OTL on student athletes getting out of trouble....

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From 2009 to 2014, male basketball and football players at the University of Florida and Florida State University avoided criminal charges or prosecution on average two-thirds of the time when named as suspects in police documents, a result far exceeding that of non-athlete males in the same age range, an Outside the Lines investigation has found.

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, Outside the Lines requested police reports involving all football and men's basketball players on rosters from 2009 to 2014 from campus and city police departments covering 10 major programs: Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Michigan State, Missouri, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Texas A&M and Wisconsin. Some police departments withheld records citing state disclosure laws. (ESPN sued the University of Notre Dame and Michigan State University for not releasing material; both cases are pending on appeal.) And not all information was uniform among jurisdictions.

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Florida, had the most athletes -- 80 -- named as suspects in more than 100 crimes at Florida. Yet the athletes either never faced charges, had charges against them dropped or were not prosecuted 56 percent of the time. When Outside the Lines examined a comparison set of cases involving college-age males in Gainesville, 28 percent of the crimes ended either without a record of charges being filed or by charges eventually being dropped.

Florida State had the second-highest number of athletes named in criminal allegations: 66 men's basketball and football athletes. In 70 percent of those incidents, the athletes either never faced charges, had charges against them dropped or were not prosecuted. By comparison, cases ended up without being prosecuted 50 percent of the time among a sample of crimes involving college-age males in Tallahassee.

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In a Florida State University Police Department case from August 2012, officers asked a football player if they could examine his car in connection with a possible hit-and-run, but he told them he was busy and would call back later. He did so but never reached an officer. Officers ultimately heard from FSU associate athletic director Monk Bonasorte, who asked if he could bring the vehicle to the police station "due to [the player] being in a mandatory football meeting."

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A civil lawsuit filed this year against Florida State for how it addressed allegations of sexual assault against quarterback Jameis Winston includes an allegation that Bonasorte did not permit Tallahassee police detectives to contact two witnesses, who were also football players, until after Bonasorte had called attorneys for them.

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That Tom Seeberg said police could not find the athlete on campus or at practice didn't surprise former Notre Dame police officer Pat Cottrell, who said a university policy prevented campus police from approaching athletes at any athletic facility. Further, the university would not allow anyone on the athletic staff to be contacted for help in finding a player, he said.

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When a woman told Columbia, Missouri, police in April 2014 that football player Dorial Green-Beckham had forced a door open and pushed her down the stairs in the apartment she shared with Green-Beckham's girlfriend, the girlfriend texted the alleged victim to persuade her to tell police to drop the charges.

"He will be kicked out of Mizzou and then not qualify for the [NFL] draft next year. The coaches talked to me and explained how serious this is and there's no time to waste at this point."
The alleged victim told police she wanted to drop the case: "She stated she was afraid of the media and community backlash since Green-Beckham is a football player," the report states. "[She] was afraid of being harassed and having her property damaged just because she was the victim. [She] stated she did not want to deal with the mental stress of the whole ordeal; it was already making her physically sick to think about it."

She had reason to be fearful. On TigerBoard.com, a popular online forum for Missouri fans, the name-calling and harassment had begun: "Which loser arse snitch called the cops over some drunk kids arguing?" "Snitches get stitches!" "No, just a jersey chaser looking for $." "Jock sniffin for dark meat team." "Is gold digging a sport?"

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If people have information and they're afraid to provide it because of the notoriety, we do our best to encourage that openness. But it's hard to provide anonymity to witnesses because the accused have the right to know who's accusing them of crimes," Gloede said

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Many of the alleged victims, mostly women, spoke to Outside the Lines on the condition their names not be revealed. They described fans who showed up at their workplaces to harass them; vulgar, sexual insults on the phone, in email and social media; and even death threats toward them and their relatives.

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