Friday, the Las Vegas Police Department held a press conference to discuss previously unreleased footage of two officers detaining Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Michael Bennett on August 27.
Bennett first announced the incident and leveled claims of excessive force against the officers on September 6 in an open letter he posted to Twitter.
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Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Joe Lombardo denied any wrongdoing on the part of the LVPD and also said Bennett “has a valid perspective as someone who experienced a reasonable suspicion stop for a felony crime.” But the majority of the conference was spent parsing multiple videos of the apprehension.
“As part of this investigation, we reviewed over 861 separate videos,” Lombardo said. “Of those 861, we determined 193 of them were pertinent to the investigation. Today, you see a culmination of what we thought was instrumental in completing the investigation. The complaint of excessive detention—the total incident took approximately 10 minutes. His time at the car was approximately seven minutes, so you can see the detention was not excessive.”
The above remarks appear at the 20-minute mark of the video of the press conference.
In regards to Lombardo’s carefully worded statement, it might be worth noting that Bennett’s chief complaint was about the excessive use of force, not being detained excessively long. Lombardo also confirmed via video and in his statement that one of the officers on the scene told Bennett he would loosen his handcuffs.
Lombardo said his office has received a formal complaint from Bennett’s attorney, and that an internal investigation is being performed in regards to Bennett’s claim that one officer threatened to “blow my fucking head off.”
Arguably the most notable portion of the conference—aside from confirmation that one officer “forgot” to turn on his body camera—is Lombardo’s assertion that race was not a factor because one of the detaining LVPD officers was Latino and other people in the area around Bennett were also black and not detained.
Bennett’s attorney, John Burris told ESPN he wants to review the tapes more closely.
“He was not acting improperly,” Burris told the Associated Press. “He was not acting suspicious. He was not involved in any criminal activity. There’s nothing to go on, no description, other than you see this big black man running.”
According to Lombardo, the officer who did not have his body camera activated may face disciplinary action.
