Tuskegee University men’s basketball head coach Benjy Taylor was briefly handcuffed by law enforcement after his team’s road loss to Morehouse College on Saturday, an incident now at the center of a potential civil lawsuit.
Coach handcuffed after postgame handshake
A video shared on Facebook appears to show Taylor being placed in handcuffs and escorted from the court following the game at Morehouse, according to avideo posted by HBCU Gameday to social media.
In a news release Sunday, national civil rights attorney Harry Daniels said Taylor has retained him as counsel and that his legal team is exploring “all legal avenues,” including a possible civil lawsuit, WSFA reported.
Concern over alleged aggressive behavior
According to Daniels’ release, Taylor became concerned during the postgame handshake line when a group of Morehouse football players were allegedly “acting aggressively” toward Tuskegee players and their parents. The release states that Taylor asked an officer on site to remove the football players from the court, citing conference-mandated security protocols that prohibit football players from intermingling with basketball players on the court and during handshake lines.
“When Coach Taylor asked two police officers to enforce those protocols attempting to diffuse an increasingly dangerous situation, however, one of the officers chose to place him in handcuffs and escort him from the court,” the release states. “Coach Taylor was never charged with a crime.”
Attorney: ‘They need to be held accountable’
Daniels condemned the officer’s actions, calling the incident humiliating and unjustified.
“It would be bad for a police officer to treat anyone like this,” Daniels said in the release. “But to do it to a man like Coach Taylor, a highly respected professional and role model, to put him in handcuffs, humiliate him and treat him like a criminal in front of his team, his family and a gym full of fans is absolutely disgusting and they need to be held accountable.”
“Coach Taylor is a good man who did the right thing to protect his team and deescalate a dangerous situation and this officer put him in chains for his troubles,” Daniels added.
Coach Taylor says he felt “violated”
It remains unclear which law enforcement agency detained Taylor or how long he was held, but he later boarded the team bus back to Macon County and issued a statement addressing the incident, according to WSFA.
“I am at a loss for words, and I am upset about how I was violated and treated today,” Taylor wrote. “For my players, my family and people of Tuskegee to witness that is heartbreaking for me. I was simply trying to get the football team out of the handshake line as they were following right behind me and the team yelling obscenities! It was a very dangerous situation.”
