If Scottie Scheffler were Black, he’d be in a Louisville jail awaiting Tuesday’s arraignment, where he would have been formally advised of the charges against him and a judge would determine if he could obtain legal counsel.
Of course, Scheffler would have had no problem obtaining legal counsel. He’s the world’s No. 1 golfer with an estimated net worth somewhere between $50 and $100 million.
But he won’t have to sweat that arraignment: prosecutors declined to pursue the charges police recommended when they arrested him Friday morning outside of a posh golf course where the PGA Championships were being played.
Police had blocked entrance to the course after a pedestrian was struck and killed by a shuttle bus. They said Scheffler attempted to drive around the barricade, ignored directives from a police officer and dragged one about 10 yards after the officer attached himself to the golfer’s moving car.
Scheffler was booked on charges of reckless driving, disregarding signals from an officer directing traffic, third degree criminal mischief and second degree assault of a police officer, a felony.
The officer was said to have suffered pain, swelling and abrasions to his left wrist, according to CNN.
Injuring a police officer is right up there with assaulting a white woman on the scale of what will get a Black person locked up quickly. Scheffler, though, wasn’t worried: He had two get-out-of-jail free cards — white skin and a loaded bank account.
How chill was Scheffler...? Even after cops gave him the obligatory orange jumpsuit, he later told reporters he ate a sandwich offered to him by an officer and did some stretching exercises in the holding cell. His tee time was pushed back so he could play his round. He had to get fueled up and stretched out for that.
He wasn’t thinking what so many Black folks in a similar circumstance would have been thinking: “Oh, my God, will I be offered bail?” “Who can I call?” “How long am I going to have to be in here?”
Nah…Scheffler was maxing and relaxing. And why not? Jail is for the little people. And the Black people. When you’re white and rich, that, ‘Hey, it was just a big misunderstanding’ explanation doesn’t draw laughs from jailers and prosecutors.
They give you a sandwich and cut you loose. Scheffler later joked about the experience during a press conference.
Despite an officer’s contention that Scheffler assaulted him, the golfer was released within hours of his arrest. Broadcasters gushed about his ability to “compartmentalize” and play well despite “what he had been through.”
I’m gonna say no Black man not named Tiger Woods would have had the same experience. (And, yes, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not going there right now.)
In the same city where, four years ago, police officers burst into the home of Breonna Taylor and shot her to death, a white man accused of actually assaulting an officer was given a sandwich and sprung from jail within hours of his arrest.
Scheffler would later finish tied for eighth at the PGA Championships, picking up a check for more than $500,000.
If depictions of Lady Justice were accurate, that sword she holds would say: “For Black people only…”