Andrew Hawkins, a football player for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, wore the T-shirt you see above during the game warm ups on Sunday. Like in St. Louis, when some St. Louis Rams players last week entered the stadium during game introductions with their hands up, the local police in Cleveland demanded an apology from the Cleveland Browns organization and Mr. Hawkins himself. The Cleveland Browns said no, no apology, stating correctly:
“We have great respect for the Cleveland Police Department and the work that they do to protect and serve our city,” the Browns said in a statement, via Cleveland.com. “We also respect our players’ rights to project their support and bring awareness to issues that are important to them if done so in a responsible manner.”
Then Hawkins hit it out of the park with his statement:
“I was taught that justice is a right that every American should have. Also justice should be the goal of every American. I think that’s what makes this country. To me, justice means the innocent should be found innocent. It means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment. Ultimately, it means fair treatment. So a call for justice shouldn’t offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology.
“To clarify, I utterly respect and appreciate every police officer that protects and serves all of us with honesty, integrity and the right way. And I don’t think those kind of officers should be offended by what I did. My mom taught me my entire life to respect law enforcement. I have family, close friends that are incredible police officers and I tell them all the time how they are much braver than me for it. So my wearing a T-shirt wasn’t a stance against every police officer or every police department. My wearing the T-shirt was a stance against wrong individuals doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons to innocent people.
When police officers get offended when people protest the actions of bad police officers, it must mean that they too are bad police officers. It must mean that they support the unprovoked murder of innocents. So good police officers, stop demanding apologies. We are not protesting you. We are not attacking you.