GEE SCOTT
Gee Scott on Michael Bennett’s police encounter: ‘If you’ve never had that happen, you don’t understand’
Sep 6, 2017, 12:12 PM
The news of Seahawks player Michael Bennett’s harrowing encounter with a police officer in Las Vegas hit close to home for 710 ESPN Seattle’s Gee Scott.
A friend of Bennett’s who also grew up the son of a policeman, Scott knows both sides of the issue. After seeing the video released by TMZ that shows Bennett being held to the ground by a police officer following the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight on Aug. 26, Scott was overcome with emotion.
“It gutted me because you got to see what happens, and if you’ve never had that happen before, you don’t understand,” Scott told Brock and Salk on Wednesday morning. “When you have friends and family and you yourself have gone through that and you know the pain and the hurt, and you see Michael Bennett in that moment, it ain’t about money, it ain’t about fame, it ain’t about the NFL. It’s about nothing else than a human being right there being handcuffed and manhandled. Why?
“What did he do to get handcuffed and arrested? So then you find out who it is, but the hurt in it is there’s so many Michael Bennetts of the world, and it’s almost like they don’t get believed, and (they) don’t get believed until (others see) the video.”
Scott said the ensuing reaction he witnessed was just as upsetting, if not more, than first learning the news when Bennett released a statement Wednesday morning on social media.
“The statement is one thing … and then you see the comments from people, and people say, ‘Oh, where’s the proof?’ and ‘What did he do?’ It’s always the same thing, every single time. Every single day, I have to wake up and I come to work and I have to hold back a lot of these feelings, because I’m afraid that if I say something then I’m considered to be angry.”
Scott texted Bennett later in the morning to see how he was holding up. Through that, Bennett shared the message he wanted to get across by making his story public.
“‘I want people to know what’s going on out there.”
