BEVO BEAT Football Ricky Williams speaks about incident with police in Tyler Posted January 18th, 2017


Update (11:57 p.m.): Tyler mayor Martin Heines spoke to the Tyler Morning Telegraph on Wednesday. He told the newspaper that he had spoken to Ricky Williams about the incident that occurred last week in Tyler.

“We visited about the incident, and we came to the positive conclusion that he’s very welcome in Tyler, Texas,” Heines said. “And I hope I can spend some time with him when he does return. I even invited him to stay with my family when he’s here; we have a guest room he’s welcome to.”

The Tyler Police Department confirmed Wednesday afternoon that an “incident” occurred when Ricky Williams visited the city for the Earl Campbell Award ceremony last week, Tyler TV station KETK reported.


WATCH: D’Onta Foreman wins the 2016 Earl Campbell Tyler Rose Award

Video released shows Williams being detained by the police, who said they were called by a resident in the 8200 block of Yale “in reference to a suspicious person behind the fence line in his back yard.”

The below video was posted by Tyler TV station KLTV, which has also followed up on the incident with the Tyler police.

The incident came to light after Williams spoke about what happened Wednesday on the Dudley and Bob with Matt show on KLBJ in Austin.

“I started to get a little bit upset and they said, ‘Calm down,’ and I said, ‘Listen, you don’t know what it’s like to be a black man, this is not the first time this has happened to me when cops have harassed me and I haven’t done anything,'” Williams said in the radio interview, which can be heard in full at the link above.

KLTV spoke with the man who placed the call to police, who said Williams “didn’t threaten me in any way, but he was hanging out in this wooded area, crouching down behind the bushes.”

Williams said he had arrived in Tyler early and decided to go for a walk before the trophy ceremony. When he got back to the hotel where he was staying, there were four police officers waiting for him. According to KLTV, the police report shows no arrest being made in connection to the incident.

“I hope that after this situation, they realize that black lives do matter. I’ve never wanted to say that, but this was a time where it fits,” Williams said. “It fits in Tyler in that moment.”

Tyler policed released a statement on the incident, which can be read in full on KLTV’s website.

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