Adrian Peterson's Arrest Exposes Danger of Real-Time Analysis

My Saturday morning began like any other lazy summer weekend. Jump out of bed at a fairly reasonable hour, make some coffee, check Twitter...and see that an NFL player had been arrested earlier that day. 

Yes, as has seemingly become the norm on summer weekends, deep in the heart of the NFL's offseason, another NFL player had found his name added to a police blotter. However, unlike many of the headlines we've read over the course of this past summer, this time it was no 24-year-old DB or second-year defensive lineman who was arrested. It was no veteran cornerback. 

It was one of the game's biggest stars, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. 

The first time I was made aware of the news (there may have been an earlier tweet, but I don't think so) was from the Twitter account of the Houston Chronicle's Jerome Solomon. 

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Breaking news: Vikings RB Adrian Peterson arrested last night in Houston for resisting arrest by HPD. Bond set at $1,000. #hounews

— Jerome Solomon (@JeromeSolomon) July 7, 2012

 

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Naturally, I re-tweeted this and waited for the storm to hit, which it most certainly did.

Almost instantly my Twitter mentions were besieged with people decrying the, obviously, racist Houston Police Department. All manner of amateur Jack McCoys (or amateur Mike Cutters for the younger crowd...) were telling me how improper it was for Peterson to be arrested for simply "resisting arrest" without some other underlying charge, 

Then, within moments of Solomon's first tweet, came this follow up:

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Houston Police Department's official listing for Peterson's offense: resisting arrest/search-unclassified. #hounews

— Jerome Solomon (@JeromeSolomon) July 7, 2012"

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Again, the Twitter mentions came fast and furious: CLEARLY Peterson was driving somewhere; had been pulled over (for no good reason, obviously); the police had asked, nay, demanded to search his car, and Peterson refused. Some saw this as a clear case of "driving while black" while others saw this as an obvious sign that Peterson was hiding drugs in his mythical car. 

I say mythical because, as it turns out, Peterson wasn't in a car when he was arrested—he was in a nightclub. 

As KHOU 11 News in Houston first reported, Peterson was arrested in downtown Houston at 2:30 am Saturday morning. Pro Football Talk then let the world know that the arrest took place at a nightclub. 

Florio also let it be known that "Peterson’s arrest was captured by one or more surveillance cameras." As of yet the public has not seen any footage from those cameras but it has seen a pretty useless video shot by a self-proclaimed friend of Peterson's using what appears to be a bottom-of-the-market camera-phone. 

Obviously, much has happened since Saturday morning, from the club owner talking to TMZ and painting a less-than-flattering portrait of Peterson's behavior at the club on Friday night/Saturday morning, to Adrian Peterson quoting Winston Churchill on Twitter (Yes, you read that right):

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“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”WC

— Adrian Peterson (@AdrianPeterson) July 8, 2012

 

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Look, I don't know what is a lie and what isn't. I wasn't there and, I suspect, neither were any of the 10,000 people who follow me on Twitter. It just seems completely asinine to me for people (including professional journalists who should know better) to be positing insta-theories about the motivations for Peterson's arrest before we have even an inkling of what the facts are.

Right now we know what one person told Mike Florio, what the club owner told TMZ, what the police have officially said—and that Peterson has said that the "Truth will surface."

I have no doubt that it will.