It’s been more than a year since the Jameis Winston rape accusation was made public, and things continue to spiral out of control for the Florida State football program. More recently, an investigation done by the NY Times has revealed disturbing evidence of several occasions where football players were involved in criminal activity, yet the Tallahassee Police Department turned the other cheek. The result is that players were not convicted and many times not even disciplined in the cases, and life continued in Tallahassee as though nothing had happened.
When Jesus (Bobo) Wilson, an up-and-coming wide receiver, was stopped by the Tallahassee police in June while riding a stolen Bintelli Sprint motor scooter, his story was dubious: He claimed he had borrowed it from a student whose last name he did not know. But for Officer Michael Petroczky, it was convincing enough to forestall an arrest.
The officer, noting in his report that Mr. Wilson was a Florida State football player, wrote: “Wilson was not arrested today because he cooperated, showed no signs of guilt and provided a plausible story that needs to be investigated.”
According to the scooter’s owner, Mr. Wilson’s football connections weighed heavily on the case. After letting Mr. Wilson go, the officer arranged to meet the owner, a Florida State student, in a campus parking lot at night and “questioned if I was mentally stable or if I had forgotten that I lent him the scooter,” the student said in an email interview. The officer seemed deeply reluctant to charge Mr. Wilson, saying he did not want his name on the arrest report, according to the student.
“He told me that he had not arrested Wilson because he was a football player, and he did not want to ‘ruin’ his record by arresting him” if there was a chance he might be innocent, the student wrote.
This is just one example of how law enforcement have seemingly turned a blind eye to the wrongdoings of FSU football players.
At least 13 football players have been implicated in a string of wild public shootouts with CO2-powered BB and pellet guns, causing thousands of dollars in property damage, endangering bystanders and eliciting a police response. Yet until the most recent case — a previously unreported shootout in June that caused such a commotion that a sheriff’s helicopter was called in to search for suspects — none of the episodes led to charges, even though elsewhere in Florida suspects as young as 12 have been arrested for doing the same things.
The number of cases are startling, yet no one had ever heard anything until Jameis Winston was accused of rape. The Times even uncovered evidence of a domestic violence incident between a football player, a young woman and an infant. However, no names are identified in this case.
The 911 call came at 3:10 a.m. A man and a woman were fighting outside an apartment complex three miles north of the Florida State campus. The caller, a neighbor, asked the police to hurry. He said the man was grabbing the baby, punching the mother and trying to block her from driving away. “He jumped behind the truck, and she tried to run him over,” he said.
It was not the first time the couple had fought, the caller said, adding, “You can constantly hear them screaming.”
In two minutes, the Tallahassee police were on the scene. Officer Paul Donaldson later summed up what they had learned in a three-paragraph report: The man and woman were inside talking, not yelling. He was holding their baby. During an earlier argument, she had tried to leave their apartment, taking the baby with her, but he objected. Both calmed down and went back inside. “There was no bruising or evidence of a battery,” the police report stated, calling the complaint “unfounded.”
The evidence of mishandling of criminal events involving FSU football players is startling, yet it continues. Many officers work overtime at football games and provide their off-duty services to the team. These disturbing allegations against the police department signal an immediate need for changes in the system, which is meant to protect the citizens. However, it is clear that the system is failing miserably to appease athletics. For now, there is investigation followed by more investigation with no sign of change.
[h/t NY Times]