Sheriff: No evidence on video officers mistreated Seahawks’ Bennett
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Police acted appropriately and professionally detaining Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett when he ran from a casino as officers searched for an active shooter following a report of gunfire at an after-hours club on the Las Vegas Strip, the head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Friday.
A review of hundreds of videos, including police body-worn cameras, found no evidence that the three officers who had direct contact with the NFL star early Aug. 27 profiled Bennett by race or used excessive force, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said.
Bennett committed no crime, the sheriff said. But he was detained at gunpoint, handcuffed and seated for about 10 minutes in the back of a patrol car until police searching the crowded casino just hours after an Aug. 26 boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor concluded that what people thought was gunfire was actually the sharp sound of velvet rope stands knocked to a tile floor during a scuffle.
Video shows an officer with his gun out while handcuffing Bennett as he lies prone in a traffic lane on Las Vegas Boulevard outside the Cromwell casino.
But Lombardo said there was nothing to support Bennett’s allegation, made in a Twitter post more than a week later, that an officer put a gun to Bennett’s head and threatened to blow his head off.
Bennett’s attorney, John Burris in Oakland, Calif., said he wants to review videos more closely. But he said he believed the clips shown verified Bennett’s accounts.
Burris said the officer’s gun was near Bennett’s while he was being handcuffed, and he said he heard profanity in audio recordings captured on body-camera video. Burris said he heard no reference to race.
“There’s a dispute over whether he threatened to blow his head off,” the attorney said. “But there’s no question that the officer said, ‘Keep your hands up and keep them where I can see them.’ ”
Neither Lombardo nor the executive of the 3,000-member Las Vegas police officers’ union, who attended the media briefing, identified the officers involved in the incident.
The officer who chased Bennett and handcuffed him didn’t have his body camera on at the time, Lombardo said, and might face departmental discipline.