Tyreek Hill says he could have handled his traffic stop better but he still wants the officer fired

Image via AP.

Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill acknowledged Wednesday that he could have handled himself better in the initial moments of a weekend traffic stop that left him handcuffed and pulled out of his car by police officers near the team’s stadium.

Hill also said he wants one of the officers involved in the incident dismissed from the police force.

Hill said he wishes he did some things “a bit differently” on Sunday morning, including leaving the window of his car down when officers instructed him to do so. He rolled up the window instead. The incident escalated quickly from there.

“I will say I could have been better,” Hill said. “I could have let down my window in that instant. But the thing about me is, I don’t want attention. I don’t want to be cameras-out, phones-on-you in that moment. But at the end of the day, I’m human. I’ve got to follow rules. I’ve got to do what everyone else would do.

“Now, does that give them the right to literally beat the dog out of me? Absolutely not,” Hill continued. “But at the end of the day, I wish I could go back and do things a bit differently.”

Miami-Dade Police Director Stephanie Daniels launched an internal affairs investigation on Sunday afternoon and one officer was transferred to administrative duties. That officer, Danny Torres, wants to be immediately reinstated, his attorney said this week. Meanwhile, the Dolphins have said they want “swift and strong action” against all the officers involved.

“Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. He’s gotta go, man,” Hill said. “In that instant right there, not only did he treat me bad, but he also treated my teammates with disrespect. He had some crazy words towards them and they didn’t even do nothing. Like, what did they do to you? They’re just walking on the sidewalk. He’s got to go, man.”

Hill was pulled from his car near the team’s stadium less than three hours before kickoff of Miami’s Week 1 game. He was placed on the ground and handcuffed, and teammate Calais Campbell — who drove by the scene and stopped in an effort to play peacemaker — also was handcuffed by police during the incident.

Hill was cited for careless driving and failing to wear a seatbelt.

The Dolphins play the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night, and Hill said he would use the game as therapy, an escape from thinking about the incident. He said he would not take a knee — a move many players have used in recent years to protest police brutality — or call for the defunding of police. Hill has said several times in recent days that he has respect for police officers, and he intends to pursue work in law enforcement when his playing days end.

“Right now, what I’m focused on is my job and that’s to play football,” Hill said. “That’s all I can be, the best football player I can be.”

Body camera footage of the incident, released by the Miami-Dade Police Department on Monday evening, showed that the traffic stop 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 — one of the game’s best and most dynamic players, an eight-time Pro Bowl selection who led the NFL with 1,799 receiving yards last season — 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 bodycam 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.

Hill can be heard in the footage yelling repeatedly that he’d just had surgery on his knee as officers forced him to the ground. The receiver said Wednesday he had a minor stem cell procedure on his knee this offseason in Antigua. Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel called it a procedure that Hill “makes sure that he takes care of.”

Hill said he was inside a movie theater Monday night when he received word that the footage was released. He left the theater to watch it and said he hopes people seeing the video — both civilians and law enforcement — use it as a means to learn and get better, even drawing the parallel to the way that football players improve when they watch game film.

“It’s shell-shocking, man,” Hill said. “It’s really crazy to know that you have officers in this world that would literally do that with bodycams on. It’s sad. It’s really sad. Which brings up another conversation and leads into ‘What would they do if they didn’t have bodycams?’ Which is even crazier.”

NBA player Bam Adebayo said he believes Hill should have adhered to the officers’ demands and left his window down when instructed. He also said it was difficult to watch what happened next.

“For me, it’s the yanking him out of the car, throwing him on the ground, the knee on the back and you can kind of hear him speak but because the officer has such weight on his back he can barely speak,” the Miami Heat captain said. “I don’t ever want to get pulled over and catch a cop on a bad day. It’s a reminder that they don’t care who you are. Some of it escalated to a point where it could have gotten ugly for him. We’ve seen this story a lot, countless times.”

The altercation, and what was seen on the six officers’ bodycam videos, has again brought to the forefront conversations surrounding the experience of Black people with police — something that has been a national talking point for some time.

Hill has been involved in off-field incidents before, though teammates spoke out this week to condemn those who used Hill’s past allegations of violence to justify any excessive use of force. McDaniel said Wednesday that Hill continues to grow as a person, and that he has spoken to him on multiple occasions about why that matters. He also acknowledged that Hill could have handled the incident differently, without revealing specifics.

“A conversation about what provoked unnecessary,” McDaniel said, “is trivial to the unnecessary.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.