On Thursday morning, the media company partially owned by the Cowboys published a police report from a July 2011 incident at a Wal-Mart in Lancaster, Texas. The Cowboys tell PFT that they have no comment on the police report.
Previously, the Cowboys haven’t officially commented on the reports and rumors of an incident at a Dallas-area Wal-Mart; as recently as last night, the Cowboys said they’re “not in the business of commenting on rumors or an alleged tape the contents of which no one can validate.” Folks like COO Stephen Jones has told members of the Dallas media that the team has no knowledge of any video. In contrast, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media declares that the Cowboys have known about the incident that occurred in a Wal-Mart parking lot “for some time” and have “taken particular interest in it.”
They should. Police were called because someone saw a woman being pulled out of a Mercedes registered to Dez Bryant and dragged to another car. The woman, who returned to the scene with Dez Bryant, told the responding officer that she got into an argument with a man named Alex Penson, and that she said she “was not assaulted or injured in any way.”
The police officer “determined that there was no offense” after “speaking with all parties involved.” But the police report reveals no conversation with Alex Penson, who clearly was one of the “parties involved.” The police report also says nothing about whether and to what extent the incident that prompted the call to police was captured by Wal-Mart surveillance cameras.
Every Wal-Mart store has a security office that includes one or more monitors for viewing the real-time and recorded contents of the surveillance cameras. The police officer merely had to walk into the store, ask for directions to the security office, and request assistance for the retrieval of the surveillance video, if any.
This story became an open secret among national NFL media members not because of the police report but because of the rumored existence of a video. While the police report contains no accusations against Dez, who at the time was preparing to start his second NFL season, it contains enough inconsistencies to justify a review of the video at the time the incident happened. And it definitely justifies an ongoing pursuit of the video -- or at a minimum the pursuit of a clear statement that there is no video.
So now the race to get the video (or a clear statement that there is no video) intensifies, whether the video comes from law enforcement, from Wal-Mart, or from someone else who happens to have it and may be inclined to swap it for cash.