​St. Louis Rams Players Pissed Off a Missouri Police Union

On Sunday, five players with the St. Louis R​ams NFL team took the field for a game against the Oakland Raiders, their arms raised in the "don't shoot" position. This was widely interpreted as a silent protest against the grand jury's failure to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August. Since that incident—the exact facts of which we will never know—"hands up, don't shoot" has become an all-purpose mantra of protests against police brutality and the ease with which the trigger is pulled on minori​ty suspects in particular.

Now, the players—Tavon Austin, Stedman Bailey, Kenny Britt, Chris Givens, and Jared Cook—could potentially be sanctioned by the NFL. And that is the NFL's business, whether to play with that political grenade or just let it be. However, it is definitely not the business of the St. Louis Police Officers Association what NFL players do with their arms. Still, the fraternal group felt compelled to issue a long, cranky statement about the event, calling the players hypocrites for protesting even though the NFL and the Rams asked for police protection against looters after the verdict.

The SLPOA statement read, in part, that they found it "unthinkable that hometown athletes would so publicly perpetuate a narrative that has been disproven over-and-over [sic] again." The group wants the players disciplined by the NFL, and they want a "very public apo​logy" from the league and the team.

The fact that the SLPOA is this interested in PR minutiae is not surprising, but it is creepy that this is where their priorities lie. Disciplining the Rams players won't change anyone's mind about the rightness or wrongness of Wilson's actions or the grand jury verdict. But it does make the SLPOA look like they're more worried about policing protests of officer behavior than in changing said behavior. The way to improve public perception of the police is to improve the police. Nothing else—certainly not shaming football players—will make much of a difference.

Now for the rest of this week's bad cops:

-On November 27, VICE News's Natasha Lennard reported on a disturbing​ incident between cops in Police, a drug suspect, and his girlfriend that took place on August 14. On that day, David Nelson Flores apparently tried to swallow a sock when approached by undercover police officers. In response to this, a uniformed officer named Christopher Evans punched Flores in the face six times. When Flores's pregnant girlfriend Mayra Lazos-Guerrero ran towards police, screaming for them to stop, the other uniformed officer, Charles Jones IV, tripped her; she can be seen on video falling heavily onto her stomach. Jones later said he was worried Lazos-Guerrero was going to kick him.

Things didn't end there, however, according to the the witness who filmed the confrontation. Levi Frasier says that police confiscated his tablet after the two suspects were arrested. He also says he didn't consent to the handover, but was threatened with arrest. The footage was deleted when Frasier got his tablet back, but he managed to retrieve it. The police report doesn't mention anything about footage of the incident, and police refused local Denver news outlets' request to view the footage and comment on it. The FBI is now ​looking into the matter, since officers Evans and Jones were cleared of excessive force by a superior who did not see the video.

-Last Monday, Brian Dennison​ was arrest​ed in Jacksonville, Florida, after speeding and refusing to stop for a police officer because his asthmatic daughter needed her inhaler. Dennison reportedly drove half a mile to his apartment after an officer from the Jacksonville County Sheriff's Office, J.C. Garcia, attempted to stop him from driving home. Dennison says when he arrived at his apartment after ignoring Garcia, he got out of the vehicle with his hands up and began to explain to Garcia that his six-year-old child desperately needed her medicine. Garcia then shot at Dennison because he apparently believed the unarmed man was reaching for a handgun. Thankfully, his daughter is fine—and Garcia eventually let him get the inhaler—but Dennison was arrested on charges of driving on a suspended license.

Garcia's decision to shoot is now under investigation, but it seems as if Dennison and his child owe their survival or at least their good health to that officer's being such a bad shot. Assistant Chief Chris Butler basic​ally suggested that Garcia managed to divert the single shot he fired because he noticed Dennison was unarmed just as he was in the process of pulling the trigger. Which seems kind of ridiculous.

-The grand jury weighing whether to indict NYPD Off​icer Daniel Pantaleo in the July 17 death of 43-year-old Eric Garner is nearing a decision, according to reports. What with all the Michael Brown-induced protests lately, it seems the NYPD has been working to prevent similar issues if Pantaleo is not indicted for his chokehold/takedown move on Garner—and this is why the NYPD has been ​combing Missouri for "professional agitators."

-Speaking of profiling: A black man in Pont​iac, Michigan was briefly detained by police for, basically, existing while black. According to a concerned 9-1-1 caller, Brandon McKean was walking with his hands in his pockets. In the winter. Outside. An officer with the Oakland County Sheriff's Department questioned McKean, and tolerated his extremely understandable incredulousness and outrage, but the officer also tried to argue that since there had been robberies lately, somehow the stop was not completely inappropriate.

-SWAT teams w​ere deployed in Pittsburgh 96 times in 2009, but 251 times in 2013. The dramatic increase is supposedly based on more "high-risk warrants" and a greater need for "tactical support," according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette—but the former is a dubious term that can mean nothing besides an informant thinking a drug suspect might have a weapon. Did policing in Pittsburgh really get more dangerous all of a sudden?

-In October, a Raleigh, North Caro​lina, man was released from prison after spending almost 100 days there for the rape of a 13-year-old and involvement in a child sex ring. But the evidence against 50-year-old Tommy Wall was so spurious it was scrubbed from public record after last month's exoneration. Wall's story, however, is still a tragedy not just for his unjust time behind bars. He lost his job, his house was auctioned by the county, and he will now forever be tied with "child pornography" in Google. That's pretty rough punishment for someone who did nothing wrong. Seemingly the only tie Wall—who didn't have internet in his home, which would make the whole child porn ring thing kinda difficult—had with the two suspected child pornographers was that he dropped off a load of lumber at their home two years before his arrest. The investigation of Wall was so botched that he's now preparing a lawsuit. He deserves to win big.

-The Washington Post is dam​ned right that the Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Department needs to actually investigate why their officers shot unarmed man John Geer 15 months ago. The Post has been following the story closely, and the Fairfax PD's complete lack of progress on releasing any details about the man's death—including the name of the officer who killed him—is alarming and baffling.

-Our Good Cop of the Week is actually a good police department. According to numerous sources—and even some folks who were cranky about a lack of arrests—on Wednesday, th​e Nashville PD managed to answer the town's Ferguson proxy protests with protection, not force. They let people march, they closed the interstate for half an hour instead of arresting people, even when those folks disobeyed orders. In short, it sure sounds like they de-escalated a tense, angry situation with tolerance and a healthy respect for First Amendment rights—even if the expressions of those rights were not very pro-police. It's hard to know what to do with this kind of good police behavior except say, "Yes, more of that, please!"

Follow Lucy Steigerwald on ​Twitter.