Report says Tallahassee police have been lenient to FSU football players
Have Tallahassee Police Department officers been taking it easy on Florida State football players?
A report released Friday night from the New York Times – the report teased by a lawyer for the woman who accused FSU QB Jameis Winston of sexual assault earlier Friday – details what it says is a pattern of leniency among TPD officers when responding to incidents involving Florida State football players.
In the Winston case, which the Times detailed in an April piece, Friday's report says that Florida State initially chose not to investigate Winston after he was identified by the accuser in January 2013. (You can read the entire report here.)
But new information has recently emerged, as part of The Times’s continuing examination of the case, indicating that it was Florida State’s athletic department that decided the allegation did not merit a university investigation. Normally, university officials outside the department handle such matters.
According to a statement released by the university on Tuesday, senior athletic department officials met with Mr. Winston’s lawyer, Mr. Jansen, within days of his identification as a suspect and quickly concluded that “there were no grounds for further action.” The accuser’s former lawyer, Patricia A. Carroll, said the department did not contact her at the time to get her client’s side of the story.
Although Florida State was legally obligated to conduct a “prompt, thorough and impartial” disciplinary inquiry, the university chose not to, as the team marched to the national championship.
Florida State issued a letter Friday that said university Title IX officials knew nothing about the incident until November 2013 because victim advocates "were duty-bound not to share any of the information."
The Times said it examined police and court records and interviewed witnesses from incidents involving football players and "the treatment of the Winston complaint was in keeping with the way the police on numerous occasions have soft-pedaled allegations of wrongdoing by Seminoles football players. From criminal mischief and motor-vehicle theft to domestic violence, arrests have been avoided, investigations have stalled and players have escaped serious consequences."
The report also detailed the ties that Tallahassee Police Department members have with the school. In November, it was revealed that Scott Angulo, the detective in the sexual assault case involving Winston, had requested work with the Seminole Boosters.
The report does say that nine players have been arrested over the past three seasons but details other incidents involving football players, including:
• An incident involving an argument with a Florida State football player and his girlfriend. The person who called 911 said the man was "punching" the woman. The report was classified as a "domestic disturbance" rather than "domestic violence." Domestic violence reports have different protocols.
• FSU WR Bobo Wilson was pulled over on a scooter that wasn't his. When he wasked whose scooter it was, Wilson said he borrowed it from someone he couldn't name. The owner of the scooter told the Times that when questioned by the officer, the officer said he didn't arrest Wilson because he was a football player and didn't want to "ruin" Wilson's criminal record.
WIlson eventually admitted to stealing the scooter and after being originally charged with a felony, pled no contest to a misdemeanor. He was ordered to pay $1,000 and put on work detail after the football season. Wilson was suspended for a game.
• Previously unreported BB gun incidents involving Florida State football players. One in June that even involved a sheriff's helicopter and the other involved players shooting a BB gun out of a car in November 2012. Both are separate incidents than the reported incidents involving Winston and other players. Winston and others were stopped next to campus with a BB gun in November 2012 before police were called to an apartment complex to investigate broken windows from a BB gun battle among FSU football players.
Three players were charged in the June incident with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.
According to a report that he wrote later, the investigator described the facts of the case to the state attorney’s office on July 2, but at first did not reveal the “names or status of the subjects.” Then, after explaining that three of them were Florida State players, “I was instructed that the issue would have to be ‘round-tabled’ with the division chiefs” before deciding what to do, he wrote.
The chief assistant state attorney, Georgia Cappleman, said, “We round-tabled the matter to get a consensus because the prosecutors who were reviewing it did not agree on how the matter should be handled.” Ultimately, they concluded that the crime involved was disorderly conduct — a lesser offense than the criminal mischief designation the investigator was considering.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
