Wtf?
if any of this is true, they should make those cops individually go to ricky and apologize, or lose their jobs...what a bunch of horsesh1t! the only good thing is how ricky is showing class through the whole thing. that police force might have a whole lot of angry dolphin fans on their hands!
from the herald...
Dolphins' Ricky Williams pays price for being black
RB doesn't blame racism for actions of police -- but others do
Ricky Williams is more hurt than angry. Does this keep happening because he has been irresponsible or because he is black? Four times already in the few months he has been in South Florida, Williams has had incidents with the Fort Lauderdale police even though he has been guilty of nothing more than having insufficient paperwork and driving expensive cars. Well, he's also ''guilty of'' being black, of course.
''I won't play the race card,'' Williams said Wednesday. ``Some friends say I'm being racially profiled, that a black guy in an expensive car is always going to be suspected of being a drug dealer, but I don't want to believe that. I won't believe that. I just want to stop being harassed when I haven't done anything wrong.''
There already have been two after-midnight police visits to Williams' home in an affluent Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, waking him and his infant son. The cops wanted to know why his garage door was open so late, but Williams doesn't understand why they also demanded his license, ran a check on it and asked him what he did for a living and how much he paid for his cars.
There was also the hostility when Williams was pulled over for going 13 miles over the speed limit in his BMW on June 5, while driving home from a Dolphins banquet. Williams says that resulted in a flurry of patrol cars, some officers emerging with hands on their guns, and a battery of drunk-driving tests and sarcasm. Williams' car was towed because he still had Louisiana license plates on it. Because he had taken his dress shoes off for the drive, he had to walk a mile barefoot after midnight to get home.
STOPPED AGAIN
And now there is Tuesday's absurdity, when driving his new Hummer resulted in Williams ending up handcuffed in the back of a police car amid a circus of cops, police cars, a horse, a drug-sniffing dog, TV cameras, a photographer, gawking tourists with video cameras and a newspaper reporter asking him if he was high -- all because he had paper dealer plates that had expired a few days earlier and had lost his driver's license while in New York.
''I know not all cops, or even most cops, are like this, but I've had bad luck with the ones I've gotten,'' Williams says. ``There are three kinds of cops -- extremely nice, normal and jerks. Except for the guy on the horse, who was really nice, all I've gotten is the jerks. And there are five or six patrol cars every time I get pulled over, so I've met a lot of them.''
RELUCTANT TO TALK
Williams discusses this reluctantly, only after being told by friends that speaking out might prevent other young black people who aren't rich and famous from similarly shoddy treatment. Athletes often refer to being pulled over for DWB -- Driving While Black -- but Williams doesn't want to paint all cops with the same incriminating brush. He still feels bad that in college an officer was fired after jailing him erroneously.
''It should never come to that because I know the job they do is hard,'' Williams said. ``But just because you have a badge and a gun doesn't mean you should go around making people feel helpless or disrespected, either. I don't want anyone getting in trouble over this. I'm just disheartened. I can't believe the way these guys talk to me. The police had their minds made up [Tuesday] that I was high and that I stole my own car just because I didn't have the proper paperwork.
``I wasn't being a smart-*** . They say I was acting incoherently. Acting incoherently? I don't know what the Florida paperwork looks like yet, and I was having trouble finding what he was asking for. That's acting incoherently? For that I have to be handcuffed? For that I have to have my daughter see me in a police car in handcuffs?''
Williams is certainly not faultless here. He needs to be more responsible about having his documents in order. And he obviously shouldn't be driving 126 mph, as he was when arrested a few months ago, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be thrown on the hood of his car by an officer with his gun drawn, either, as he says he was.
Jim Wright, public information officer for the Fort Lauderdale police department, said assistant chief Chuck Drago was aware of two of the four Williams incidents and was looking into them. Drago spoke to Dolphins security chief Stu Weinstein, Wright said. Williams said Weinstein told him someone from the Fort Lauderdale police department would be calling to apologize soon, but Wright said, ``We're certainly not above apologizing whenever we've done something wrong, but that hasn't been concluded in this instance yet.''
CHANGING CARS
One Dolphin who requested anonymity said that many black Miami players get rid of expensive cars because they get pulled over so often. Former safety Louis Oliver, for example, sold his Porsche because he was getting pulled over weekly.
''I've been harassed, wherever you go, driving around, in the department store,'' Dolphins receiver Oronde Gadsden said. ``It's one thing to get stopped if they say you don't have your tags right or the proper identification, but the handcuffs were a little excessive. I don't think you can really justify putting him in handcuffs. When you see incidents like that, a lot of people are wondering why.''
Said Dolphins wide receivers coach Robert Ford, ``That was embarrassing. An embarrassment. We're supposed to be Americans. We're supposed innocent until proven guilty. They treated him very poorly over expired tags.''
NO NAME-DROPPING
This latest incident could possibly have been averted if Williams had just told the officer he was a Dolphins running back. But Williams doesn't do that, ever, doesn't use his name to skip through lines at nightclubs, doesn't do it to make reservations in booked restaurants and doesn't do it to get out of trouble with cops.
He once was stuck eight hours in an airport because he didn't have his driver's license and couldn't board the plane without it. Finally, a flight attendant came over and said, um, aren't you the Heisman Trophy winner? This would be considered noble under normal circumstances, but circumstances that involve several police cars, a horse, a drug-sniffing dog and cameras are rarely normal.
The name on the paperwork Williams has identifies him as Errick Lynn Williams, not Ricky, which is what generally leads to the confusion that could be avoided if he just represented himself as a Dolphin or the Ricky Williams. Either that, or he can just start driving around with the Heisman Trophy in his passenger seat.
''I'm not going to throw my name around,'' Williams said. 'I shouldn't have to. I'm not asking to be treated special. I just want to be treated with the same respect you'd give any other citizen. Just don't talk down to me. But sometimes when the cops know who you are it makes things even worse, anyway. When I got pulled over after the banquet, one cop recognized me and said, `You think you have all this money and can do whatever you want. You are all hotheads. You guys are like criminals.' I told him, 'You don't even know me.' He said he knew me, he knew all of us. He said us athletes were were all the same.''
Williams has learned at least one lesson from all this.
Immediately after being let go by police, he drove to Pompano to get his plate renewed.
''A big punishment,'' he said through a laugh, ``for procrastinating.''
dlebatard@herald.com
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