Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill acknowledged Wednesday that he probably should have kept his window rolled down during his now-infamous traffic stop outside of Hard Rock Stadium.
“Yes,” Hill told reporters, “I will say I could have been better.”
But then Hill added: “Does that give them the right to beat the dog out of me? Absolutely not.”
Latest From Miami Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill
Hill went on to call for the termination of Officer Danny Torres, a 27-year veteran of the MDPD police force whose behavior during Sunday’s incident was the most egregious.
“Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. He gotta go,” Hill said.
Hill and teammate Calais Campbell were placed in handcuffs but not arrested by Miami-Dade cops after a dispute over Hill’s driver’s-side window during Sunday’s traffic stop.
Cops threatened to shatter Hill’s window before pulling him out of the car by his head, cuffing him facedown on the street, then later slamming him to the ground while he was restrained. All of it was captured by the police department’s own surveillance apparatuses.
Hill went on to say that he was “choked, punched, kicked, all of that,” adding the video is “embarrassing, because I have kids.”
Hill was at the movies when MDPD released nearly two hours of applicable footage Monday night.
Slater Scoop has a portion of the Tyreek Hill body cam video
— Adam Beasley (@AdamHBeasley) September 9, 2024
His reaction after seeing the video?
“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 body cams on. It’s really sad. … What would they do if they didn’t have body cams?”
Hill is arguably the best player in football and one of the strongest-willed. Just hours after his detainment, he caught seven passes for 130 yards and a touchdown in the Dolphins’ 20-17 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.
He has also long been a magnet for negative attention — often with no one to blame but himself.
Hill told reporters Wednesday that the older he’s gotten, the more he’s realized how important it is to be a “pro’s pro.”
“I’m slowing my life down,” he said, adding that he’s not doing the “crazy” stuff he was early in his career.