The full body cam video was released yesterday and I still am of the opinion that the optics of this situation are much worse than the actions, but you can watch things for yourself. Oh, and if you don’t have 18 minutes to watch, then this one minute version where you get a cliff notes version of the events.
VIDEO: Lubbock Police released video from early Sunday morning. It shows what happened right before four Texas Tech football players were arrested. This is a small part of the video. We’re going through a lot more for the KAMC News at 6 and 10. BACKGROUND: https://t.co/UpaM7SGHTh pic.twitter.com/xsBlhcEqxG
— KAMC News (@KAMCNews) March 26, 2018
For me, the takeaway is that Christian Taylor punches a windshield and is then arrested. We don’t know what led to Taylor doing that but I’m guessing he was maybe provoked (unless he has violence issues already, but we haven’t heard of them) and possibly drinking as well. In any event, the crowd starts surrounding the cops who have pulled Taylor into a parking garage and they say that they’re being threatened by players standing around and the players were asking about Taylor.
The key here is that the players were asked to back up and they weren’t listening to the cops like I guess they wanted. Here’s a parenting trick, when you tell a child to back up that’s fine, but if you tell them to back up to a particular point, then they know where they need to be. Telling players to back up, which they did to some extent isn’t specific enough instructions. Tell the crows to back up to the curb of the street, that way there’s clear communication of expectations. I’m guessing that the players in the heat of the moment felt like they were backing up.
It appears that the players that got arrested are the players who were most upset and vocal at Taylor’s arrest. Also making an appearance is Dakota Allen, who is there, but backs up. Jett Duffey makes an appearance at around the 7:50 mark and someone is asking why Taylor is arrested, the policeman gives an answer, and turns around. The next thing you hear is a loud bang, which is Duffey hitting a wall, and he’s then subsequently arrested. There’s no drama or anything else that led up to that point.
In any event, this doesn’t seem like it was handled very well by the police and by the students standing around. The police asked that they comply and in their opinion they didn’t. I still don’t think this warrants players being kicked off the team, but Kingsbury has had a pretty short leash on these sorts of things. One of Kingsbury’s biggest faults is that he’ll over-punish players to his detriment.