It’s a message the Giants and other NFL teams pound into their young players’ heads: In a jam, call us first.
“Why would you call the police?” former Giants cornerback and retired player representative Jason Sehorn told The Post. “They’re not paid to help you. They’re paid to arrest you, to book you.”
“If I got into trouble, I’d call my security guy right away,” said ex-Giant Sean Landeta, a punter on two Super Bowl-winning teams.
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“I’d want to have his advice on what to do. I’d have confidence that my security guy would do what was in the best interest for me at that moment.”
Most teams employ at least one “security guy,” and send a clear signal to players to call that go-to guy, even before cops, in a crisis, insiders say.
“The police can’t be trusted, and the law can be a trap,” was the message journalist Stefan Fatsis said the Denver Broncos received when he attended the team’s 2006 training camp as a placekicker.
Betsy Klein, the team’s executive director of player and organizational development, told players at rookie orientation of how she once helped a player whose neighbors threatened to go to the media with complaints about barking dogs and noisy parties, recalled Fatsis in his recent book, “A Few Seconds of Panic.”
“I squashed that,” she boasted.
“Anything I can do to help you get things off your back or help you in your careers, that’s what I’m here to do.
“If the police intervene, don’t tell your story,” Klein continued, according to the book. She added that prosecutors pursue charges even if the accused insists nothing happened – and “that’s bad, because it will be reported in the media.”
It was Giants official Ronnie Barnes – and not the cops – whom players Plaxico Burress and Antonio Pierce contacted early on Nov. 29, when Burress fumbled a gun he carried into a Manhattan nightclub and shot himself in the thigh.
Barnes, the team’s vice president of medical services, directed him to a Manhattan hospital that employed team physicians. No one – not even hospital administrators – dialed 911 or notified police until eight hours after the 1:50 a.m. shooting.
Burress became the seventh Giant to have a run-in with the law this year. Since 2000, 246 NFL players, including 10 Giants, have been arrested.
Player indoctrination on what to do in a jam starts in training camp, when team officials go through scenarios and give out phone numbers.
Former Giants coach Jim Fassel, now a Westwood One NFL radio analyst, said that during training camp, he and the team’s head of security, Mike Murphy, would tell players, “If you get in trouble with the law, here’s the number – call us and we’ll do whatever we can to help.”
But the former coach said he also advised players to “honest and striaghtforward” if ever stopped by police, and even provided guidance on gun laws. “I spoke to the players myself,” he said. “I remember when we checked in at training camp one of my topics of conversation with them was: you understand that you cannot have a weapon on you. So if anyone has one, you check it in. No punishment, we will just take it. Murphy…would take it and put it in a secured area.”
The NFL’s Player Conduct Policy requires that the league “be advised promptly of any incident” involving a possible arrest or criminal matter. Both the players’ union and the NFL said there is no rule discouraging players from contacting the police.
Critics of these policies say alerting team officials ensures that NFL security gets on top of damaging information quickly – possibly faster than the cops.
“The purpose of NFL security is not to root out crime and corruption but, when it erupts, to seal it up or cover it up,” said Dan Moldea, author Of the 1995 book, “Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football.”
“They want to control the information as long as they can, so when it comes out, they’re ready to spin it to the least detriment of the NFL owner,” he added.
“What they’re worried about is how this situation is going to impact the investment of the NFL team owner. That’s their major concern.”
Moldea said there’s a long history of team and league officials trying to keep a lid on emerging scandals.
When star Cincinnati Bengals running back Stanley Wilson didn’t show up for a team meeting the night before the 1989 Super Bowl, Cincinnati Police Chief Larry Whalen – moonlighting as an NFL security adviser to the Bengals – broke into Wilson’s Miami hotel room, where the player was found shaking in the bathtub, a plastic bag of white powder in his hand.
Whalen turned over the bag to the NFL, instead of cops, and the room was not secured to preserve evidence. NFL security hustled Wilson to another hotel, where he ducked down a fire escape and vanished for days so cops could not immediately question where he got the alleged cocaine, or if other players were involved.
Long before troubled Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick pleaded guilty to a federal dogfighting charge, the team reportedly spent years trying to rein in and cover up his bad behavior, even assigning former player and team official Billy “White Shoes” Johnson as his personal troubleshooter.
In 2004, Johnson allegedly tried to bribe a security screener whose Rolex watch was stolen by two of Vick’s friends at the Atlanta airport.
Before filing a police complaint, the screener, Alvin Spencer, said he met with detectives and Johnson. The Falcons’ “fixer” offered Spencer $1,000 to keep Vick’s name out of the filing, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In another case, Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tim Barnett’s jail sentence for beating his wife was delayed so he could finish the 1993 season.
Barnett’s lawyer was able to keep him out of the clink, allowing the receiver to play in the AFC conference championship game.
During his extended freedom, he also sexually assaulted a motel maid and was sentenced to another three years in prison.
Additional reporting by Justin Terranova