Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004
IN MY OPINION
Police, not Rolle, may be at fault in this fishy case
DAN LE BATARD
[email protected]
It isn't fair.
First, we smear a name, a school and a lot of reputations.
And then we get around to figuring out the facts.
Cornerback Antrel Rolle, the University of Miami's best football player, has been suspended indefinitely, and all we have on our hands is an embarrassing incident, a national stain, one side of the story (the police's) and an awful lot of things that don't smell right.
In terms of character, Rolle might be the finest kid on this team -- smart, disciplined, from a good family. Rolle's father is the Homestead police chief, and Antrel has a brother and a half-brother who are police officers, too, so we can assume he grew up respecting the law and understanding the difficulties inherent to police work.
But during an incident outside a Coconut Grove bar at 4 a.m., Rolle was arrested and charged with a felony -- battery on a police officer -- as well as disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence.
How is that even physically possible? Beating up a police officer in a felonious manner without violence? All one can assume without the facts is that Rolle didn't like how he was being handcuffed, pulled an arm away in objection and accidentally brushed an officer. But this gets reported nationwide as ''University of Miami star charged with felony battery on police officer outside bar,'' and that's not a fight you can win, not even if the charges are dropped.
And then there's this:
''Antrel doesn't even drink,'' UM coach Larry Coker says. ``He's a super kid. He doesn't hang around trouble. Nothing about this sounds like him. It's out of character.''
LINGERING DOUBTS
Which leads us to these uncomfortable questions:
Is that police report true? What's missing here? Were the police part of the solution that night or part of the problem?
We have this naive tendency of confusing ''police report'' and ''facts.'' They are not synonyms. But when we hear 4 a.m. and bar and athlete, we've been betrayed enough by our sports figures to often assume guilt. Circumstantial evidence. Perception. Past. They handcuff our athletes with more success than those officers do.
We have no idea what happened that night. None. Maybe Rolle behaved like a punk and police behaved perfectly in an impossible, dangerous line of work.
But haven't we seen enough instances of police officers mistreating black people to at least question their credibility when something like this happens? Haven't we seen enough officers dabbling in drug rings, child prostitution, evidence tampering and other stupidity to at least wonder about the guy in the police uniform as much as the guy in the football uniform?
You say it isn't fair to smear a lot of good law-enforcement officials because of the bad behavior of a few? I say it isn't fair to smear a lot of good athletes because of the bad behavior of a few, either.
Pick up this newspaper on any given day, and you'll find just as many police officers breaking the law as you will athletes. During Coker's tenure in Miami, the local police officers have been a lot more corrupt than the local football players.
A FATHER'S ANGUISH
Rolle's father, Alexander, is trapped in a terrible predicament, caught between love of son and career. Antrel's parents politely declined to comment Friday, saying they don't want to interfere with justice, but family friends say they are haunted and stressed, unable to sleep, wanting to tell their truth while their son leads local newscasts for all the wrong reasons.
It's a no-win situation for Rolle's father. In his position, and because of the unwritten code officers have of protecting one another, he can't come out and smear the police officers working that night. Nor can he come out and defend his son. It has to be a silence that makes him want to scream.
But even keeping quiet wins him nothing. The newscasts here aren't going to report the charges against his son being dropped with the same zeal they reported his son's arrest. And if the country's best cornerback gets off, it will be assumed by Miami's rivals that Daddy The Police Chief exerted influence behind the scenes.
If Rolle's father makes this more of a public-relations mess than it already is by lashing out, he not only loses the rest of his men at work but risks angering officials who, being human, might suddenly prosecute his son more zealously than they might otherwise. So he jeopardizes the future of his son, a certain first-round pick in next season's NFL draft.
Not since Twan Russell's father landed the Hurricanes on probation with massive financial-aid fraud has a father at UM found himself in a public predicament this uncomfortable.
The police report alleges that, while protecting his vehicle from strangers, Antrel ''began cussing and getting aggressive in his demeanor toward both officers.'' Maybe that's true. Maybe he just snapped at them without provocation. But you should wonder what happened before that. Police reports never read, ``I, Police Officer X, started this whole mess by abusing my own authority. I'm in the middle of a divorce, in a stressful job and just felt like being a jerk. Also, I'm a racist.''
Being a police officer can be a thankless job -- eight have died on the job this year in Florida alone -- so this ought not be read as an indictment of all or even most of them. But only a handful of them know what happened that night, and there are some important pieces missing here while a family is forced to remain silent and UM's best player -- a kid widely regarded as a pillar of integrity -- suddenly faces an uncertain future.
''I read Ohio State has had 15 arrests in the last three years,'' Coker said. 'We all live in glass houses, but we work hard to have a clean program. You can't have slip-ups. We want a good image because we don't like the negative reputation of some of our past teams. We want to avoid giving ammunition to the UM detractors who are going to look at this and say, `Same old stuff. Same old team.' ''
It's too late for that.
Rightly or wrongly, this gives them that ammunition.
That's what happens when ''felony'' and ''battery on a police officer'' end up in the same sentence.
Problem is, we don't know if Antrel Rolle belongs in that sentence, too.
But, no matter what happens from here, even if the charges get dropped, he has already been sentenced.