Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry has not minced words when it comes to social justice matters since the league restarted inside the bubble. On Wednesday, he shared his strongest message yet.
Days removed from an incident in Aurora, CO, in which police officers mistakenly identified a mini-van as a stolen vehicle and placed a family of women and children in handcuffs face down in a parking lot, Gentry was asked for his thoughts on the situation.
His quote was long but passionate with one word repeated multiple times: disgust.
“To me, other than the George Floyd thing, it’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Gentry said. “To take kids out of a car and handcuff and put them on the pavement or whatever the heck they decided to do, if that’s your protocol then you need to change it because I don’t understand how, number one, how a minivan can be confused as a motorcycle (and number two) how a Montana license plate can be confused as a Colorada license plate. This is something that should have absolutely never happened. This thing should have been worked out before they even walked to the car. If that’s what you’re supposed to do – you take a mom, a niece and two kids out of a car and handcuff – then it’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of. It’s very disturbing even to just watch it on tape.
“And I don’t know what could possibly be going through your mind to think that would be ok to do to little kids,” he continued. “That is just something that should never, ever, ever happen. I don’t give a damn what their protocol is there, how you’re supposed to do it. To do that to kids that are going to be traumatized for the rest of their lives and have every right to be, really, I just don’t understand how these things can continue to happen and happen and happen. If that’s the way we’re training our police officers then we need to change everything about it because if you think (those kids), if they’re threats (and) that we have to put handcuffs on them then I have no idea where we’re headed as a country or as a police force or anything else.
“It was very disgusting. It really was. And that’s the only words you can use.”
The incident quickly gained national recognition as another high-profile example of racism in the country. As is often the case in modern America, a witness caught the entire thing on camera as the video quickly circulated across social media.
The video begins with a mother and her sister as long as multiple children face down, handcuffed on the pavement with multiple officers standing over top of the family with guns drawn. In the video, the screams and cries of the children can be heard throughout.
The car was initially followed and pulled over for being a suspected stolen vehicle. While the license plate number matched, as Gentry noted, the plates were from a different state. The stolen vehicle also was a motorcycle, not a mini-van.
The Aurora Police Department cited standard protocol as the reason for having the family handcuffed at gunpoint.
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