December 9, 2012; Cincinnati, OH, USA; Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Andrew Hawkins (16) and cornerback Adam Jones (24) celebrate their team
West Virginia Mountaineers alumnus Adam “Pacman” Jones has been taken into custody today on charges that he assaulted a woman outside an Ohio nightclub this past week.
The security camera video of the incident can be seen exclusively at TMZ.com. When watching the video, it is clear that Jones and the woman appear to have an argument outside of the nightclub. As drunken arguments go, tensions escalate quickly and the woman gets up and pours her beer on Jones.
Jones then wastes no time in punching the woman in the face, sending her plummeting to the ground in a heap. Does Pacman stop there? No, he appears to continue trash talking as his unidentified associate pushes him down the street and away from the scene of the crime.
Pacman turned himself into authorities today, but not before releasing this tweet about the incident:
Just got arrested for protecting myself, I will not let this break me or change what I have work so hard for ....
— ADAm Pacman Jones (@REALPACMAN24) June 10, 2013
Clearly Pacman was in imminent danger from the woman’s cocktail and felt he had a need to defend himself. So instead of doing the rational thing and deflecting the shot of liquid by simply knocking the glass from the woman’s hand or simply using his NFL-caliber agility to avoid the shower, he does what Pacman is historically known to do, he goes too far.
In the past few years, Mountaineers fans and Cincinnati Bengals fans have given Jones much credit for attempting to rehabilitate his image after ugly strip-club incident in 2007 while between careers with the Tennessee Titans and the Dallas Cowboys. Since joining the Cincinnati Bengals in 2010, Jones has been keeping a low profile and staying out of trouble.
All that hard work that Jones alludes to in his tweet, the hard work put into repairing his image and salvaging his professional football career, has been undone by one quick jab.
Common sense and decency dictates that you never hit a woman, no matter the situation. Sure, there can be cases made for when a woman has a loaded gun pointed to your head that maybe this rule of society can be waived. It does not matter what the woman is saying to you or threatening to do to you if you are Jones. A woman of maybe 5’6″ 110 lbs (guessing based on the footage) poses no threat to a 5’10” 186 lbs NFL cornerback who routinely takes down players in the 6’3″ 220 lbs size range or bigger.
In Jones case, when facing a loaded cocktail, there is no excuse to hit a woman. Both the NFL and the Cincinnati Bengals should come down hard on this latest transgression, given Jones’ repeat offender status with nightclub incidents.