OPINION:
Ezekiel Elliott, meet Cathy Lanier.
“I’m hoping this hire means something to young women in terms of fairness and opportunity,” Lanier, the former District of Columbia police chief, told the Washington Post in February shortly after being hired as NFL security boss.
“For people to assume that the NFL is not fair — or it’s a man’s club or not committed to (addressing) issues like domestic violence — I don’t feel that way inside this organization. That perception is for me to change,” she said.
It seems that the case where Cathy Lanier has decided to show that commitment — to change that perception — is the domestic violence investigation into the Dallas Cowboys star running back.
Elliott, the 2016 NFL Rookie of the Year, was suspended last month for six games after a year-long investigation following accusations of domestic violence made against him in July 2016.
A woman who said she was Elliott’s former girlfriend told Columbus, Ohio, police he attacked her several times. The woman also posted photos on her Instagram page showing bruises on her arms, hand, neck and leg.
AUDIO: Producer and writer David Simon with Thom Loverro
The police report said investigators spoke to four witnesses who said they did not see any assault, and Elliott has denied the charges.
The woman also told police in Florida that Elliott has pushed her up against a wall in a February incident, and has reportedly been cooperating with NFL investigators — who work for Lanier.
In the Post interview, Lanier made it clear that there was a new world order in the NFL when it came to violence towards women.
“These are sports people; their expertise is very clearly football,” Lanier said. “They’ve reached out to people with the expertise in matters of domestic violence, sexual assault. … They are committed to seeing that this league is not seen as one that condones, supports or hides domestic violence. They are committed to making sure that is not only not the way it is — but not the way it’s perceived. That’s our job right now: to make the perception change. But perception is very hard to change.”
Elliott has filed an appeal, along with a lawsuit challenging the appeal process.
And the National Football League Players Association has filed a temporary restraining order against the suspension, charging that Kia Roberts, the NFL investigator who had interviewed all witnesses and the accuser, did not support a suspension recommendation for Elliott.
“She was prohibited from conveying her views to both Commissioner Roger Goodell and the advisory committee that was paneled to make recommendations to the Commissioner,” the NFLPA said in a statement.
“The deliberate exclusion of her recommendations and findings constitutes a failure to follow the NFL’s own Personal Conduct Policy, which the League unilaterally imposed and refused to collectively bargain.”
If that is the case, the decision to ignore those findings presumably had to have been signed off by Lanier.
The story goes that if you are a new arrival in prison and want to set the tone for your time there, you pick out the biggest inmate in the yard and confront him.
Lanier may have done just that with the Ezekiel Elliott case.
Here you have one of the new young stars in the league playing for the most popular and valuable franchise in the league, owned by one of the most powerful owners in the league who reportedly had been a close ally to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
By choosing this battle — when, without any charges filed by law enforcement against Elliott and by her own investigator’s reported recommendation of no suspension — Lanier appears to have picked the biggest inmate in the yard in Jerry Jones and his prize running back.
Jones, who publicly supported Goodell in his four-game suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the Deflategate investigation, is reportedly “furious” over the Elliott suspension.
He was made to look like a fool when, in the days leading up to the announcement, Jones told anyone who would listen that “domestic violence” was not an issue in the Elliott probe.
“There is just nothing,” Jones told the Dallas Morning News in March. “I know I would have heard about it. I would have the information if there were something. I know that.”
He should have been paying attention to the message Lanier sent NFL owners in that February interview.
And maybe Jones should have gotten a copy of the NFLPA memo sent to agents in March, a few months after Lanier took the job.
I was the first to report that the players union sent a memo to agents warning them of a “new world of NFL investigations of players” where the league “investigates matters that are directly reported to it by alleged victims, even if the alleged victim has not reported alleged conduct to law enforcement.
“The NFL has initiated numerous investigations based merely upon phone calls by alleged victims to the NFL,” the NFLPA memo stated. “It appears that many people are now aware that they can directly call the NFL to levy allegations against players.”
Cathy Lanier is in charge. It’s not a man’s club anymore.
• Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.