The Cedric Benson Case: Not So Cut, Not So Dried

By: D.K. Wilson

So, what exactly is Cedric Benson guilty of? Being intoxicated on a boat on Lake Travis in Austin, Texas? Let’s see, there were, from the photo accompanying this article there were at least six young black men and six young white women, plus Jackie Benson, Cedric’s mother. Now, if Cedric was intoxicated on this boat on this perilous lake where there have been 22 fatalities in the last three years (called a “spate” of deaths by Howard Wilt of the Chicago Tribune) Yet there are no statistics for fatalities in the three years period before this; or five year period, or 10. I’m sorry but if we have no comparative fatality statistics for Lake Travis, no matter how hard we try, we have no “spate.”

But I digress. If Cedric Benson was intoxicated and the Lower Colorado River Authority was looking out for boater’s safety - performing “random safety inspections,” it stands to follow that the officer at the scene, Sgt. Leonard Snyder, would call for more patrol people and give field sobriety tests to everyone on the boat, including Jackie Benson. That, apparently, is too logical a chain of events for the patrolman in the Benson case to follow - or for wilt or any other reporter either in Austin or Chicago to ask.

Why is this important? Benson was pulled from the boat, dragged through the water to the shore - or not, depending on whom you believe - and taken to a nearby marina where he was charged with resisting arrest and boating while intoxicated.

Someone had to drive the boat to a safe space, yes? And with at least 11 other passengers if Benson was intoxicated it sure would have been a crime - pun intended - for another intoxicated party in Benson’s boat to drive the craft —— anywhere.

So, with absolutely no proof of any other party on Benson’s boat being intoxicated, we are to believe that one Cedric Benson formerly of the University of Texas and the third-leading rusher in Longhorns history and presently of the Chicago Bears was the only person drinking or over the legal limit on the boat.

Again, this stretches credulity. I mean, talk about flipping the script on having a designated driver, huh?

Then there is the question of the legality of “random safety inspections.” In 1990 the Supreme Court ruled that properly conducted checkpoints are constitutionally legal (though they directly violate the 4th Amendment). However, one of the primary general guidelines for checkpoints is that they cannot be random, they must be performed through a neutral formula, that is, every other vehicle, or every vehicle, or every fifth vehicle. That these checkpoints are called “random safety inspections” points towards their illegality:

…they deny police abused Benson or that he was singled out for special scrutiny.“It’s routine to stop people on the water for safety checks,” said Krista Umscheid, an LCRA spokeswoman. “It’s not based on anything in particular that people are doing. The officers are not required to have probable cause to do an inspection.”

But the overreaching problem here is that Texas is not a state authorized to conduct sobriety checkpoints. The states that have passed a law allowing them are:

Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia.

Moreover, it opens the way for profiling of any sort.

And with the boat owned by Cedric Benson we’re talking about racial profiling. We’re talking about at least six young black men and six young white women in a new 31.5 foot motorboat worth $147,000 at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday night:

Sgt. Leonard Snyder, who pepper-sprayed and arrested Benson on Lake Travis near Austin, Texas, said he surmised Benson was intoxicated because he was “combative,” “cocky,” “insulting,” and used “profanity.” At times, he was “crying” and “cooperative,” Snyder wrote.

Historically, “cocky” and “insulting” in police reports dealing with black men are much more often than not code words for “uppity black man.” Snyder further described the confrontation with Benson:

After failing sobriety tests administered by Snyder, an officer with the Lower Colorado River Authority, Benson refused to come ashore for more tests and “stood up from the position where I had him seated and suggested I could not tell him what to do,” the report said.

After informing him he was under arrest and about to be handcuffed, “I touched his body in an attempt to direct him and he presented himself in a very hostile way,” Snyder wrote.”Benson is a very muscular person and easily capable of overpowering me. As I had exhausted all attempts to gain control of Benson, and been met with resistance and what I perceived as a threat, I administered pepper spray into Benson’s face to gain control.”

How could Snyder’s version diverge so drastically with every other version? Perhaps because, as Wilt reports in his article the Benson incident is an abnormality:

Several boaters randomly interviewed Tuesday evening on Lake Travis said the LCRA officers generally are respected as responsible law enforcement officers who prefer to issue warnings rather than citations when they see violations to avoid spoiling recreational experiences for people.

Yet Wilt, after this insight, falls back into seeking information to corroborate the LCRA’s side of the story. It is as if Wilt himself is afraid of reprisal from the Austin water police:

Although the City of Austin Police Department has been the subject of scrutiny over racial-profiling complaints in recent years, no such complaints have been made about the LCRA police, according to the Texas ACLU and other civil rights watchdog groups.

With a 94% white arrest rate (2.2% blacks, 2% Asian, and the remainder unclassified) it is easy to surmise that the preponderance of boaters on Lake Travis, particularly since a 31.5 foot, $147,000 boat is an average Lake Travis party boat, are white, racial profiling complaints would be kept at a minimum.

But we are still left with not only Benson’s account of the story…

“There was no resistance on my part,” Benson told the Tribune on Sunday night. “Was I drunk? No.”

“They gave me a field sobriety test, told me to say my ABCs and told me to count from 1 to 4 up and down,” Benson said of Saturday’s incident. “I’m thinking, I passed all the tests, did everything right. Then the officer told me we needed to go to land to take more tests. I politely asked him why we needed to go to land to take more tests when I took every test. Then he sprayed me with mace, on his boat.

“I’m not handcuffed. I’m not under arrest. I’m not threatening him. I’m not pushing him. I’m not touching him. And he sprays me right in my eye.”

“Nobody saw what he did to me,” Benson said. “I started screaming for my mother to come. That’s when they put me under arrest. And the officer threw a life jacket over my head.

“Once we got to land, the Travis County police grabbed me and kicked my feet from under me. So I landed on my back while I was handcuffed. They held me down and held the water hose over my face. I couldn’t breathe, I’m choking, I’m begging the cops, ‘Please stop. Please stop.’ Then they picked me up and dragged me backward toward their car. And I’m still being polite, asking them, ‘Sir, could you please allow me to walk like a man to your cop car?’ They just kept dragging me on.”

…we have a divergent story from another person on the boat:

A woman who was a passenger in Cedric Benson’s boat when he was pepper-sprayed and arrested Saturday night said the Chicago Bear’s running back did not seem intoxicated and did not resist arrest, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Elizabeth Cartwright, 22, a senior at the University of Texas and a friend of Benson, said she called her father and asked him to call police about the way Benson was treated by officers of the Lower Colorado River Authority, which patrols Lake Travis, a man-made lake northwest of Austin, Texas.

“I called my dad and told him, ‘Call 911, my black friend is getting beaten up by police on Lake Travis,’” Cartwright recalled, according to the Tribune. “It’s more what I heard than what I saw. I have never heard or seen Cedric that scared.”…

Cartwright said she is willing to present her account of events as evidence. She also said her fiancé took photographs of the incident that help back up her claims.

According to the Tribune, Cartwright said she had had one drink and Benson had consumed two when the party of about 15 people decided to head back to shore at about 9:30 p.m. on Saturday to get dinner. About that time, a patrol boat approached to conduct a random check, she said.

According to Cartwright, it was the sixth time that a patrol had stopped Benson’s boat on Lake Travis in as many outings this year.

Cartwright said after the boat passed the safety checkup, Benson was asked to board the LCRA craft for a sobriety test. As an officer led Benson to the LCRA boat for the test, the second officer left behind on Benson’s boat assured his mother, Jackie Benson, that her son would be fine, Cartwright said, according to the report.

“I know Cedric and I don’t think he was drunk,” Cartwright said, according to the Tribune.

A few minutes later, Cartwright said she heard Benson begin to scream after the officer pepper-sprayed him, according to the report. By the time Benson was in handcuffs, he was screaming, “Please stop, Mom, make them please stop,” she said.

According to the report, Cartwright’s father, Jeff, called 911 at his daughter’s insistence. Unaware she was calling about Benson, he told the dispatcher that police “were beating up a black kid on Lake Travis.”

“In the weakest voice, Cedric said to me and my fiance, `Help me get out of here,’ ” Cartwright said. “He was so scared.”

Even if the “random stop” was somehow legal, it cannot be extrapolated to mean that a beat down for someone perceived as combative, cocky, and insulting is also legal. However, it is par behavior for the course with white police interacting with young black men, especially those they feel by their build are a physical threat.

But stopping Benson’s boat was not at all legal. Under the circumstances as described by Benson and Cartwright, pepper spraying the running back, dragging him ashore, and obviously from his mug shot, beating him, was not at all illegal, either.

Yet this is 2008 treatment of black men - and women, and in some instances, children. It is 2008 treatment just like it was 1998 treatment. Just like every decade previous to that so far into the past that no one wants to remember.

For Howard Witt and Maureen O’Donnell, though, the tilting of the facts of what happened on Lake Travis against Benson are just another day at the office, attempting to crush the spirit of a running back who has been branded as weird and aloof, who had very minor run-ins with the law - he was sentenced to eight days in jail in 2003 (at UT) for a misdemeanor trespassing charge after forcing his way into an apartment to look for a television stolen from him; in 2002, misdemeanor drug and alcohol charges against him were dropped - who for three years has run behind offensive linemen who blocked like they despised him, who was never Ricky Williams, the Longhorns running back before him.

Benson was and remains quiet, thoughtful, and aloof - and a bit of a mama’s boy. He is slower than Williams but as powerful. His first half carries will not excite you but if you believe in him, or at least understand what he is as a runner, you will be rewarded in the 4th quarter when tacklers shy from hitting his huge frame and the three-yard carry of the first three quarters is the eight-yarder in the fourth, at the time eight yards is needed most. Just check his stats at Texas.

What needs to be remembered as this case moves forward (Benson is set to appear in court for a hearing on May 19) is that there are more than distinct sides to this story as it stands: one from the LCRA and one from Benson and Cartwright. But there is also the side of wanting Cedric Benson run from Chicago and the Chicago Bears and one that wants to see him in an offense that features him, like the offense he was in at Texas.

Finally, there are the two sides of race. To many, many white people this incident is perceived simply as Cedric Benson receiving his just desserts for threatening the authorities.

To many, many black people this incident is a case of racial profiling. And to the people taking in the evidence so far, the bootprints of yet another incident that is a microcosm of a history of racist oppression in America are everywhere.

Just remember that all these sides exist.

But remember the minority viewpoint is as valid as the other. And because black people are the recipients of systemic oppression and institutional racism there is a highly-attuned radar for events like this that is inherent in the black collective unconscious.

Just as there is a radar that tells too many white people to view this event and attack Cedric Benson - or turn in a contrived self-righteous disgust and walk away.

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D.K. Wilson is a freelance sports writer. He is better known on the internet as "DWil," and writes for Sports On My Mind.

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7 Comments

  1. You’re comments about random stops, do they pertain to water police? Or are they only applicable on streets with normal police?

    Comment by Joe on May 8, 2008

  2. I am an employee of the Lower Colorado River Authority and have been for over 7 years. I am a 34 year old white male, sports fanatic and I enjoy reading takes different writers have on sports related issues. I tend to agree with the majority of what you wrote until you took a turn south with this commment;
    ” To many, many white people this incident is perceived simply as Cedric Benson receiving his just desserts for threatening the authorities.”
    You lost credibility with me at that point. No doubt, racism is still prevelant, but to emphasize “many” speaks volumes to your ability to weed through the “BS”. Austin is an extremely liberal city. This incident was definitely racial profiling in my opinion, but just because the arresting officer decided to act in the manner in which he did, does not constitute your blanket statement of the white mans perception that Benson deserved his treatment. He was treated unfairly, fact. I have been on the lake enough to know. The arresting officer made the decisions he made, fact. This doesn’t make me or many, many other white people racist.

    Comment by Kendall on May 9, 2008

  3. I am sure someone has the photos and/or video to prove one way or the other. Just give it time and the truth will be told.

    Comment by Randy on May 9, 2008

  4. Kendall-
    I lived in Austin for years and about to return in a few weeks. Sure, it’s the only oasis in Texas but compared with cities elsewhere, it’s no oasis for many, many black people.

    Now, I said for “many, many white people”… but I did not specify Austin.

    If you are not one of the many, many white people I’m talking about, that’s great. But I’ll believe my own eyes, experiences across this country, and various threat to do me bodily harm in private emailed responses to some of my commentaries and articles and by the statement that:

    “To many, many white people this incident is perceived simply as Cedric Benson receiving his just desserts for threatening the authorities.”

    Yes, I’ll stand by that statement.

    Comment by D.K. Wilson on May 9, 2008

  5. What this article doesn’t state is that, completely unrelated to the arrest and circumstance, the Bears need to fire Benson. Hope this case gets wrapped up and the appropriate parties are disciplined, that way I can get back to being a Bears fan, Benson can get back to living his life, and we can dislike each other without regards to real world events.

    Comment by Barry on May 9, 2008

  6. LCRA was created to manage the water rights and environmental concerns of the Lower Colorado river in Texas now they have a police department. I’m sure it is only the best and brightest looking to server in that elite force.

    The formula I see here is a cocky “public safety” officer over stepping his mandate and a spoiled young athlete used to getting his way — The two didn’t mix well.

    Comment by BJ Baker on May 13, 2008

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