Originally posted by Drop.Tine:
Originally posted by Veer2Eternity:
Originally posted by Drop.Tine:
I didn't think the popo arrested FSU athletes?
Sucks to be him.
He wouldn't have been arrested if he was returning to FSU.
Just like he was able to hit and run (AT LEAST) and never paid a price.
Thank peat for pointing out that some places actually hold kids accountable and then there's places like FSU and kU*.
No kids have ever been arrested at FSU. #heyjealousy
TALLAHASSEE,
Fla. - In the early morning hours of Oct. 5, as this college town was
celebrating another big football victory by Florida State University, a
starting cornerback on the team drove his car into the path of an
oncoming vehicle driven by a teenager returning home from a job at the
Olive Garden.
Both
cars were totaled. But rather than remain at the scene as the law
requires, the football player, P. J. Williams, left his wrecked vehicle
in the street and fled into the darkness along with his two passengers,
including Ronald Darby, the team's other starting cornerback.
The
Tallahassee police responded to the off-campus accident, eventually
reaching out to the Florida State University police and the university's
athletic department.
By the next day, it was as if the hit and run had never happened.
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The
New York Times looked into how the police handled the case, reviewing
law enforcement records and interviewing witnesses, lawyers, the police
and a university representative. The examination found that Mr.
Williams, driving with a suspended license, had been given a break by
the Tallahassee police, who initially labeled the accident a hit and
run, a criminal act, but later decided to issue Mr. Williams only two
traffic tickets. Afterward, the case did not show up in the city's
public online database of police calls - a technical error, the police
said.
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Graphic
Comparing Two Hit and Run Cases
A starting cornerback for the Florida State University
football team left the scene of a collision on Oct. 5 but was not
charged with a hit-and-run, an examination by The New York Times found.
That contrasts with another case in the same area in the same month.
OPEN Graphic
Mr.
Williams eventually returned to the scene. But Tallahassee officers did
not test him for alcohol. Nor did their report indicate whether they
asked if he had been drinking or why he had fled - logical questions,
since the accident occurred at 2:37 a.m. The report also minimized the
impact of the crash on the driver of the other car, Ian Keith, by
failing to indicate that his airbag had deployed - an important detail,
because Mr. Keith said in an interview that the airbag had cut and
bruised his hands.
The
university police, who lacked jurisdiction, nevertheless sent two
ranking officers - including the shift commander - to the scene. Yet
they wrote no report about their actions that night. Florida State
dismissed the role of its officers in the episode as too minor to
require a report or to be entered into their own online police log,
comparing it to an instance when campus officers responded to a baby
opossum falling from a tree.
The
car accident, previously unreported by the news media, comes amid
heightened national scrutiny of preferential treatment given to
athletes, including articles by
scheduled for a student disciplinary hearing Dec. 1, nearly two years after the accusation was first made. He has denied sexually assaulting anyone.
Elijah
Stiers, a lawyer from Miami who helped write a state law enacted this
year that toughened penalties for hit-and-run drivers, said the basic
facts of the Oct. 5 crash had warranted criminal charges and a sobriety
test.
Photo
The vehicle involved in the
accident driven by Ian Keith, shown from Vehbidz, a website where
totaled cars are auctioned for parts.
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"Two-thirty
in the morning, people fleeing on foot - at the very least you've got
to charge them with hit and run," he said, adding, "You don't get out of
it just because you come back to the scene."
The
Times also showed its findings to the Tallahassee police chief, Michael
DeLeo, who said in an interview that the department would "conduct an
investigation to determine what happened and whether the officers acted
appropriately." He added, "No one should be shown any favoritism."
Florida
State declined to make anyone available for an interview. In a series
of written responses to questions, the university gave shifting answers,
at one point saying, incorrectly, that Mr. Williams had driven his car
home and that the Tallahassee police were required to call the campus
police under a "mutual aid agreement." A Tallahassee police spokesman
said there was no policy requiring its officers to contact the
university when its students committed traffic violations.
Neither
Mr. Williams, named the most valuable defensive player in last season's
national championship game, nor Mr. Darby responded to a request for
comment.
Photo
The accident caused the
airbag to deploy in Ian Keith's vehicle, shown from Vehbidz, a website
where totaled cars are auctioned for parts.
In
their report on the crash, the Tallahassee officers justified not
charging Mr. Williams because he returned "approximately" 20 minutes
later without being contacted by the police. That stands in sharp
contrast to how the police treated another driver who left the scene and
drove home after a minor, low-speed accident in the same area late last
month. That driver and his mother contacted the police about a
half-hour later to report the accident.
At
five miles per hour, the collision inflicted far less damage than that
caused by Mr. Williams's car - and caused no injuries. Even so, the
police charged the driver, who was not a Florida State football player,
with hit and run.
The
Oct. 5 crash occurred shortly after 2:30 a.m., as Mr. Keith, 18, was
driving home on West Tharpe Street from his job at the restaurant. A
Buick Century heading the other way darted in front of him, attempting a
left turn onto High Road. Mr. Keith hit the brakes, but it was too
late: His Honda CR-V collided with the Buick, spinning it around. The
Honda lurched to a halt a short distance down Tharpe, its front end
crumpled, debris scattered around and fluid leaking onto the street.
Shaken,
Mr. Keith got out and waited for the Tallahassee police, who arrived
within minutes. An officer approached him with an unexpected question:
Where were the occupants of the other car?
Photo
A police report listed the
crash as a hit and run, and after initially requesting that Mr.
Williams's car be held as evidence, an officer changed the report and
wrote, "No hold no processing."
"That's when I first realized they were gone," Mr. Keith said.
More
officers arrived, and tow trucks were called to remove the two disabled
cars. An officer at the scene, Derek Hawthorne, filled out a form for
the abandoned Buick, labeling the accident a "hit and run," and asked
that the car be held for processing as evidence. Officers ran a check on
the license plate and found that it was registered to Mr. Williams's
grandmother in Ocala, Fla.
About
a half-hour after the accident, the investigation took an odd turn.
Another officer at the scene, Joseph Smith, discovered that the glass
front door of a closed Exxon station at the corner of Tharpe and High
was shattered, apparently from a break-in, according to his report. The
gas station manager was called, and she replayed security camera video
for the police showing a man breaking in and walking out with an armload
of merchandise.
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The
video, obtained by The Times, also captured a poor-quality image of the
accident. In it, the Buick containing the Florida State football
players could be seen attempting the left turn onto High Road, in the
direction of the Exxon station, just as the burglar was about to leave
and walk toward High Road.
Photo
Mario Edwards Sr., director
of player development for Florida State's football team, received a call
from Mr. Williams the night of the accident.
Credit
Phil Sears/Associated Press
"They
happened within seconds of each other," said Karen Southern, the Exxon
manager, adding that the police had mentioned the accident to her but
had not said whether they believed there was any connection to the
burglary. No evidence has surfaced to link the two, and the break-in
remains unsolved.
Mr.
Keith said one of the officers had asked him about the Exxon's broken
front door, and he replied that he had not noticed it. He said he
believed that when the break-in was discovered - at 3:06 a.m., according
to the police report - the football players had not yet returned,
indicating that they could have been gone for at least half an hour.
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Dave
A
university spokesman said that when the Tallahassee police called
Florida State asking for help, about an hour after the accident, the
players had already returned. Other football players who had heard of
the accident also showed up, though how many is not known.
At
one point, Mr. Keith said, a football player - he did not know which
one - apologized to him for fleeing and explained that they "had a lot
on the line." The player was "sort of rambling" until a female friend
told him to stop talking, Mr. Keith said.
Photo
Mr. Williams, right, in Florida State's game against Syracuse last month.
Credit
Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
"She
said to him, 'Be quiet, you sound like you've been drinking,' " Mr.
Keith said. "I remember that very clearly, because it surprised me that
she would say it. But the way he was speaking, I definitely had
suspicions about drinking."
In
the crash report, Officer Hawthorne indicated there was no suspected
alcohol or drug use, and he issued Mr. Williams traffic tickets for an
improper left turn and for "unknowingly" driving with a suspended
license. On the form for the impounded Buick, the officer used a pen to
cross out earlier notations indicating the car would be held as
evidence, writing: "No hold no processing."
Around
3:30 a.m., Mr. Williams, 21, called Mario Edwards Sr., director of
player development for the football team, for a ride home, according to
the university. The crash report said that both cars were disabled with
damage that exceeded their estimated value. Mr. Keith got a lift home
with a tow truck.
The
Tallahassee police said officers had discretion in deciding when to
press charges and issue citations. They provided The Times with seven
other cases in which someone had hit a car and left the scene but had
not been charged with hit and run.
A
review of those cases, however, found that none were comparable in
severity or circumstance to the Oct. 5 crash. Four of the accidents
involved cars bumping into each other in parking lots, one other caused
no damage, and the other two were very minor. In no case did a driver
abandon a wrecked vehicle in the middle of the night and flee the scene
after totaling someone else's car. Notably, most of the seven crash
reports contained far more narrative detail about what had happened than
the report on the Oct. 5 accident did.
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The
role of the campus police in responding to the accident is especially
unclear. That agency's call logs indicated that the Tallahassee police
had called at 3:38 a.m. seeking help in an "investigation." Yet, a
university spokesman said all the city police had wanted was an
after-hours phone number for a football coach so they could tell him
that two of his athletes had been in an accident; the campus police
could not locate a phone number.
The
two campus officers - Sgt. Roy Wiley, the shift commander, and Cpl.
Greg Washington - decided on their own to drive to the crash scene to
see whether they could help, but they were not needed, the university
said.
University
policy specifies that police reports "must be completed and submitted
regarding actions taken by officers" in response to an "outside request
for assistance." Asked why the two officers had not filed a report, the
university said they "were not involved in the investigation, didn't
make an arrest and their assist didn't result in an arrest, citation or
summons."
The
campus police chief, David L. Perry, said in a statement that he had
reviewed the actions of his officers and had found that they behaved
appropriately. "This was a routine matter of our agency responding to a
simple request from T.P.D. and it was all together proper for our
officers to go the scene," he said in the statement.
As
for Mr. Williams, court records showed that two days after the
accident, he paid $296 in overdue fines, related to an earlier speeding
ticket, in order to have his license reinstated. But the $392 in fines
related to the Oct. 5 crash remained unpaid, and overdue, as of this
week. As a result, his license was suspended again.
