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 officers near the team’s stadium.
Hill said he wishes he did some things “a bit differently” on Sunday, 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.”
Hill was pulled from his car during a traffic stop near the team’s stadium less than three hours before kickoff of the team’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 — was also handcuffed by police during the incident.
Hill spoke with the media a day after he called for the Miami-Dade Police Department to fire officer Danny Torres, the officer put on administrative duties during an internal affairs investigation of the incident.
On Wednesday, Hill again called for Torres to be fired and said the officer’s legal reps reached out to broker a sit-down apology, but he declined.
Hill was cited for careless driving and failing to wear a seatbelt.
ESPN’s Marcel Louis-Jacques and The Associated Press contributed to this report.