BLEW THE RIGHT THING

Mara, Giants spike shot to be strong on abuse

So the Giants are just like every other NFL franchise that cuts corners for wins. Got it. It’s impossible to read this Josh Brown situation any other way. “I think this is an organization that always tries to do the right thing,” co-owner John Mara said Wednesday during a press conference that even he admitted was days late. “I don’t know that we always get it done, but we try.” If they tried in this case, they failed. Mara admitted the Giants knew about Brown’s 2015 domestic violence arrest, and about the alleged 20-plus additional incidents first reported by the Daily News last Thursday, prior to re-signing Brown this past April.

To make matters worse, when Mara was asked if he were privy to other information that might clarify the situation, he seemed irritated.

“I’m not gonna get into that,” Mara said. “And that’s one of the reasons why I hesitated quite frankly in addressing all of you because you get into discussions like that and I don’t think it’s fair or appropriate. There are privacy issues here. There are sensitive, emotional issues that affect families.”

He hesitated addressing the matter because, what, the truth would come out? Yeah, who would want that?

Oh, if only the pesky media didn’t make the public aware of all these matters that a business would prefer to keep private. Go live in that world. See how it takes.

Given the opportunity, Mara also would not dispute the validity of Molly Brown’s allegations.

“I’m not gonna get into whether they were valid or invalid,” he said.

So is he saying Brown’s ex-wife wasn’t truthful? “I did not say that,” Mara said.

So he’s not accusing her of fabricating the accusa- tions? “No,” Mara said.

But wait a second. No one is trying to convict an innocent man here before he’s proven guilty.

The NFL suspended Brown for one game, a pathetic slap on the wrist but nonetheless an acknowledgment of his wrongdoing. The league and the legal system both were unable to charge or further investigate only because of lack of cooperation — a common silence in domestic violence cases, for obvious reasons.

No one wants to further hurt Brown, his ex-wife or their family, or to jeopardize whatever efforts they’re making to repair the damage. But the issue here is the Giants’ tolerance of domestic violence, and if they want to claim that they don’t tolerate it, they need to clarify that it didn’t — and has not — happened here. They seemingly cannot do that. Mara challenged that “a lot of times there’s a tendency to try to make these cases black and white. They are very rarely black and white. You very rarely have a Ray Rice video.”

But what he may be forgetting about that Ray Rice video is that the visual evidence was the only thing that strong-armed Roger Goodell and the NFL into doing the right thing in that case in the first place. Without a video, the league was ready to suspend Rice for two games and “move on,” as Mara kept saying Wednesday.

Unfortunately, clearly in these cases we need a video, because otherwise organizations like the NFL and the Giants can hide in the gray areas, which is an injustice to the victims of domestic violence.

You could see on Mara’s face how pained he is about this whole situation. He is clearly aggravated by the perception that the Giants tolerate domestic violence.

“This is an issue, domestic violence, that we take very seriously here … We have worked very closely for many, many years — long before this became a hot-button topic — with an organization called, ‘My Sister’s Place,’ and this is an issue that is very personal to a lot of us,” he announced in an opening statement.

No question the Giants are revered for a reason. There are good people here, usually doing good work.

Brown’s situation is not closely covered by media, though, because domestic violence is a “hot-button issue.” If it is a “hot-button issue,” it’s because the NFL was caught trying to sweep it under the rug.

One domestic violence incident is too many. The 20-plus alleged additional incidents are unconfirmed, but Brown’s May 2015 arrest documents irrefutable abuse in one instance. That should have been enough for the Giants to do the right thing. Trying, in this instance, isn’t good enough.