtained by NBC6, Officer Danny Torres was suspended six times in his 27-year tenure with the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Records show Torres was suspended once in 2014, three times in 2016, once more in 2018, and another time in 2019.
The police officer is currently on administrative leave for what the Miami Dolphins called “aggressive and violent conduct” that he and other officers displayed during Tyreek Hill’s detainment on Sept. 8.
Just hours before the Dolphins’ season opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Hill was pulled over by police while he was driving to the Hard Rock Stadium.
Videos posted online show several officers forcing Hill to the ground and handcuffing him. Torres was the cop who initiated the stop and was seen holding Hill face-down on the ground. Hill was cited for careless driving and failing to wear a seat belt, but those traffic offenses were dismissed in November after the officer who cited him failed to appear at a traffic court hearing.
After the incident, police officials temporarily removed Torres from duty and launched an internal investigation.
Several of Torres’ previous suspensions are connected to citizen complaints about his behavior.
His last suspension in 2019 occurred after a man complained that Torres intentionally mutilated his driver’s license, then cited him for “unlawful use of a mutilated driver’s license.”
That incident happened in August 2018 when Hector Montalban said he honked at a police officer he believed was driving recklessly and followed her into a parking lot to complain.
Montalban began yelling at the female officer in front of other officers, including Torres, who were gathered at a nearby bakery and saw the confrontation.
Montalban told the officer she was “terrible,” and when he started leaving, Torres “screamed” at him, ordered him out of his vehicle for a “pat down” search, and asked why he was “harassing” the other officer, adding “I should arrest you for this.”
Montalban apologized for insulting the other officer, but Torres demanded he turn over his driver’s license. Montalban said he took it, damaged it, and then gave it back to Montalban before citing him for the ruined ID.
All of this reportedly took place right after Torres deactivated his body camera, a policy violation that investigators later disciplined him for. While his bodycam was turned off, he showed the mutilated license to another officer and then ran it through the police database to search for Montalban’s history.
In later discussions with internal investigators, Torres denied damaging the license and said he turned off his bodycam to save power.
He received a 10-day suspension for failing to use the bodycam for the entirety of the stop and for failing to report the stop to dispatchers. A disciplinary report stated that the suspension was justified because Torres’ “pattern of behavior” indicated that he “repeatedly failed to adhere by departmental rules and procedures.”
If investigators had bodycam evidence proving Torres mutilated the license, he could have been charged with a criminal offense.
Montalban had hoped he would be fired for the incident.
“Police officers are there to protect and serve this guy is not there for that,” Montalban said.
Torres was also suspended in 2016 for his conduct during an October 2014 encounter with a married couple who called police over a landlord-tenant dispute.
Torres was the responding officer to that call. As he was leaving the home, a man began “screaming obscenities at him,” according to documents. Torres turned around and reportedly pulled a mental fence door off its tracks to confront the man, even after the man’s wife said he didn’t have permission to come onto the property they were renting.
A neighbor who saw the incident later told investigators that Torres pushed the woman out of the way and broke the metal fence off in a way that caused her to fall, leaving her with a cut on her finger and a bruise on her head.
The witness stated that Torres then chest-bumped the man. Although Torres denied initiating physical contact with the man, he did admit to investigators that they “got real close to each other,” and he asked the man, “What are you going to do?”
He was suspended for violating the department’s use of force procedure and other policies during that incident.
The 2014 and 2018 complaints were also referred to the state attorney’s office, but authorities declined to prosecute.
Torres was also disciplined after his aggressive interaction with two sisters in 2015.
He was dispatched to a trash and recycling center to de-escalate a verbal dispute involving the sisters’ father. When one sister called the cops “idiots” and pointedly called Torres a “f***ing idiot,” Torres reportedly grabbed her by the arm and slammed her on the hood of a police car, which left her with visible bruising. He also handcuffed her and put her in the back of the car.
Torres said that the individual was arrested for disorderly conduct after she refused to leave the area. He told investigators that she resisted arrest, so he used force to cuff her.
Torres was cleared of violating the use of force procedures but was disciplined for unbecoming conduct after another officer reported hearing Torres tell the other sister, “I don’t wake up every f***ing morning to have someone call me an a**hole.”
The use of force complaint was also submitted to the state attorney’s office for a criminal battery investigation, but the office declined to prosecute.
NBC6 reported that Torres was suspended two other times — once for 20 days and another suspension for five days — but police have not released the documents detailing the incidents that disciplinary history is connected to.
Torres was also issued written reprimands about his conduct in 1999 and 2000.
