Cincinnati police have released an hour-long video taken during their arrest of Ole Miss head basketball coach Andy Kennedy in December. Police arrested Kennedy for allegedly assaulting a cab driver outside a downtown night club. The driver claimed the Rebels coach, who was in town to play Louisville in the Big East-SEC Invitational, directed racial slurs at him.In the video, Kennedy is pulled over, handcuffed, placed in the police cruiser and taken back to the night club to be positively identified. In the video taken from the cruiser's dashboard camera, Kennedy repeatedly begs the officers to let him go because the arrest would create "an international altercation."
Kennedy kept pleading with the police to let him go and continued to say this would turn into a national incident. He even pulled out the "I used to be the head coach" at the University of Cincinnati card. One officer responded to Kennedy's pleas by rhetorically asking, "You think we've never arrested somebody that's made national media? ... We deal with the Bengals all the time."
The video also shows Ole Miss director of basketball operations William Armstrong yelling at the cabbie for lying to the police. Armstrong and Kennedy claimed that the cab driver dropped an N-bomb on one of their companions in the argument. The cab driver denied this to police, prompting an outburst by Armstrong that ended in his arrest for disorderly conduct.
Kennedy's assault trial is set for April.
