{"id":24626,"date":"2014-12-16T19:58:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T03:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=24626"},"modified":"2014-12-16T19:58:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T03:58:26","slug":"andrew-hawkins-is-right-a-call-for-justice-doesnt-require-an-apology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/andrew-hawkins-is-right-a-call-for-justice-doesnt-require-an-apology\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Hawkins Is Right: A Call for Justice Doesn’t Require an Apology"},"content":{"rendered":"

See also: Police officers across U.S. upset at being seen as brutal racists<\/a><\/p>\n

On Sunday, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wore a shirt during pre-game introductions that read “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford.” You can probably see where this is going. <\/p>\n

Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old killed by Cleveland police for having a toy gun. The policeman shot him just two seconds<\/a> after arriving on the scene. John Crawdord was killed by police in a Beavercreek, Ohio<\/a> Walmart because he was holding a toy gun of the type that Walmart sells. <\/p>\n

We’ve learned that “justice” isn’t the sort of thing you ask for these days, at least not when the killers are police. Cleveland’s police union was livid, and demanded a public apology from the Cleveland Browns and from Hawkins. “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law<\/a>” was part of the official statement from the police union. <\/p>\n

The notion that a football player could be not okay with police killing people and police being furious isn’t new. In St. Louis, five Rams players fueled outrage <\/a>from their own police department for doing the Ferguson “hands up” display. <\/p>\n

Following the go-to police tactic of escalation beyond all reason, St. Louis police demanded apologies from the team and the league, and “disciplinary” actions against the players. They went on to insist that “thugs” like the ones in Ferguson don’t buy the products of Rams’ advertisers, police do. The Rams expressed<\/a> “regret” that the police were mad, which police took as an apology, but which the Rams reiterated was not. <\/p>\n

Back to Cleveland, Hawkins is leaving less open to interpretation. He’s not apologizing, nor should he. Hawkins declared “a call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology<\/a>,” and he’s quite right. It’s not surprising that Cleveland police are outraged, because they’re used to killing people and getting away with it, but that should not be the expectation, and it damned sure doesn’t warrant an apology. <\/p>\n

Here’s hoping the Cleveland Browns take the high ground and simply ignore the complaints, leaving this between Hawkins and the police. He’s got things handled, and more power to him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See also: Police officers across U.S. upset at being seen as brutal racists On Sunday, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wore a shirt during pre-game introductions that read “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford.” You can probably see where this is going. Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old killed by Cleveland police for having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[662],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cleveland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24627,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626\/revisions\/24627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24626"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}