Anti-Kobe T-shirts hang Sheriff’s Office
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“The order was never placed,” Eagle County Sheriff Joe Hoy said Wednesday.
According to e-mails obtained by the Vail Daily, the order was placed with hangmantees.com from the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office. In e-mail correspondence, hangmantees.com said the Kobe Bryant T-shirts were not in stock, and that it would take two to three weeks to fill the order.
The e-mail said the shirts were for workers in the Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office.
District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Krista Flannigan said no one from their office was involved in this.
“We knew about them,” said Flannigan. “We were asked if we wanted to order some and the staff decided against it.
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Hoy insisted the issue is minor, saying it’s “not even a blip on our radar screen.”
“The company was giving away the shirts as souvenirs during Bryant’s October’s preliminary hearing,” said Hoy. “We collected some money to give to them to donate to an organization that deals with abuse. They refused it at the time.
“When we found out they wanted to charge us, that was the end of it.”
No one from hangmantees.com would comment on Hoy’s assertion about why the order was not completed.
Hoy said a Sheriff’s Office staff member went online to handle the details.
According to the e-mails, the order was placed Oct. 16, the day after Bryant’s preliminary hearing ended, and about a week before Eagle County Court Judge Fred Gannett issued his ruling that ordered Bryant to stand trial for allegedly raping a 19-year-old Eagle woman on June 30. The woman was a worker at The Lodge and Spa at Cordillera, where Bryant was a guest.
Bryant has said the sex was consensual. He is charged with sexual assault, a Class 3 felony. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
Bryant is scheduled to make his first appearance in District Court next Thursday to be advised of the charges against him. During that appearance, before District Judge Terry Ruckriegle, he might enter a plea.
Tee it up
On the front of the T-shirts is a hanging man, like the ones depicted in the children’s game “Hangman.” On the back of one is two statements about the Los Angeles Lakers basketball star: “I am not a rapist; I’m just a cheater.”
On the back of the other is: “First class plane ticket
$600.00
Hotel room
$5,000.00
Surgery
$25,000.00
Not bringing your wife to Colorado with you
PRICELESS
K_B_ BRY_NT”
The order asked for 76 T-shirts, in sizes ranging from medium to triple-extra-large. Hangmantees.com said in an e-mail reply that the T-shirts usually cost $12.95 each, but that Eagle County Sheriff’s Office employees could get then for $7 each, the company’s cost to produce them. The company said it needed two to three weeks to fill the order, and that the Sheriff’s Office could get the discount rate because it had ordered so many.
Hoy told Fox News, which first broke the story Tuesday, that he wouldn’t care if his employees did order the shirts, saying that what they wore off duty was their business.
Local attorney Rohn Robbins said that while it might not be illegal, it was unwise.
“It appears invocative of Klan lynching and wholly inappropriate in modern society,” said Robbins. “It’s poor judgment and racially insensitive, especially with the pictogram of someone being hung.”
On their Web site, hangmantees.com said that by selling these T-shirts and others like it, they are doing their part to see the mighty brought low, or at least lampooned on the front of the T-shirts they sell.
“Are you sick and tired of these so called celebrity role models for our children, getting you down with their behavior and/or total disregard for societal standards?” they wrote. “Whether they are caught shoplifting or convicted of rape or maybe it’s just a corked bat, to adulterated sex in the oval office. From Wynona Ryder to Mike Tyson – from Sammy Sosa to Bill Clinton, they all make us sick here at hangmantees.com.”
Last week, Ruckriegle issued an gag order to lawyers and law-enforcement officers prohibiting attorneys and law enforcement officers from commenting on the case.
