28 March 2007

Bengal Begone?

Chris Henry has gotten himself in trouble yet again. He's a good receiver but you gotta wonder how much longer the Bengals are going to put up with this. Of course, the NFL seems to be on the verge of taking the decision away from the team soon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I saw today that Chris Henry is in trouble with the Cincinnati PD. I thought, “That’s it! Number ten! We’re gonna see history!” But then I looked closer at the charges against Mr. Henry. He “has been cited by Cincinnati police on three traffic charges including driving with a suspended license. Henry also was ticketed for an alleged improper turn and seat belt violation. His vehicle was impounded after he was stopped March 21, and he paid $100 to retrieve it Monday, court records show. Court action is pending.”

And that reminded me of something. Remember the Cincinnati riots in 2001? It all started when a black kid was killed by the Cincinnati cops. Timothy Thomas had 14 outstanding warrants, and all were for traffic violations. He was, essentially, executed for Driving While Black. Wikipedia says, “A local independent magazine, City Beat, published research that an "analysis of 141,000 traffic citations written by Cincinnati Police in a 22-month period found black drivers twice as likely as whites to be cited for driving without a license, twice as likely to be cited for not wearing a seat belt and four times as likely to be cited for driving without proof of insurance." National trend or localized anomaly, the lawsuit was based on a disproportional number of arrests, citations, and deaths.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Cincinnati_riots

I had basically forgotten all about this.

I guess all I’m saying is maybe we should keep in mind that the Cincinnati cops have a rather brutal history of racism. Maybe the problem is less that the Bengals have “bad apples” and more that Cincinnati cops just hate black people.