Kareem Hunt filmed tackling, kicking woman

For all things Chicago Bears

Moderator: wab

User avatar
wab
Mod
Posts: 29805
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 12:49 pm
Has thanked: 127 times
Been thanked: 1956 times

KOP_Snake wrote:I am of the opinion that a man should not hit a woman beyond reasonable self-defense. But I'm also of the opinion that white people shouldn't be slinging the N-word at black people without being ready to be cold-cocked. So this is rather conflicting.
I believe this is where I’ve landed as well.
User avatar
Mikefive
Hall of Famer
Posts: 5189
Joined: Sat Aug 20, 2016 9:33 pm
Location: Valparaiso, IN, USA
Has thanked: 340 times
Been thanked: 278 times

I find this situation rather fascinating. For the record, when I raised my 3 kids, I told them to just walk away in situations like this. And I taught my boys to never hit a woman. What Hunt did was wrong, no doubt about it.

Ray Rice gave a wheelhouse right hook to a pretty defenseless woman in an elevator and put her out cold, IIRC. And despite that that name keeps getting mentioned when introducing the Hunt incident, there's no comparison whatsoever between the two. Honestly, after hearing the radio descriptions and then watching the video, I was flabbergasted at my media induced perception vs. reality.

Here's what I saw. Two angry people. She approached him saying something (by accounts calling him the N word). He pushed her away. Same thing happens again. For starters he was being the aggressor by approaching him. His pushing her away is not what I'd advise, but that should be no crime. He wasn't trying to hurt her, just get her away from him. A bunch of people grab him as his anger escalates... being even ferociously angry isn't a crime either... and he doesn't like being restrained. Nobody would. So he pushes back and one person flies into another person who knocks her over. Now if she's injured as a result, there's some blame that goes his way, but it's certainly not direct assault or anything like that. After that, while being held back he puts a foot into her leg, the worst of his transgressions. She wasn't doing anything wrong or being threatening and he just put his heel into her. That's the long and short of it.

Now if I'm the judge in this case, the stuff leading up to the boot was nothing criminal. Kicking her the way it happened is a no-no for sure. Any time you have situations like this, there are always matters of degree involved. It looks to me that the woman contributed to escalating the incident and that is a factor in my judgement. Kicking some stranger who has not said a word to you is different than someone who was getting in your face and calling you bad names.

Further, the argument that "he would've done so much worse if he wasn't held back" doesn't hold any water with me. You're only guilty of the crimes actually committed. There's no way to project something that didn't happen.

As far as the boot goes, it's really pretty minor. It would be very different if she was passed out and he tried to flatten her skull against the floor by leaping and putting his body weight down on her. What I saw was that he wanted to inflict some pain, but it didn't look to me like he was trying to put her in the hospital. I imagine she had a significant bruise out of it.

My sentence: Two weeks in jail.

Sending someone to jail is a big deal. The crime here was just not very significant. You can't kick people who are just sitting there, even if they did provoke you. That's wrong. But in the scale of crimes, it's pretty small. What happened here happens on playgrounds every day.

Now what the right thing was for the Chiefs to do... They probably did the right thing and hats off to them. What a great message to send to your team that you need to be 100% honest with us or you're gone, even if you're an all pro. How many teams would do that?

I see the points that some here would be interested in bringing him in. He's a very good player and it's possible that he would learn from his mistakes. But knowing that he has another incident that is being looked at and he had anger management baggage from college, I think I'd let some other team roll the dice with him. And for those reasons, I don't see Ryan Pace getting anywhere near him.
Mikefive's theory: The only time you KNOW that a sports team player, coach or management member is being 100% honest is when they're NOT reciting "the company line".

Go back to leather helmets, NFL.
Post Reply