Some people who were handcuffed by police at gunpoint over a misunderstanding would cry foul and say they were mistreated. Hines Ward is not one of those people.
Instead, Ward is making a point of letting his fans know that the police who stopped him early this morning did nothing improper. Ward posted a brief note to his fans on Facebook, saying that everything was OK.
“The incident in the news that involved me getting pulled over. I want everyone to know that this was a complete misunderstanding,” Ward wrote. “The police were just doing their job. Apologies were made and it’s now in the past. Moving forward.”
Ward, the Steelers receiver who’s a contestant this season on Dancing With the Stars, was a passenger in a car that was pulled over by the Los Angeles Police Department, and he was handcuffed while officers checked whether it was stolen. In reality, the driver had reported it stolen after a valet couldn’t produce it, then failed to report that it wasn’t stolen when the valet eventually found it.
Ward’s comments stand in contrast to those of Titans running back Chris Johnson, who also used social media this week to discuss an incident when police questioned him even though he did nothing wrong. While Johnson suggested that he was targeted because he’s young, black and rich, Ward has a more magnanimous reaction to his own encounter with police.