The Pittsburgh Steelers organization made the decision to put the name of Antwon Rose, an accused drive-by shooter, on their players helmets. That, according to Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick who says putting Rose’s name on the helmets was not the players call.
“It was mostly made from people upstairs and everything else like that,” Fitzpatrick told ESPN. “Don’t know exactly who. Don’t know exactly how. But we did. We knew that we were going to have somebody on the back of our helmets, and it wasn’t exactly clear on what it was going to be. It was mostly made by everyone upstairs.”
That organizational decision was not embraced by all. Steelers tackle Alejandro Villanueva chose to display the name of Army hero Alwyn Cashe, instead of Rose. Center Maurkice Pouncey took to Instagram on Thursday to distance himself from management’s decision, saying that he regretted wearing Rose’s name and that he wasn’t given enough information about Rose’s background.
As Breitbart’s Warner Todd Huston reports:
Antwon Rose, Jr., was shot by a police officer on June 19 of 2018, after a car he was in was pulled over.
In a statement, the Steelers explained: ‘While the driver was being handcuffed on suspicion of being involved in an incident that happened earlier that evening, a frightened Rose fled from the car. The cell phone video a bystander captured showed Rose running, and then you could hear gunshots and see as he was fatally shot in the back three times by a white East Pittsburgh Police Officer.’
However, what that statement does not mention is that Rose was identified as being involved in a drive-by shooting that had occurred not long before being pulled over. The victim in the shooting told police that Rose was the shooter. Police had every reason to assume that Rose was armed and dangerous.
In addition, the officer who shot and killed Rose was found not guilty of improperly killing the teen. The shooting was deemed justified according to the investigation.
The information on the circumstances of Rose’s death and the accusations against him, were readily available to the Steelers and would have been detected by anyone concerned with facts. But, of course, the social justice movement of which the NFL is now clearly apart, apparently believes that any and all officer-involved shootings involving black men constitute instances of racist policing.
The Steelers have not yet said whether they will continue to display Rose’s name on their helmets.
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