Seahawks rookie Damien Lewis’ personal reason why players protest. Why they demand change
This is why the protest. This is why they demand change.
Damien Lewis has an intensely personal reason for the decal he wants to wear on his helmet for his second NFL game.
The Seahawks’ rookie starting right guard from LSU wore the name of Breonna Taylor on the back of his helmet for his pro debut last weekend in Atlanta. Taylor, a Black woman, was shot and killed by police in her home in Louisville this spring.
For his second NFL start, Sunday night when the Seahawks host the New England Patriots, Lewis wants to wear the name of Andrew Sledd.
In 1989, Sledd was a 23-year-old attending and playing basketball for St. Xavier College in Chicago. According to federal court records in Illinois, he was living in his mother’s townhouse in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Chicago police obtained a search warrant in a drug case. The warrant sought a man by a different name, but the warrant listed the address where Sledd lived.
Sledd’s family asserts what happened next was a case of not only mistaken identity but of an erroneous address.
And of unconscionable police brutality.
Seven officers in street clothes, not in uniforms, bashed down the door to Sledd’s townhouse. Sledd testified the officers did not announce they were police, nor did they have any visible identification as officers. With no way of knowing they were police, Sledd thought he was being robbed. At least one officer shot Sledd in what court documents said was “a storm of gunfire.”
The officer who shot Sledd, according to federal court documents, “then rolled Sledd over, put the gun to his head, and said, ‘We’re the police, you (expletive). I should blow your (expletive) brains out.’”
Court documents state, “Sledd asked him to call an ambulance, but in response (Officer) Baker struck him on the head and kicked him in the groin.”
Police said they found cocaine in the townhouse when they searched it after shooting Sledd. Sledd testified the police officers planted the drugs after they shot him.
He was permanently physically impaired. A bullet fragment remains in his spine. One of his daughters, Chloe Cheyenne Sledd-Rogers, told Black Enterprise in 2019 Chicago police kept her father handcuffed to his hospital bed through multiple surgeries in the first days after officers shot him. She said police asserted her dad remained a threat— while Sledd was unconscious in his hospital bed and unable to walk.
He was charged with attempted murder, armed violence, aggravated assault, plus possession of cocaine and cannabis. A bench trial in the Circuit Court of Cook County found Sledd not guilty on all charges.
Federal court records from Andrew Sledd v. Guy Linsday, 102 F.3d 282 (7th Cir. 1996), in the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit state the lead officer in the raid, Officer Guy Lindsay, was a cocaine user. Court documents further state the Chicago Police Department learned of Officer Lindsay’s drug habit nine months after the shooting of Sledd, and that the CPD suspended Lindsay and eventually fired him following his positive drug tests.
Sledd sued the Chicago Police Department. Federal court records show Sledd asserted “the police defendants had used excessive and unjustifiable force against him, falsely arrested and imprisoned him and maliciously prosecuted him, and that they had acted pursuant to unconstitutional policies and customs of the City of Chicago.”
A U.S. District Court judge dismissed Sledd’s lawsuit. In 1996, a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals ruled his case had merit and ordered a trial.
Just before the trial was to begin, the Chicago Police Department settled the suit brought by Sledd. He received an undisclosed amount of money.
Andrew Sledd is the father of Damien Lewis’ girlfriend, Savannah Sledd.
Savannah and her older sister were born after police officer shot and permanently impaired their dad.
“My girlfriend, her father, she’s had police brutality, too. He got shot 11 times in Chicago,” Lewis said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone Wednesday, before he practiced for the Seahawks’ home opener.
“My girl, before we even got together she told me the story, that Chicago Police Department, they had the wrong guy. They were looking for the wrong guy, and they ran in the house and they ended up shooting while the kids were there and he was there. But they were looking for the wrong guy.
“And they shot him 11 times. Without giving him warnings, or nothing.”
Thing is, Lewis can’t just put Andrew Sledd’s name on the back of his helmet because he wants to.
This summer the NFL and its players’ union reached an agreement to allow players to wear helmet decals with names or slogans for the causes of social and racial justice and police brutality. But the agreement says players are to stick to an approved list of names or messages.
Breonna Taylor is one. George Floyd is another. Seahawks receiver DK Metcalf is wearing one with the name of Emmett Till. Black Lives Matter, Stop Hate and End Racism are other NFL-approved decals.
Andrew Sledd is not. He got shot before social media, before citizens began capturing previously unseen shooting and beating and knees to the neck of apprehended suspects on smartphone videos. Before the Black Lives Matter movement.
Lewis is going to seek to get Sledd’s name approved for him to honor Sunday night during the national-showcase game.
“I’m going to talk to someone and find out, to see if I can do it,” Lewis, a native of Canton, Mississippi, said.
“If not, I will pick someone else that I’m able to do.”
Lewis’ teammate, All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner, called on the NFL to let players choose more names to honor on their helmets during games.
“It’s definitely cool to see the names on the back of the helmets,” the Seahawks’ co-captain said. “I would love for them to loosen up on what names we are able to use, and not just kind of put us in box on certain names.
“But you appreciate the efforts. You just want whatever happens to continue, and you want it to be real — and not just gestures and not just something they are doing to react in the moment.
“You want it to be something that is a start. Or a beginning to a forever change.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 5:53 PM.
