Well, this takes a lot of gall.
On Thursday, a day after Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett claimed that he was the victim of excessive force and racial profiling by the Las Vegas Police Department late last month, the police department asked NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league to investigate the incident for “obviously false allegations” from Bennett.
Sadly for the Las Vegas PD, video of the excessive force exists, yet they still have the gall to demand that Bennett’s employers “investigate” him for saying it happened.
Why would that even be anything to do with the NFL if it were true? Employers aren’t responsible for what their employees do outside work.
So the demand is nonsensical as well as outrageous…so they’re just grandstanding then?
“Gall” doesn’t even cover it.
Goodell, who supported Bennett in a statement on Wednesday evening, has no plans to open an investigation.
“There is no allegation of a violation of the league’s personal conduct policy and therefore there is no basis for an NFL investigation,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy wrote in response to the LVPD’s request, via ESPN.com.
NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith also issued a statement: “There are no grounds for the NFL to investigate our union rep, and I look forward to Roger confirming the same.”
…
The police disputed Bennett’s claims of racial profiling, but video footage of the incident left his brother, Packers tight end Martellus Bennett, shaken. Then, on Thursday, Steve Grammas, president of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, wrote the letter to Goodell, which included this passage:
“While the NFL may condone Bennett’s disrespect for our American Flag, and everything it symbolizes, we hope the League will not ignore Bennett’s false accusations against our police officers.”
Oh yes that’s the important thing here – respect for the flag. Police brutality is just part of the job, but dissing the flag – now that’s worth making a fuss about.
This is Trump’s America.
Comments
11 responses to “Graduates of Arpaio University”
What the NFL should’ve done is offered to do the investigation, as asked, “And therefore, we request that you immediately submit all official documents and evidence, including body- and dash-cam footage of both the arrest and the incident that led up to it, any video taken as evidence in the investigation of the shooting proper, and any statements officers made about the arrest.”
Betcha the LVPD would rescind their ‘request’ at light-speed.
‘Employers aren’t responsible for what their employees do outside work.’
So when the players commit rapes, punch out their wives on elevators, run dog-fighting rackets etc. the league should just look the other way?
Since NFL teams travel extensively for games and publicity, they may have a legitimate concern for about the kind of deranged local authorities they might be putting the players in the way of.
A detail you may have overlooked is that the police swarming the area all had body cams, resulting in a plethora of video evidence of events.
……………………………..Except the officer making the arrest, i.e. the guy accused of violence. It is claimed that his camera was either off or absent.
Not at all an equivalent comparison. Sporting contracts very frequently contain a clause for termination if the player does something criminal; they do not have a clause against making allegations against others.
That is not even close to what Ophelia said. There’s a difference between not being responsible for an employee’s behaviour and choosing what to do about it. The only way I can interpret this statement is some kind of misguided moral equivalence between raping an actual human being and pissing on a flag or something. In neither case would an employer ordinarily be ‘responsible’, but they are entirely welcome to make moral decisions about whether to condemn, defend or ignore an employee’s actions. The rest of us are free to judge both the employee and the employer on the basis of their actions.
On the other hand I put that too strongly. I had doubts about it at the time but was in a temper at the Las Vegas PD so I overruled my doubts. In reality, because football is made such a fetish here and takes up so much mental space, I do think the NFL should be able to rebuke or disavow some things players do on their own time.
But it does seem grotesque for a police department to tell the NFL “Hey, tell your players not to object when we assault them for running away from the sound of apparent gunshots!”
She says, pointing out the obvious.
I thought that was the point I was making. They’re not responsible except when they choose to be. There are various actions I reckon they should choose to take responsibility for if only because of the whole hero worship thing. Others, well, refusing to take responsibility makes a statement too.
Yes I wasn’t disagreeing with your point, I was adjusting mine. I don’t remember what I had in mind with “on the other hand”…
Yeah, I need to work on that whole simultaneously taking everything far too literally and far too abstractly thing :)
Don’t we all!
Holms @4,
I agree that there’s no specific mention of “making allegations against others,” but the behavior/morals clauses are much broader than just criminal conduct.
In the case of the NFL, the Standard Player Contract states that the player:
And the Collective Bargaining Agreement (same link as above) allows the Club to punish a player for “conduct detrimental to the Club,” and the Commissioner to punish for “conduct detrimental to the integrity of, or public confidence in, the game of professional football.”
Whether “making false allegations” would fall within these broad but vague clauses is a tough question. Realistically, I don’t see the NFL wanting to get involved here anyway. (There’s also legal complications in that many jurisdictions grant legal protection for complaints to law enforcement and other authorities.)
For the most part, I think the league has confined itself to punishing criminal offenses or violations of specific league rules, but there may be some other examples I’m forgetting. And I don’t doubt that if, say, an NFL player was marching with the neo-Nazis at Charlottesville, that he would find himself in Roger Goodell’s crosshairs.