“Unfortunately, I’ve got to admit my awareness is different than it was,” Pete Carroll said last week. This was after the Seahawks coach had seen the video of Baltimore running back Ray Rice punching the mother of his child in the face, leaving her unconscious in an Atlantic City elevator. “I don’t think it’ll ever be the same as it was.”
The Super Bowl champs will now deal differently with domestic-violence incidents involving team members, Carroll said after Rice’s two-game suspension was increased by the league to an indefinite period and he was fired by the Ravens. “I’m glad that I can say that now,” he added, “because hopefully we can prevent or head off any kind of issue that could come up in the future.”
Of course that also effectively writes off any past mishandlings of DV cases by the team. Thus the franchise moves forward without any apparent regrets about employing a player convicted of assaulting his girlfriend and a coach once accused of violence toward women. Also left in the dust are past incidents involving a player who departed last season after being accused the second time of domestic violence, and another player who, like Rice, punched the mother of his child in the face but merited only a one-game suspension.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted he originally got it wrong by suspending Rice for a mere two games. Likewise, the Ravens were compelled to release Rice last week after video of the brutal elevator knockout hit the airwaves, causing a public uproar.
Star tackle Rocky Bernard Photo by Luis Antonio Rodriguez Ochoa via Wikimedia
Contrast that with, for example, the nonaction Seattle took in 2008 when 300-pound star tackle Rocky Bernard punched his ex-girlfriend at a downtown nighclub. “The suspect [Bernard],” said a police report, “walked toward the victim and punched her one time with a closed fist, striking her forehead, causing her forehead to hit a glass divider.” The woman and a friend then fled to their car and Bernard chased them, banging on the windows as they drove off.
But there was no video of the incident for the public to see. Bernard, despite his size, wound up charged with misdemeanor assault, and was given a deferred sentence for hitting his baby’s mother. He sat out one game as ordered by the league, and after completing that season—the final year of a $13 million, three-year contract—moved on to the New York Giants.
He’s currently a free agent, as is former Seahawk Leroy Hill, who left the team before the start of last season. The eight-year linebacker, who played on the 2005 Super Bowl team, was arrested in January 2013 on two counts of domestic violence. His girlfriend claimed Hill threw her across the room, then stood on her chest. The victim “stated she ‘thought [she] was going to die,’ ” stated an Issaquah police report. But prosecutors ended up dropping the case, feeling they couldn’t prove assault. In 2010, his girlfriend also claimed Hill assaulted her, and he received a deferred sentence. (He was suspended by the NFL for one game, but that was for marijuana use.)
As recently as May, Seattle signed linebacker A.J. Jefferson, although he had been released by Minnesota after being charged with felony assault. He was accused of strangling his girlfriend—picking her up off the bed by the throat. “She said she did not fight back because she was having a hard time breathing and he is a lot bigger than her,” a charging complaint alleged. Jefferson, currently on the Hawks’ injured reserve list, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence and received a suspended sentence.
In 2011, Carroll defended the hiring of assistant coach Tom Cable, who, while head coach at Oakland, was accused of breaking the jaw of an assistant coach in a fight. According to a report on ESPN, he earlier had abusive relationships with his wife and a girlfriend. Cable denied the claims and was never charged, but admitted to “slapping” his then-wife after she had an affair. (Said the ex-wife: “There was never any infidelity on my part. And he did not slap me, he punched me.”) Carroll was ready to move on. “Tom has dealt with all of that in a very professional manner and taken care of business,” he said then. “We’ve done our due diligence to understand the background and all of that, and I feel that this is a good time for him to come to us. He’s going to get supported.”
Of course, professional football teams are dealing with employees who have to turn off the violence within them upon leaving the field of play. Some do it better than others. And some teams handle it better than others. That’s what the world champions say they plan to do—starting now.
“Unfortunately we had to see an incident that elevated our awareness to really get it to the right place,” Carroll said last week. “It’s unfortunate we have to learn the hard way sometimes.”
randerson@seattleweekly.com
Rick Anderson writes about sex, crime, money, and politics, which tend to be the same thing. His latest book is Floating Feet: Irregular Dispatches From the Emerald City.
