Bob Frantz, The Examiner
2008-07-28 10:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

SAN FRANCISCO -

It does not take a battle-hardened 30-year veteran of an urban police force to recognize that street violence perpetrated by young gangbangers and wannabes remains a serious, ongoing problem in American cities. Sure, the names may be different than some of the groups that terrorized inner city landscapes in the 1980s and 90s, and the methods may have evolved (or more appropriately, devolved) over time, but make no mistake: Street gangs are alive and well, and still on the radar of many of the professional athletes and entertainers that supposedly “escaped” their violent origins.

That’s why the mounting media criticism of the National Football League, which is taking appropriate steps to ensure that players aren’t flashing gang signs from the playing field, is so baffling.

Earlier this month, the league announced the hiring of law enforcement experts with specific knowledge of gang culture to study game tapes and identify any hand gestures that might be construed as menacing, threatening or even glorifying the gang lifestyle. League officials, including vice president of security Milt Ahlerich, have been monitoring the situation covertly for some time.

“There have been some suspected things we’ve seen,” Ahlerich told the L.A. Times, and that the league has moved to “quietly jump on [them] immediately.”

However, after watching NBA commissioner David Stern drop a $25,000 fine on the Boston Celtics’ Paul Pierce for flashing a sign commonly used by the notorious “Bloods” street gang after a playoff altercation with the Atlanta Hawks, the NFL has decided to increase its visibility on the issue, and will begin actively reviewing game tapes during the upcoming season.

And no one seems happy about it.

David Cornwell, an attorney who once worked as assistant general counsel for the league, told ESPN.com that, “It has an element of institutional racism to it, frankly.” He pointed to the legal troubles of Michael Vick, Jamal Lewis and Ray Lewis as advancing the stereotype that black players are most likely to be criminals, and that the league’s crackdown on perceived gang signs only adds fuel to that fire.

Cornwell is an idiot.

If he wants to broadly proclaim that most American street gangs are populated by blacks, and that the players most likely to flash hand gestures that signal allegiance to them are also black, how can it be racism for someone else to simply recognize it as such? The fact that there are far more black players in the league than there are white, Hispanic or any other ethnicity might also have something to do with that perception.

Regardless, it is not the race of the player, nor the gang he may be referencing that concerns the league. It is the perception that a league that has worked tirelessly to promote itself as family-friendly might have players paying homage to thugs who routinely rape, rob, steal, kill and deal drugs that has them worried. In other words, if white players with shaved heads started doing the “Sieg Heil Salute” after touchdowns, I think the league might be just as interested in their intentions as they are in Blood or Crip hand gestures from black players.

In case people missed the league memo: Roger Goodell has hired experts in gang culture to determine which signs are problematic and which are completely benign. To clarify: If you’re not actually in a gang, or BFF’s with someone who is, you can signal from the sideline like a third base coach with a bad case of jock itch, and you’ll be fine.

If, on the other hand, you do have some sort of allegiance with an organized group that operates outside the bounds of the law ... someone will be watching.

As they should be.

Sports personality Bob Frantz is a regular contributor to The Examiner. E-mail him at bfrantz@sfexaminer.com.