NFL defends its handling of the Kareem Hunt investigation

Reporting from IRVING, Texas —  The NFL on Wednesday defended its controversial handling of the Kareem Hunt investigation, even though incriminating surveillance video of the star running back — images that surfaced months after his skirmish with a woman in a Cleveland hotel — led to the Kansas City Chiefs releasing him.

“There is information out there in this surveillance society that we can’t get when we need it, and when we get it, we act on it,” said B. Todd Jones, the league’s special counsel on conduct said at the December owners meetings, making his first public comments on the incident.

Hunt, the NFL’s defending rushing champion, was captured on video shoving and kicking a woman in the hallway of a Cleveland hotel in February. Police were called but no arrests were made. The NFL and Chiefs contend that they never saw that video until TMZ released it last month.

There were undeniable parallels between the Hunt situation and the Ray Rice controversy in 2014, when the Baltimore Ravens running back punched his fiancée in a hotel elevator, knocking her unconscious. The league was sharply criticized for being too lenient with Rice in its initial punishment of him, seeming only to take the situation seriously after the elevator video surfaced. The big question at the time: How hard did the NFL work to get hold of that video?

“This was not the same situation in 2014, other than the fact there was a video that was disclosed late in the game,” said Jones, former director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We did learn lessons from 2014. We did request that video up front. We were aware that it was there and couldn’t get it. Somebody made the decision for monetary reasons to sell it to TMZ. That’s unfortunate.

“Once it was released, we reopened the investigation and it’s ongoing. There’s been no discipline imposed yet.”

As for why the NFL did not interview Hunt as part of its investigation, and has yet to do so, Jones said: “People in the business sort of understand that you don’t sit down with the suspect until you have a fuller handle on the facts because you’ve got to be able to ask some intelligent questions beyond, ‘Were you there?’ and ‘Did you do anything?’ So I think that the sequencing of the interviews was appropriate given the information we had at the time.”

While noting that the NFL does not have subpoena power to demand information, Jones said it’s “not likely at all” that the league will begin paying for video as part of these investigations.

“To become mercenary and pay for videos opens up a Pandora’s box of all kinds of opportunities, and things may come to us in the form of not just surveillance videos in public places, but you’re talking about the world of social media,” he said. “And everybody on a smartphone, as TMZ is in the business of doing, is buying people’s smartphone tidbits for a fee. The NFL is not going to do that.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATimesfarmer