When Vikings running back Adrian Peterson hired high-profile attorney Rusty Hardin to fight his resisting arrest charge, it signaled that Peterson was looking for a fight, rather than a resolution that would make the whole thing go away quietly. But while Hardin claims that an off-duty Houston police officer gave Peterson a black eye, he also says that at the moment, he’s not looking to file a civil suit.
Asked in an interview with Andrew Siciliano on NFL Network whether they are contemplating a civil lawsuit, Hardin answered, “No, not at this time. I think those kind of things are way premature.”
Hardin didn’t expressly rule out Peterson suing the Houston Police Department, but he said that right now he’s looking to convince prosecutors to drop the resisting arrest charge.
“We’ll just concentrate on getting this taken care of first,” Hardin said. “The key thing for everybody to understand is Adrian never pushed, shoved or hit a police officer, and any suggestions that he did are just flat false. The initial reports were clearly wrong as to what happened. He wasn’t refusing to leave. He was leaving when he was placed under arrest; he did have some words with a police officer, but not anything that justifies an arrest and he certainly never did anything physically toward him. So I think when this is all over, the prosecutors are going to have to conclude these charges should never have been filed.”
Based on what we’ve heard so far, it sounds like the police at the very least overreacted. The wise move may be for the authorities in Houston to drop the charge against Peterson, and hope that Peterson’s ready to drop it as well.