Ooooff.
This isn't a good look. It's bad enough for Tennessee that a former player is suing the school for harrassment, alledging they took actions against him after he came to the aid of a rape victim, it is looks like the police and Butch Jones spoke multiple times the day after the alleged rape.
I know, I know. This is standard practice in college towns. Still, it rare for police to jeopardize an investigation by giving the accused, especially multiple accused, a heads up they are being investigated. And it definitely jeopardizes investigations.
I'll let Ryan Nanni at SBNation
take over:
One of the best ways to hinder an investigation is to let the subject know he or she is under investigation before you want them to. There's a nine-hour gap between Jones calling Johnson and the cops searching Johnson's apartment. That isn't professional courtesy. It's, at best, a sloppy investigation.
If you're part of law enforcement at any level, you should hate sloppy investigations. They're how strong cases get punctured, and they're how meritless cases linger without resolutions. Sloppy investigations are bad for victims, who don't get justice, and they're bad for those who are falsely accused.
Nanni, rightly, points out giving that professional courtesy makes a lot of sense with the garden variety 'Mark Richt has lost control of...' things that college students get into. A rape investigation? That is a very different crime, with a very different set of challenges to begin with.
TW
