In March, we wrote about the racist attacks on the Utah women’s basketball team when they checked into their hotel in Coeur d’Alene in Idaho for the NCAA Tournament.
The games took place roughly 30 minutes away in Spokane, Washington, but because of the lack of hotel space, the team had to make the move to Idaho.
And that’s where the incidents began.
“We had several instances of some kind of racial hate crimes toward our program and it was incredibly upsetting for all of us,” head coach Lynne Roberts said. “In our world, in athletics and in university settings, it’s shocking. There’s so much diversity on a college campus and so you’re just not exposed to that very often.”
It got so bad that the team relocated to a different hotel the night after arriving.
KSL.com reported that players, team members, cheerleaders and the school band were called the N-word and harassed by a group in a vehicle as they walked around town.
“We all just were in shock, and we looked at each other like, did we just hear that? … Everybody was in shock — our cheerleaders, our students that were in that area that heard it clearly were just frozen,” said Utah deputy athletics director Charmelle Green, who is Black. “We kept walking, just shaking our heads, like I can’t believe that.”
The school filed a report with the police, who investigated their claims.
Earlier this week, over a month after the incident was reported, Coeur d’Alene attorneys declined to charge an 18-year-old who used racial slurs against the team.
The Spokesman-Review writes that the accused high schooler, Anthony Myers, “admitted he used the N-word and referred to a sex act when yelling at the players with the desire to be ‘funny.’” That comes directly from the written decision released on Monday by Chief Deputy City Attorney Ryan Hunter.
Prosecutors stated Myers’ language was racist and misogynistic, but they weren’t criminal. Even more infuriatingly, his words were deemed to be protected speech under Idaho law.
Investigators had collected evidence, including interview accounts and video surveillance, which proved that racial slurs were used and were audible. According to The Spokesman-Review, five witnesses gave descriptions of the language and the agitators who harassed the group from Utah.
But in the end, despite the hurt, humiliation and fear the visiting group felt, it didn’t matter.
“I’m disappointed that there isn’t some kind of accountability,” said Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond. “I’m not going to second-guess the prosecutor who made that decision, but I’m disappointed there’s not some form of community service that child can perform to be held accountable.”
In his decision not to charge Myers, Hunter wrote:
“As to the first requirement of specific intent to intimidate or harass, there is insufficient evidence that Anthony Myers acted with a specific intent to intimidate or harass any specific person; on the contrary, the sum of the evidence supports that Mr. Myers’s intent was to be funny.
