memento
Third String But Playing on Special Teams
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2008
- Messages
- 804
- Reaction score
- 508
No cooperation from the alleged victim, not to mention that she tells the cop within the first minute or two that she doesn't wish to pursue charges, and goes on to repeat herself many times throughout the conversation that "she just wants to get her phone." 10 minutes into the situation, the cops are more concerned with looking in the weeds for Manziel's wallet than they are with any threat of physical violence.
Despite the media hype of her statement, the cop led her with the initial question of "are you in fear for your life?" That wasn't a statement that she came up with on her own. He gave her an either/or question, so the only way that she could've responded was that "I am in fear for my life." She openly admits that he took her iphone, so she threw his wallet out of the window. There are reports that she was seen trying to leave the car, yet he was preventing her from exiting. The police couldn't determine who had initiated the physical contact, only that both parties participated in some scratching/clutching/pawing at each other.
Johnny Football will get what's coming to him unless he changes his ways very quickly, but I think the lack of cooperation and evidence kind of tied the NFL's hands here.
Nothing ties the NFL's hands anymore, and that's the point. Deferring to the police and justice system would be a reasonable requirement to make for an employer's reprimand. The NFL doesn't wait on the justice system anymore -- which maybe you agree with maybe you don't, but now there's no clear logic for what separates one incident from the next. They'll punish if it looks bad, and they'll punish on how badly it looks (for them). These punishments are based on the NFL's perception, are purely subjective, and lead to wildly different severities for relatively similar incidents.
The incident looked bad. This wasn't just domestic abuse, this was domestic abuse while driving and possibly drunk around 6pm in the evening on a busy road. Multiple eyewitnesses described erratic driving before they got out of the car and had an altercation. We're lucky Manziel didn't slam into any innocent drivers on their way back from work.