When Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins took the field for Sunday’s game, he came out wearing a shirt saying, “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford”–two black Ohio teenagers who were killed by police under highly questionable circumstances. Well, Cleveland’s police union wasn’t at all pleased, and demanded that the Browns apologize.
Jeff Follmer, the president of the Cleveland chapter of the Police Patrolman Union, issued the following statement to WEWS in Cleveland:
“It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.”
Follmer went further in an interview with The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, saying that Hawkins was merely “an athlete” who had “no facts of the case whatsoever,” and therefore had no business speaking out about “a split-second decision.”
With all due respect, Officer Follmer, much of the nation already knows about what happened to Rice. The 12-year-old from Cleveland was playing with a toy gun when police rolled up and shot him to death within only 1.5 seconds of arriving on the scene. And much of Ohio and a substantial portion of the country outside of it knows about what happened to Crawford. This summer, he was walking through a Walmart in Beavercreek, a suburb of Dayton, holding a BB gun he’d just bought. Police arrived in response to a complaint of someone brandishing a gun, and fired two shots at Crawford within seconds of encountering him.
Based on the videos in both cases, shots were fired with nowhere near enough time for a warning, and with no evidence that Rice or Crawford were acting in a threatening manner. Anyone who saw those videos would know that both situations stink. A grand jury declined to indict the officers who shot Crawford (though the special prosecutor stated that Crawford did nothing wrong), while the Rice shooting is still being investigated.
In an emotional interview on Monday, Hawkins refused to back down one inch. As he saw it, his shirt was “a call for justice” that shouldn’t bring demands for an apology. With his voice breaking at times, Hawkins said that has a two-year-old son, Austin, who is “my entire world,” and the thought of him dying the way Rice died “scares the living hell out of me.” That, plus solidarity for Rice and Crawford’s parents, led him to decide to wear the shirt.
He stressed that he respects every officer who “protects and serves all of us with honesty, integrity and the right way.” As he saw it, those officers have no reason to be offended. However, he said, there are some officers who step out of line based on “preconceived notions or the wrong motives,” and those officers should be held to account.
Watch a clip of that interview, courtesy of The Plain Dealer:
I hope Follmer has the chance to watch this video. Maybe then he’d see that this isn’t just an athlete talking. This is a father who is really worried about something like this happening to his son.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC on Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
