Drizzt
Member
Chicago Tribune
February 9, 2003 Sunday,
HEADLINE: A powerful, dangerous mixture;
Police blotter tends to fill up when firearms find their way into the possession of athletes
BYLINE: By Michael Hirsley, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Geoff Dougherty contributed to this report.
BODY:
A year ago, Jayson Williams was best known as a quick-witted 6-foot-10-inch athlete who had been one of the NBA's top rebounders until a leg injury ended his career. His gift of gab then helped him become a basketball analyst for NBC television.
Today, he is known as a suspected killer. Next month, lawyers for the former New Jersey Nets star are scheduled to appear before a New Jersey appeals court to argue that Williams should not be tried for manslaughter in the shooting death of limousine driver Costas "Gus" Chrisofi last Feb. 14. Williams, who remains free on $270,000 bond, recently settled a civil lawsuit filed by Chrisofi's family. Terms were not disclosed.
Though he might be the most prominent example of an athlete whose use of firearms led to legal trouble, Williams is hardly the only one.
The list of athletes charged with gun violations in recent years includes pro basketball's Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen; major-league baseball's Steve Howe and Jose Canseco (material published at this point has been deleted from this sentence); the NFL's Andre Rison, Alonzo Spellman and Damien Robinson, and coaches Bob Knight and Barry Switzer. In recent months the list has expanded to include the Bulls' Marcus Fizer and professional boxer Michael Bennett.
The nation's four leading pro sports leagues--the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball--are so worried about the problem that they conduct annual seminars for their athletes on firearms. The common theme: Don't own one.
Yet the problem persists for varying reasons, according to experts and athletes interviewed by the Tribune.
"A disproportionate percentage of athletes grew up in environments where guns exist," such as rural areas with hunting traditions or crime-ridden inner cities, said sociologist Harry Edwards, who consults with the San Francisco 49ers. Former Bears linebacker Bryan Cox once said, "Where I'm from, in East St. Louis, Ill., a gun was like a credit card."
What distinguishes athletes from others coming from such backgrounds is that they attain the wealth and influence to easily acquire what they want, including guns, Edwards said.
"If you took people of that same age and circumstance and gave them the wherewithal to purchase these guns, they would do so," he said.
Another reason, Edwards said, is the fear among young millionaires who are often targeted by thieves.
"Sometimes athletes see guns as a court of last resort when confrontation occurs," he said.
But there is also a more visceral connection, said Richard Lapchick, who studied the weapons issue for years as director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Boston's Northeastern University.
"Athletes are fascinated by guns, as they are with cars, because they are symbols of manhood," said Lapchick, who now chairs programs in sports business, diversity and ethics at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Though the charges against athletes make headlines, there is little to suggest that sports figures are arrested more often on firearms charges than other groups. Yet experts say these arrests are especially troubling because some young people try to emulate sports stars.
Lapchick sees athletes' gun-related arrests as the tip of a larger problem. "America is obsessed with guns," he said.
That view is shared by Milt Ahlerich, the NFL's head of security.
"We've got a disease in this country, not just among athletes, about possession of guns," he said.
Williams played college basketball at St. John's University, where Richard Lapchick's father, Joe, once coached. Richard Lapchick recalls presenting awards to Williams at St. John's and being impressed with his sincerity.
"The Jayson Williams case has the biggest impact on the issue of athletes and guns because he was a good person," Lapchick said, "but apparently one of those who had a fascination with guns. It has unalterably changed the life of his victim's family, and his own and his family's lives."
Some want protection
Though a sports star's arrest makes headlines, most professional athletes keep their names off the police blotter. Some, such as the Utah Jazz's Karl Malone, have been advocates of legal, safe gun ownership. Malone has even been a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
Yet they have been overshadowed by scores of contemporaries who have violated gun laws, most often by possessing or carrying guns illegally.
Athletes are not caught in gun-related incidents more often than the average person, "but they are celebrities so they get in the news because of it," said Peter Roby, the current director of Northeastern's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.
Former Atlanta Falcon Tim Green, now a TV commentator, estimated that "one out of every three of my teammates had handguns. A lot of them kept them in their cars and as a home-defense kind of thing."
Some athletes, such as Jalen Rose of the Bulls, openly advocate gun ownership as a means of protection. Last September, a would-be carjacker tried to stop Rose in his car on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. When the man pulled a gun, Rose sped away. The assailant fired eight shots from a 9mm handgun, one of which struck Rose's passenger.
"I'm just fortunate to be living," Rose said, adding that the incident hasn't changed his position on guns.
"I'm from Detroit, Mich., which has been the violence capital of the world, so to speak," he said. " . . . You look at the [sniper] incidents that happened around Washington, D.C. We live in worried times.
"The unfortunate thing is that the people who are normal citizens who go out and make a hard-earned living every day and don't have guns are outnumbered by the people who are doing the opposite and do sometimes have guns."
Asked if he keeps a gun, Rose smiled and replied, "If I told you that ..." But Rose said he does not assume a gun would have helped him that night in Los Angeles.
"Having protection may have done wonders or it may have put me in a worse situation," he said. "You never know."
That said, Rose allowed that he was troubled by teammate Fizer's October arrest on a felony charge after police allegedly discovered a loaded handgun in his car.
"To be honest, I think he has to do a better job of being responsible and having his paperwork in order if he's going to carry a gun," Rose said.
Fizer declined to comment because of his pending court case. He has pleaded not guilty.
"The thing about carrying a gun is, I don't feel it's necessarily the right thing to do," Rose said. "Because guns don't kill people, stupid people at the wrong time kill people. I don't feel that just because you have a gun, you're protected."
Former pitcher and current ESPN analyst Rob Dibble, who said he has a permit to carry a firearm, concurred.
"Just like a professional ballplayer can always beat an amateur with a baseball, a professional mugger can always beat an amateur with a gun," he said.
Athletes as targets
Professional athletes' obvious wealth sometimes makes them targets of thieves.
"These guys go out partying with expensive jewelry around their necks," Edwards said. "That's like walking into a lion's cage with a T-bone steak around your neck."
In 2001, New York Giants cornerback Will Allen lost $150,000 in jewelry to three armed attackers who doused him with gasoline and threatened to set him afire.
The previous summer, Boston Celtics forward Antoine Walker was robbed of a $55,000 watch at gunpoint in Chicago. In 1993, Seattle Sonics guard Gary Payton lost $60,000 in cash and jewelry to a gun-wielding robber in his hometown of Oakland. Payton briefly struggled with the man and nearly was injured when the gun fired.
Washington Bullets forward Larry Stewart was stabbed and shot during a 1994 home invasion.
Last November, New York Giants wide receiver Tim Carter was carjacked at gunpoint by two men who took his BMW, $10,000 in jewelry, $120 in cash, credit cards and the crutches he had been using since tearing his Achilles' tendon.
Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson has cited the roadside shooting death of Bill Cosby's son, Ennis, as an incident the victim might have survived if he'd had a gun. Before he was arrested on drug and weapons charges in 1997, Iverson had told the Philadelphia Daily News that he carried a handgun because "I just want to feel safe."
Bennett, a heavyweight boxer from Chicago, was charged last year with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon when a handgun was found in his car.
"I don't have a reason to carry a gun," Bennett said. "But there is pressure out there, especially when people know who you are."
Bennett, who spent seven years in state prison on an armed-robbery charge, now faces probation or a return to prison if convicted of the new charges.
In 1994, Pippen was charged with illegal possession of a firearm, a handgun found in his car. He later said he regretted what happened. But he also said that "because of what's happening in the world of sports today," such as the slaying of Michael Jordan's father, "you have to protect yourself."
At the time, several Bulls said at least half of the NBA players owned guns for protection.
'No reason or excuse'
The very thought of a player defending himself in a shootout gives chills to professional sports league officials, who have launched annual presentations to athletes about gun ownership and safety.
But guns are ingrained in many athletes' lives. Some, such as Phillies pitcher Turk Wendell, are avid hunters. So is Malone.
"There are certain things I believe in and do," Malone said at the time his NRA endorsement appeared in 1999. "That's my right. Some people might not like this. I know that. But I'm an NRA type of guy."
At the same time, as sports figures move ever more easily between the playing field and pop culture, the relationship between athletes and guns has even been romanticized. For some, guns have become a form of status symbol.
"Boys who now see a lot of violence depicted on TV and in video games, they see the sexiness of owning guns," Roby said.
Edwards and Lapchick believe there also is a machismo factor. Lapchick cited the reaction among some professional athletes to former NFL player Esera Tuaolo's admission of homosexuality, saying, "Guns are a way to combat that image and to show manhood."
Iverson once recorded a rap song with the lyrics: "Man enough to pull a gun, be man enough to squeeze it."
In 1973, former Dallas Cowboy receiver Peter Gent published "North Dallas Forty," a thinly fictionalized account of his NFL career, including a scene in which drunken players on a bird-hunting trip strafe their teammates with shotgun blasts. Yet Gent sees a difference between those antics and the climate today.
"Although I'd never been hunting with guys who drank first until I went to Texas, none of those guys carried guns with them all the time," Gent said. "Back then, we knew you could get killed if you carried a gun."
Worrisome behavior
Sports officials tend not to worry about lawful possession and use of guns. But they do fret about irresponsible and unsafe use.
Three years before Jayson Williams' arrest, he wrote in his autobiography about a near-tragedy on the shooting range at his mansion. He fired a powerful handgun and nearly hit New York Jets wide receiver Wayne Chrebet.
"Just as I shot, I heard something behind me and I looked backward," he wrote in "Loose Balls."
"What I didn't realize was that Wayne was right in front of me, kneeling down to pick up one of the cartridges. . . . So when I fired the gun, it must have been a few inches from Wayne's face, 'cause the noise knocked him out. Cold. I looked down, and there's Wayne lying there, with gunpowder all over his face."
According to prosecutors, Williams apparently did not learn from that close call. Court documents allege that he was pointing a loaded shotgun in Chrisofi's direction when it fired, killing the limo driver.
Tim Green remembers frightening moments from his years with the NFL's Falcons, from 1986 through 1993.
In those days, he said, the Falcons often traveled in two buses, and then-coach Jerry Glanville once told players "maybe partly in jest, that fighting was allowed on the second bus, but no firearms."
One night at the end of training camp, "a fight did break out on the second bus. And afterward, a guy went to get his gun from his car. He was restrained by a friend."
No college policy
Most gun-related problems in sports have involved professional athletes. The NCAA has no policy on gun ownership by college athletes.
"That's an issue we leave up to the schools," said spokeswoman Monica Lunderman.
But at the University of Michigan, senior cornerback and team captain James Whitley was dropped from the football team in December 2000 before what would have been his final game, the Citrus Bowl against Auburn. His dismissal came on the heels of his arrest by Ann Arbor, Mich. police for carrying a loaded automatic handgun.
The only reason given was that Whitley "was let go on a team violation, and we don't disclose what the violation is in such situations," said university spokesman Bruce Madej. "He was suspended from the team, and you could say it was for one game or for the remainder of his career.
"There is no athletic department gun policy, and none resulted from that incident. But he was arrested on a weapons charge, and the general student policy is no firearms."
When Green was a student and an All-American defensive tackle at Syracuse University, he kept a shotgun in his apartment.
He still keeps guns in his house in suburban Syracuse, all locked up except for a shotgun for security.
"It's unloaded, with a safety on, and I keep the ammunition in a separate place," he said. "I don't keep a handgun in the house. I've weighed one decision against the other insofar as protecting my family. Handguns with kids in the house are insane."
Further, he said: "I don't think players should have handguns. It's an invitation to disaster."
February 9, 2003 Sunday,
HEADLINE: A powerful, dangerous mixture;
Police blotter tends to fill up when firearms find their way into the possession of athletes
BYLINE: By Michael Hirsley, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Geoff Dougherty contributed to this report.
BODY:
A year ago, Jayson Williams was best known as a quick-witted 6-foot-10-inch athlete who had been one of the NBA's top rebounders until a leg injury ended his career. His gift of gab then helped him become a basketball analyst for NBC television.
Today, he is known as a suspected killer. Next month, lawyers for the former New Jersey Nets star are scheduled to appear before a New Jersey appeals court to argue that Williams should not be tried for manslaughter in the shooting death of limousine driver Costas "Gus" Chrisofi last Feb. 14. Williams, who remains free on $270,000 bond, recently settled a civil lawsuit filed by Chrisofi's family. Terms were not disclosed.
Though he might be the most prominent example of an athlete whose use of firearms led to legal trouble, Williams is hardly the only one.
The list of athletes charged with gun violations in recent years includes pro basketball's Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen; major-league baseball's Steve Howe and Jose Canseco (material published at this point has been deleted from this sentence); the NFL's Andre Rison, Alonzo Spellman and Damien Robinson, and coaches Bob Knight and Barry Switzer. In recent months the list has expanded to include the Bulls' Marcus Fizer and professional boxer Michael Bennett.
The nation's four leading pro sports leagues--the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball--are so worried about the problem that they conduct annual seminars for their athletes on firearms. The common theme: Don't own one.
Yet the problem persists for varying reasons, according to experts and athletes interviewed by the Tribune.
"A disproportionate percentage of athletes grew up in environments where guns exist," such as rural areas with hunting traditions or crime-ridden inner cities, said sociologist Harry Edwards, who consults with the San Francisco 49ers. Former Bears linebacker Bryan Cox once said, "Where I'm from, in East St. Louis, Ill., a gun was like a credit card."
What distinguishes athletes from others coming from such backgrounds is that they attain the wealth and influence to easily acquire what they want, including guns, Edwards said.
"If you took people of that same age and circumstance and gave them the wherewithal to purchase these guns, they would do so," he said.
Another reason, Edwards said, is the fear among young millionaires who are often targeted by thieves.
"Sometimes athletes see guns as a court of last resort when confrontation occurs," he said.
But there is also a more visceral connection, said Richard Lapchick, who studied the weapons issue for years as director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Boston's Northeastern University.
"Athletes are fascinated by guns, as they are with cars, because they are symbols of manhood," said Lapchick, who now chairs programs in sports business, diversity and ethics at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Though the charges against athletes make headlines, there is little to suggest that sports figures are arrested more often on firearms charges than other groups. Yet experts say these arrests are especially troubling because some young people try to emulate sports stars.
Lapchick sees athletes' gun-related arrests as the tip of a larger problem. "America is obsessed with guns," he said.
That view is shared by Milt Ahlerich, the NFL's head of security.
"We've got a disease in this country, not just among athletes, about possession of guns," he said.
Williams played college basketball at St. John's University, where Richard Lapchick's father, Joe, once coached. Richard Lapchick recalls presenting awards to Williams at St. John's and being impressed with his sincerity.
"The Jayson Williams case has the biggest impact on the issue of athletes and guns because he was a good person," Lapchick said, "but apparently one of those who had a fascination with guns. It has unalterably changed the life of his victim's family, and his own and his family's lives."
Some want protection
Though a sports star's arrest makes headlines, most professional athletes keep their names off the police blotter. Some, such as the Utah Jazz's Karl Malone, have been advocates of legal, safe gun ownership. Malone has even been a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
Yet they have been overshadowed by scores of contemporaries who have violated gun laws, most often by possessing or carrying guns illegally.
Athletes are not caught in gun-related incidents more often than the average person, "but they are celebrities so they get in the news because of it," said Peter Roby, the current director of Northeastern's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.
Former Atlanta Falcon Tim Green, now a TV commentator, estimated that "one out of every three of my teammates had handguns. A lot of them kept them in their cars and as a home-defense kind of thing."
Some athletes, such as Jalen Rose of the Bulls, openly advocate gun ownership as a means of protection. Last September, a would-be carjacker tried to stop Rose in his car on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. When the man pulled a gun, Rose sped away. The assailant fired eight shots from a 9mm handgun, one of which struck Rose's passenger.
"I'm just fortunate to be living," Rose said, adding that the incident hasn't changed his position on guns.
"I'm from Detroit, Mich., which has been the violence capital of the world, so to speak," he said. " . . . You look at the [sniper] incidents that happened around Washington, D.C. We live in worried times.
"The unfortunate thing is that the people who are normal citizens who go out and make a hard-earned living every day and don't have guns are outnumbered by the people who are doing the opposite and do sometimes have guns."
Asked if he keeps a gun, Rose smiled and replied, "If I told you that ..." But Rose said he does not assume a gun would have helped him that night in Los Angeles.
"Having protection may have done wonders or it may have put me in a worse situation," he said. "You never know."
That said, Rose allowed that he was troubled by teammate Fizer's October arrest on a felony charge after police allegedly discovered a loaded handgun in his car.
"To be honest, I think he has to do a better job of being responsible and having his paperwork in order if he's going to carry a gun," Rose said.
Fizer declined to comment because of his pending court case. He has pleaded not guilty.
"The thing about carrying a gun is, I don't feel it's necessarily the right thing to do," Rose said. "Because guns don't kill people, stupid people at the wrong time kill people. I don't feel that just because you have a gun, you're protected."
Former pitcher and current ESPN analyst Rob Dibble, who said he has a permit to carry a firearm, concurred.
"Just like a professional ballplayer can always beat an amateur with a baseball, a professional mugger can always beat an amateur with a gun," he said.
Athletes as targets
Professional athletes' obvious wealth sometimes makes them targets of thieves.
"These guys go out partying with expensive jewelry around their necks," Edwards said. "That's like walking into a lion's cage with a T-bone steak around your neck."
In 2001, New York Giants cornerback Will Allen lost $150,000 in jewelry to three armed attackers who doused him with gasoline and threatened to set him afire.
The previous summer, Boston Celtics forward Antoine Walker was robbed of a $55,000 watch at gunpoint in Chicago. In 1993, Seattle Sonics guard Gary Payton lost $60,000 in cash and jewelry to a gun-wielding robber in his hometown of Oakland. Payton briefly struggled with the man and nearly was injured when the gun fired.
Washington Bullets forward Larry Stewart was stabbed and shot during a 1994 home invasion.
Last November, New York Giants wide receiver Tim Carter was carjacked at gunpoint by two men who took his BMW, $10,000 in jewelry, $120 in cash, credit cards and the crutches he had been using since tearing his Achilles' tendon.
Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson has cited the roadside shooting death of Bill Cosby's son, Ennis, as an incident the victim might have survived if he'd had a gun. Before he was arrested on drug and weapons charges in 1997, Iverson had told the Philadelphia Daily News that he carried a handgun because "I just want to feel safe."
Bennett, a heavyweight boxer from Chicago, was charged last year with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon when a handgun was found in his car.
"I don't have a reason to carry a gun," Bennett said. "But there is pressure out there, especially when people know who you are."
Bennett, who spent seven years in state prison on an armed-robbery charge, now faces probation or a return to prison if convicted of the new charges.
In 1994, Pippen was charged with illegal possession of a firearm, a handgun found in his car. He later said he regretted what happened. But he also said that "because of what's happening in the world of sports today," such as the slaying of Michael Jordan's father, "you have to protect yourself."
At the time, several Bulls said at least half of the NBA players owned guns for protection.
'No reason or excuse'
The very thought of a player defending himself in a shootout gives chills to professional sports league officials, who have launched annual presentations to athletes about gun ownership and safety.
But guns are ingrained in many athletes' lives. Some, such as Phillies pitcher Turk Wendell, are avid hunters. So is Malone.
"There are certain things I believe in and do," Malone said at the time his NRA endorsement appeared in 1999. "That's my right. Some people might not like this. I know that. But I'm an NRA type of guy."
At the same time, as sports figures move ever more easily between the playing field and pop culture, the relationship between athletes and guns has even been romanticized. For some, guns have become a form of status symbol.
"Boys who now see a lot of violence depicted on TV and in video games, they see the sexiness of owning guns," Roby said.
Edwards and Lapchick believe there also is a machismo factor. Lapchick cited the reaction among some professional athletes to former NFL player Esera Tuaolo's admission of homosexuality, saying, "Guns are a way to combat that image and to show manhood."
Iverson once recorded a rap song with the lyrics: "Man enough to pull a gun, be man enough to squeeze it."
In 1973, former Dallas Cowboy receiver Peter Gent published "North Dallas Forty," a thinly fictionalized account of his NFL career, including a scene in which drunken players on a bird-hunting trip strafe their teammates with shotgun blasts. Yet Gent sees a difference between those antics and the climate today.
"Although I'd never been hunting with guys who drank first until I went to Texas, none of those guys carried guns with them all the time," Gent said. "Back then, we knew you could get killed if you carried a gun."
Worrisome behavior
Sports officials tend not to worry about lawful possession and use of guns. But they do fret about irresponsible and unsafe use.
Three years before Jayson Williams' arrest, he wrote in his autobiography about a near-tragedy on the shooting range at his mansion. He fired a powerful handgun and nearly hit New York Jets wide receiver Wayne Chrebet.
"Just as I shot, I heard something behind me and I looked backward," he wrote in "Loose Balls."
"What I didn't realize was that Wayne was right in front of me, kneeling down to pick up one of the cartridges. . . . So when I fired the gun, it must have been a few inches from Wayne's face, 'cause the noise knocked him out. Cold. I looked down, and there's Wayne lying there, with gunpowder all over his face."
According to prosecutors, Williams apparently did not learn from that close call. Court documents allege that he was pointing a loaded shotgun in Chrisofi's direction when it fired, killing the limo driver.
Tim Green remembers frightening moments from his years with the NFL's Falcons, from 1986 through 1993.
In those days, he said, the Falcons often traveled in two buses, and then-coach Jerry Glanville once told players "maybe partly in jest, that fighting was allowed on the second bus, but no firearms."
One night at the end of training camp, "a fight did break out on the second bus. And afterward, a guy went to get his gun from his car. He was restrained by a friend."
No college policy
Most gun-related problems in sports have involved professional athletes. The NCAA has no policy on gun ownership by college athletes.
"That's an issue we leave up to the schools," said spokeswoman Monica Lunderman.
But at the University of Michigan, senior cornerback and team captain James Whitley was dropped from the football team in December 2000 before what would have been his final game, the Citrus Bowl against Auburn. His dismissal came on the heels of his arrest by Ann Arbor, Mich. police for carrying a loaded automatic handgun.
The only reason given was that Whitley "was let go on a team violation, and we don't disclose what the violation is in such situations," said university spokesman Bruce Madej. "He was suspended from the team, and you could say it was for one game or for the remainder of his career.
"There is no athletic department gun policy, and none resulted from that incident. But he was arrested on a weapons charge, and the general student policy is no firearms."
When Green was a student and an All-American defensive tackle at Syracuse University, he kept a shotgun in his apartment.
He still keeps guns in his house in suburban Syracuse, all locked up except for a shotgun for security.
"It's unloaded, with a safety on, and I keep the ammunition in a separate place," he said. "I don't keep a handgun in the house. I've weighed one decision against the other insofar as protecting my family. Handguns with kids in the house are insane."
Further, he said: "I don't think players should have handguns. It's an invitation to disaster."
The Ber 92 was THE pistol of choice. For rifles most of them bought .22s. 
