Jermain Defoe Sues “Racist” Police For Wrongful Arrest; Probably Just A Crap Driver

Jermain Defoe, star striker for Tottenham Hotspur and the English national team, has flied a lawsuit against the Essex Police charging that his arrest last month was a result of racial profiling, and not the way he keeps breaking the speed limit in his Range Rover. Move over, Rosa Parks!

The suit stems initially from a June court ruling suspending DeFoe’s license for two charges of speeding and two charges of refusing to identify who was driving his Range Rover (his car was caught by police speed cameras.) His license was initially suspended for six months, but that suspension was put on hold pending appeal.

Unfortunately, police didn’t update his status, so when he was pulled over on July 28th they showed that he was driving with a suspended license. It was two in the morning, so he was held for five hours until the courts opened and police could ascertain his status. He was released but then, adding insult to injury, the police forgot where they impounded his car and refused to turn over his keys because he didn’t have the proper documentation.

He’s now filed a lawsuit claiming wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, and says that all proceeds from the suit will go to charity. That’s all well and good, and it sounds like he’s got a case for the police being incompetent morons (really– it’s 2009 and you can’t just look up in a computer somewhere if a guy’s got a suspended license?) But it’s the racial component of this that’s just straight up silly, even as hard core professional racialists.

See, the charity he’s donating to is an anti-racism charity. And, through his lawyer, he’s complaining that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to white players, saying “Every time he is in his Range Rover he gets pulled over and he does not know why.”

Every time? Really? Every single time? Every little jaunt to the corner to get a spot of tea? Every time, dude? Well, not “every” time, since the first two speeding tickets were just caught on camera. Oh, but he claims that those weren’t legit because “unauthorized” personnel handled the paperwork.

Basically, this just sounds to us like some dude with a fancy lawyer trying everything he can to get a star client off the hook. And we’re all for that, with capitalism being what it is, and we have soft spots in our hearts for the evils of institutional racism. But every time somebody cries “racism” to get out of a jam it diminishes people’s reactions to actual racism. So, whatever — grab every fancy loophole you can find in the book, and good luck with the suit because we think you’ve actually got a pretty good case. But please, for the love of God, leave the rest of us minorities out of it.

England star Jermain Defoe sues ‘racist police’ because he’s always stopped in his car [Daily Mail]
Jermain Defoe sues police over ‘wrongful’ driving arrest [Telegraph UK]