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Police said Friday they found “no evidence” that officers used excessive force in detaining Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett during an August incident in Las Vegas and that they had reasonable suspicion to make the stop.
Bennett has accused police officers of racial profiling, saying they pointed guns at him and used excessive force in the incident, which occurred outside a nightclub after the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Conor McGregor fight on Aug. 26.
The body camera of the officer who initially detained Bennett was not turned on. Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Friday that police sorted through 861 videos, including from body cameras from other officers and hotel security cameras, and found that 193 were pertinent to the investigation. From there, they said they pieced together a timeline of the incident and played video for the media at a news conference. They said Bennett’s detainment lasted about 10 minutes, seven of which were spent in a police car.
The video shown by police showed an officer with his weapon drawn over Bennett on the sidewalk. Police said Bennett was handcuffed, moved to a police vehicle and spoken to by another officer, who told Bennett that police were looking for an active shooter. After an exchange with police that lasted a few minutes, police took the handcuffs off Bennett and he was told he could leave. Bennett shook one of the officers’ hands and walked away.
Lombardo said the internal investigation showed that the officers behaved “appropriately and professionally” and that “the incident was not about race.” He said two other individuals were also detained in a similar manner, one black and one Hispanic.
Bennett told reporters earlier this month that the incident was “a traumatic experience for me and my family” and he was considering filing a civil rights lawsuit.
Bennett first gave his side of the incident on Twitter on Sept 6. He said that officers pointed guns at him “for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time” and ordered him to lie down on the ground.
Bennett wrote that one officer, with his gun drawn, warned him that he would “blow my f—ing head off” if he moved. Another officer jammed his knee into Bennett’s back and handcuffed him, according to Bennett.
“The Officers’ excessive use of force was unbearable,” Bennett wrote. “I felt helpless as I lay there on the ground handcuffed facing the real-life threat of being killed. All I could think of was ‘I’m going to die for no other reason than I am black and my skin color is somehow a threat.’ “
Bennett wrote that he was placed in a police car before officers confirmed his identity, realized he was not a suspect and released him “without any legitimate justification for the Officers’ abusive conduct.”
“They apparently realized I was not a thug, common criminal or ordinary black man but Michael Bennett a famous professional football player,” he wrote.
The video police shown Friday showed Bennett identifying himself as a Seahawks player after police allowed him to get out of the police car and told him he was not under arrest.
Bennett’s attorney, John Burris in Oakland, California, said he wants to review videos more closely. But he said he believed the clips shown verified Bennett’s accounts.
“He was not acting improperly,” Burris told The Associated Press. “He was not acting suspicious. He was not involved in any criminal activity.
“There’s nothing to go on, no description, other than you see this big black man running,” the attorney added. “He was running like everyone else, trying to get away.”
Lombardo said the intent of Friday’s news conference was not to “disparage” Bennett, acknowledging there are “two sides to every story.”
“Mr. Bennett has a valid perspective as a person who experienced a reasonable suspicion stop for a felony crime,” he said. “Those who experience such a stop, especially when they have not committed a crime, are not likely to feel good about it. But there is a reason why officers are trained to do what they do and what they did that night.”
The officer who chased Bennett and handcuffed him didn’t have his body camera on at the time, Lombardo said, and might face departmental discipline.
Otherwise, “I believe they acted appropriately and professionally,” the sheriff said of the officers.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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A watchdog group asked the Interior Department’s inspector general on Friday to investigate whether Secretary Ryan Zinke violated the law by chartering private planes for purposes that may represent conflicts of interest.
The Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog group focused on public accountability, asked both the Interior Department’s Office of Special Counsel and the inspector general to investigate whether Zinke violated conflict of interest laws and the Hatch Act by using private charter flights to travel for public speaking events, including addressing professional sports teams, as part of his official duties.
“Interior argues that by speaking to a group of highly paid – mostly foreign – athletes, Sec. Zinke was reaching ‘a key audience of people we are trying to target to use our public lands,’” said Daniel Stevens, the group’s executive director.
“Shouldn’t Sec. Zinke be more focused on American families and how they can benefit from our national lands? Rather than putting America first, Zinke is putting a top donor first,” said Stevens.
An agency inspector general office tends to take requests for investigations seriously, and will tell the group whether or not it will procede with an investigation within a specified timeframe.
Politico first reported on Thursday that Zinke chartered private and miltary transport planes at a cost of $12,000. The news broke after Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt was found to have spent $58,000 on private flights. But that is next to nothing when compared to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price who spent about $1 million in military and private flights. Price resigned on Friday over the allegations.
Cabinet secretaries are required to use commercial airlines for travel, with restrictions on the use of private charter flights and military transportation. Zinke on Friday called the dust up over the flights “a little B.S.,” but that was before Price resigned.
The watchdog group pointed out that the Washington Post reported on Thursday that Zinke had taken a private charter plane in June following a “motivational speech” to the Vegas Golden Knights, a National Hockey League team based in Las Vegas, Nev.
The team is owned by Bill Foley, the chairman of Fidelity National Financial, which had been a campaign contributor to Zinke’s two congressional races when he served in the House.
“In addition, Fidelity National Financial and affiliates donated $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee,” according to the group.
The group argues that Zinke’s trip to Las Vegas to speak to the team, “whose owner has been a major benefactor to both Mr. Zinke and President Trump, seems to be a special favor provided to a major political supporter, in violation of conflict of interest laws.”
It added that Zinke’s motivational speech may also be considered a “prohibited political activity under the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from engaging in political activity while on duty.”
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