It would seem Jimbo's hands may be tied given how he just handled DJ's women beating. It looks like the precedent has been set that hitting a women gets you kicked off the team, even if the charge is only a misdemeanor.
What sucks for Cook is his incident actually happened before the DJ incident but for some reason didn't hit media till after. I assume that was because the release of the DJ video caught everyone's attention.
Had Cook's case came out first, before DJ, Jimbo could've kept Cook on team under the misdemeanor rule, and booted DJ due to the graphic nature of the video. He could then distinguish the two cases in order to justify keeping Cook while dismissing DJ from the team.
But with DJ already gone, this will be difficult since the appearance will be preferential treatment to the star player, especially with the perception that Cook's incident occurred after DJs, even though that's not true.
If Jimbo was to keep Cook on the team, or even let him play before his case is finished, he would need to make the following arguments:
- Misdemeanor gives him wide discretion.
- Cook denies involvement and will plead not guilty (the opposite of DJ).
- It's a he said, she said case, with the only independent witness not being able to confirm Cook was the assailant (according to the arrest affidavit).
- There's no Ray Rice type video, so no need to immediately fly into damage control mode.
I suppose it could be done, but there would be no way to avoid the avalanche of criticism that would follow that decision.
Finally, did anyone notice the last sentence of arrest affidavit? Cook would've only received a civil citation and a notice to appear (no arrest) had it not been for his prior arrest for failure to appear in the BB gun incident.
SMH
What sucks for Cook is his incident actually happened before the DJ incident but for some reason didn't hit media till after. I assume that was because the release of the DJ video caught everyone's attention.
Had Cook's case came out first, before DJ, Jimbo could've kept Cook on team under the misdemeanor rule, and booted DJ due to the graphic nature of the video. He could then distinguish the two cases in order to justify keeping Cook while dismissing DJ from the team.
But with DJ already gone, this will be difficult since the appearance will be preferential treatment to the star player, especially with the perception that Cook's incident occurred after DJs, even though that's not true.
If Jimbo was to keep Cook on the team, or even let him play before his case is finished, he would need to make the following arguments:
- Misdemeanor gives him wide discretion.
- Cook denies involvement and will plead not guilty (the opposite of DJ).
- It's a he said, she said case, with the only independent witness not being able to confirm Cook was the assailant (according to the arrest affidavit).
- There's no Ray Rice type video, so no need to immediately fly into damage control mode.
I suppose it could be done, but there would be no way to avoid the avalanche of criticism that would follow that decision.
Finally, did anyone notice the last sentence of arrest affidavit? Cook would've only received a civil citation and a notice to appear (no arrest) had it not been for his prior arrest for failure to appear in the BB gun incident.
SMH
