It’s a common phenomenon whenever someone faces criminal charges. Since anything said by the defendant in any context can be used against him later, his lawyer typically advises him to say nothing.
Of course, that won’t stop us in the media from asking questions.
The day after he was booked on charges arising from allegedly walking out on a $27 check and resisting arrest, Seahawks defensive end Raheem Brock worked at a football camp in Philly, speaking with roughly 300 high school juniors and seniors at the Legends of the Pub football clinic. Per Phillip Lucas of the Philadelphia Daily News, organizers of the camp said that Brock wasn’t there to discuss his personal business.
The police were willing to talk about Brock’s personal business. Per Lucas, the trouble at the Copabanana on South Street began when Brock and the woman accompanying him were kicked out because the woman had brought in food from another restaurant. So Brock and the woman left without paying their bar tab.
“The manager and, I guess, the waitress, called police and told them where they were,” police spokeswoman Tanya Little said, according to Lucas.
Police found Brock and the woman at a place across the street.
“He wouldn’t come outside and wouldn’t comply with the officers,” Little said. “They tried to put the handcuffs on him and he resisted.”
The situation raises an interesting question regarding the duties of a consumer who is asked to leave a restaurant. Though most establishments reserve the right to refuse service, what happens when full service is refused after some service has been provided? Though Brock should have settled up, it’s hard to fault him for choosing to comply with an unreasonable directive to leave.
Really, how stupid was it for management of the Copabanana to kick the duo out after they’d already spent $27 on drinks, and when the fairly large man was apparently poised to buy the amount of food that a fairly large man eats?
Like so many other minor matters of this nature, Brock likely will work out some sort of a plea deal in which he pays the money and is placed on some sort of probation. Still, it seems like something that should have been completely avoided, either by the Copabanana, by Brock, or by both.