A bit closer look at NFL crime stats

ESPN reported over the weekend that Erik Walden, who played linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts last season, was involved in a domestic violence incident, although police officials coyly referred to it as “aggravated assault, family violence aggravated assault, theft by taking and first-degree burglary.” As soon as the story broke I checked CNN, expecting to see it as one of its “top stories.” These are what I found instead:

TV contestant (a woman) slain; suspect had remains in stove (so were her slain husband’s)

Mom's 911 call leads to tragedy (mentally-ill man being shot dead by police)

Mob beats woman, burns her (by Afghan men—the attack instigated by a mob of equally malignant women who accused her of burning the Koran, obviously in the expectation of this sort of punishment)

Machete attack (by a black male, not a “Mexican”) on TSA agents

Woman shot in head in road rage incident (it seems that she picked the wrong person at the wrong place and the wrong time to antagonize) 

This type of “news” is the kind that sensationalist, lurid yellow journalists engage it, the kind of thing that the “respectable” supposedly rise above and leave to the disreputable. No doubt that it is the job of someone at CNN to scour the Internet in search of such stories to further a gender agenda. Surely the Walden story would fit in quite nicely in “context” at first blush? I suspect that the compiler of this data became excited at the prospect of enlisting another NFL player to the cause—except that when she examined the story a little more closely, she decided that it would not do at all.

For reality bites. In Braselton, GA Walden’s ex-girlfriend paid a “visit” to his home where he was living with a new “companion.” Erica Palmer—armed with a gun, knife and baseball bat—apparently threatened to shoot both of them. Walden “wrestled” the gun away from her, although before she got away she struck his companion with the bat, breaking her arm. Palmer soon returned, however, to try to finish the job intended. While Walden was in the process of taking his companion to the hospital, Palmer slashed Walden with the knife and ran away again. Police eventually arrested her in a hotel hideaway by tracking her cellphone. 

Such incidents do not make it into the NFL crime rate reports. Neither did the murders of Steve McNair and Fred Lane by their female “companions”—both cases over an apparent “need” for their money. Nor do any assaults or thefts in which players are victims. According to a USA Today compilation, there have been 787 arrests of NFL players from January 1, 2000. There are 1696 players on a regular season roster; although that doesn’t mean that half the players on the current rosters have a rap sheet, you’d think that is exactly what the non-sports news media wants you to believe. 

And it isn’t hard to get that “impression.” If you try to google the total number of players in the NFL since 2000, or better yet, the crime victim rate of NFL players, all you see is pages and pages of crime rates among NFL players and their victims no matter how many ways you try to make the search terms specific. What does that tell you? It tells you how the news media (as opposed to the sports media) has totally skewed its reporting to be biased against NFL players by flooding the media market with this bias so that alternative viewpoints cannot be heard.

By my own “guestimation,” there were probably something on the order of 7,000 players to appear on regular season rosters, discounting those who were drafted or undrafted and subsequently cut before their first game. According to the NFLPA, the average career lifespan for an NFL player is only 3.3 years, so using that figure I came up with an “approximate” number of players in the past 15 years—and it is probably on the low side. 

Now, according to a website called Fivethirtyeight.com, someone examined the USA Today numbers and their breakdown by crime and compared them to that of the general population, and found that the crime rates for football players were far lower generally; the rate of domestic violence rate was fifty percent that of the general population. I made a closer examination of the USA Today’s numbers and found the following nuggets:

Out of 125 arrests since Jan.1 2013, only five were white (Daniel Kilgore, Bruce Miller, Thomas Keiser, Brandon Barden, Al Netter). 15 cases involved domestic violence. Miller was recently arrested on a domestic violence accusation, but the media has been oddly silent on the case. It was exhausting checking the race of every name I didn’t recognize or was unsure of, but I am fairly certain that this 25 to 1 arrest racial ratio holds firm for the previous years. Money, fame and black athletes apparently don’t mix well, at least according to police, “fans,” their gangsta “posses,” wives and girlfriends for whom money doesn’t improve their temperaments.

Also:

Charges were dropped in 168 cases.

Resolution “undetermined” in 204 cases

Player acquitted in 31 cases

Players cut by team in 44 cases

Players released by team in 47 cases

Thus in nearly half the arrests, the charges either ended in not guilty verdicts, were dropped or were otherwise unresolved—meaning more than half the arrests ended in something other than a guilty verdict or plea deal. This would imply that the crime rate among players may be even lower than suggested. Some of those cases were probably not too dissimilar to that of Nate Allen, who was detained, interrogated, charged for a crime that police assumed he was guilty of, simply on the accusation of a teenage girl who claimed she saw a black man masturbating in a parked truck. The actual perpetrator (if there was one) was not caught, but police were forced to admit the (female) police interrogator was not interested in obtaining facts, and that Allen could not even have been anywhere near the vicinity where the girl claimed the act occurred.

It is interesting to note that in cases where players are the victims, such as in the Walden case, one can read in the comments that many still operate on the assumption that the player must have been guilty of something to instigate his own victimhood; his attacker was a “wronged” woman or something along that order. Women just don’t do things “like that” without “justification.” One suspects that if Walden had defended himself and his companion physically against Palmer, he likely have been charged with domestic violence—or at least “confirming” to many people his own “guilt.”

Here are additional tidbits contained in the USA Today list:

Cincinnati DT Matthias Askew.  Arrested for resisting arrest. “Accused of refusing police orders, parking violations, resisting arrest and obstruction of police business in Cincinnati. He was subdued by Taser. Acquitted, he also won $500,000 award in civil lawsuit over incident. Cut by team three weeks after incident.”

Cleveland RB Reuben Droughns. Arrested for domestic violence.   “Accused of shoving his wife to the ground and locking her outside at his home near Denver. Charge dropped.”

Seattle DE Bryce Fisher. Arrested for domestic violence. “Accused of twisting his wife's arm behind her back in a dispute.  Charge dropped.”

Arizona RB Joshua Rue. Arrested for domestic violence. “Accused of pushing his wife and throwing a coat hanger at her in Tempe, Ariz. Cut by team within a week.” 

Chicago DT Terry Johnson.    Arrested for DUI.  “Pulled over in Arizona for going 40 mph in a 25-mph zone, accused of being impaired ‘to the slightest degree.’  Charge dropped after blood-alcohol content measured 0.72. Team released him three days after arrest.”

Cin LB A.J. Nicholson.  Arrested for domestic violence. “Accused of hitting girlfriend in the eye, but she later recanted her statement, saying she hit herself with a phone. Charge dropped after 40 hours community service, other programs. Released by team three days later.”

NE DE Chris Sullivan. Arrested for DUI. “Police found Sullivan in a parking lot, where they determined he had been driving drunk after team Super Bowl ring party. Resolution undetermined. Team cut him the next month.” The police officers involved must have been rooting for the other team.

Some others:

Denver LB Kevin Alexander cut a day after his arrest for allegedly shoving his girlfriend. Charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. One of your domestic "violence" tallies; no one asked what she did.

Jarrett Bush accused of public intoxication; case dropped.

Alex Okafor, “evading arrest” for an apparently unknown crime. 

D’Qwell Jackson, accused of hitting a pizza delivery man in the head after a dispute over a parking space.

Andrew Jackson, arrested for DUI just a tick over the legal limit. Probably pulled over because he was driving a nice car. He also needed a better lawyer.

Naturally the focus has been on domestic violence, or those incidents where it can be shoehorned into; these account for 11 percent of the USA Today list. Department of Justice statistics, most recently compiled by two obviously biased females with a political agenda, is at huge odds with the 2011 CDC report on intimate partner violence. It suggests that the biggest “silent” crime in this country is in fact domestic violence perpetrated by women. Note that Ray Rice’s now wife was also charged with domestic violence (she in fact was the prime instigator) in the same incident that garnered so much outrage by the media and hypocrites by vocation, yet nowhere was this mentioned or discussed. 

The way these incidents are reported, you would believe that the women involved never did anything wrong themselves. It’s always a savage beast attacking, a poor, defenseless mouse. But what do arrests really say about domestic violence? You don’t need to be convicted, you only need to be accused—especially if you are a black; forget the fact that black women are no virginal spring chickens in regard to the physical application of the notion of promoting their way. 

You can’t even trust the police reports on these incidents; I was listening to Danny O’Neil—formerly a sports reporter for the Seattle Times and now a local sports radio host—conduct a phone interview with a man who claimed to be a police officer discussing another domestic violence case where the charges were dropped, yet the fact of a charge even being made should be enough to put the fear of a god in any team unwise enough to seek his services, no matter how good a player he is. The alleged police officer had a decided lack of credibility, hypocritically talking about “integrity” and “accountability,” as if the police know what that is. This isn’t made any more palatable by the fact that police are alleged to be involved in 2 to 4 times the rate of domestic violence incidents compared to the general public—making it 4 to 8 times higher than NFL players.

The harsh reality is that this focus on NFL players is plain old political opportunism by the media and gender advocates. It also suggests that black players are far more likely to be targeted than white players. The majority of the crimes listed appear to stem from the “driving while black” police syndrome and involvement with “fans” with something less than intelligent to say or do. The fact that half the domestic violence charges were dropped is due to the inclusion of context, quite apart from the one-sided stories told by the media. Such one-sidedness destroyed careers; half the nearly 100 cases where players accused of crimes were either cut or released by their teams were never convicted of the crime they were charged with.

Finally, it is the duty of the court system--obviously not that of the media and gender activists--who must weigh all of the evidence and make dispassionate decisions, although unfortunately there are many judges who throw out objectivity to advance their own political and social agendas.