When news broke that Colin Kaepernick was involved in a police investigation in Miami, TMZ was on the story first, saying that Kaepernick was being investigated for an alleged sexual assault. But a police spokesman later said TMZ’s report was based on information that was taken out of context, and Kaepernick has slammed TMZ’s report as “completely wrong.”
For its part, TMZ is standing by its story. Sort of.
The top headline now at TMZ is, “Colin Kaepernick: Cops confirm investigation is ‘sexual in nature.'” The story under that headline cites a “well placed official at the Miami Police Department” as saying that Kaepernick is a suspect in an investigation that is “sexual in nature.”
It’s not clear what “sexual in nature” means, exactly, but while TMZ appears to be trying to stick with what it previously reported in the face of Kaepernick’s strong denial, the new TMZ report does not say specifically that Kaepernick is being investigated for a sexual assault, which is what the initial TMZ report said.
The fact that a police spokesman has said publicly that there’s no evidence of a sexual assault strongly suggests that neither Kaepernick nor anyone else is suspected of a sexual assault — the police aren’t normally in the business of saying publicly that there’s no evidence of a crime if they’re still investigating whether a crime has been committed.
All we know for sure is that a woman says that after drinking with Kaepernick, 49ers receiver Quinton Patton, and Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette, she went to bed and the next thing she knew she was waking up in a hospital. That certainly fits the description of a “suspicious incident,” as the police have called it. But while TMZ insists that the police are privately confirming that the investigation is sexual in nature, that’s not what the police are saying publicly.