Four off-duty police officers working a Minnesota Lynx game walked out after players made comments regarding racial profiling.
The WNBA players wore these Black Lives Matter shirts in warmups Saturday. The shirts also recognize the officers shot and killed in Texas last week with the #Dallas. In bold font on the front of the shirt reads, “Change starts with us.”
However, what may set the officers off may not have been the t-shirts. It may have been the comments made by some of the players.
Lt. Bob Kroll, president of the Minneapolis Police Federation, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, praised them for quitting. “I commend them for it,” he said …
… Kroll criticized Lynx players, citing the “false narratives” in the past two years in which some allegations of police misconduct in the killing of black people were refuted. “Rushing to judgment before the facts are in is unwarranted and reckless,” he said.
Police sign up for off-duty jobs to work Lynx games, Kroll said. “They can start or stop a job whenever they want,” he said. “They are working on an independent contract.”
Asked about a report that seven or eight officers had walked off the job, Kroll said, “They only have four officers working the event because the Lynx have such a pathetic draw.”
Simply put, the officers aren’t progressing towards positive change if they walked off the job simply because of the shirts. After all, according to the Star Tribune, the players also denounced the ambush on police in Dallas. However, was there something more? Something else said that was never reported? Such questions would be the only way to legitimize the police lieutenant supporting such a walk-off.
The Lynx are the current defending WNBA champions and play in the metropolitan area Philando Castile was killed by a police officer last week.
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports. Follow him on Twitter or like the channel on Facebook here.
