Video Of Cedric Benson's Booking Released and Questions Continue to Mount - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

The salvos keep on coming in the Cedric Benson boating arrest. With witnesses streaming forward to corroborate Benson's side of the story, the Travis County police has released a video of the Bears running back entering the booking station on the night in question.

You can watch the whole thing at the Chicago Tribune's site but here's the quick recap. It's a man walking into a police station in hand cuffs, hanging his head and showing none of the confrontational nature he's been accused of in the official police report. I'm not sure what we're supposed to get from the video, it has nothing to do with the incident in question, but there it is.

All of the attention focused on this case has made it impossible not to wonder what the final verdict might mean for Benson's career. Chicago bloviator Jay Mariotti has weighed in, writing that the Bears should cut Benson based on his performance with no regard to what happened out on the water but he can't help combining the two anyway.

If the Lower Colorado River Authority had been cracking down on boaters of all sorts, why would Benson, with his NFL career at a crossroads and the Bears sending a message with the second-round drafting of Matt Forte, allow beer on his 30-foot boat and turn himself into a target?

I don't know, maybe because if he wasn't doing anything wrong he was just enjoying a day out on his boat with friends.

I've enjoyed alcoholic beverages on the open water more than once when I wasn't in charge of getting the boat to and from shore, as have countless others, and I doubt that the captain of those boats were thinking about the ramifications of their actions. The way I read Mariotti's argument, Benson's guilty even if he didn't do anything wrong simply because of where he is and who he associates with. That's pretty irresponsible.

Put Mariotti into Benson's place and I wonder if we wouldn't read a column in the Chicago Sun-Times about overzealous policing. If you aren't breaking the law, you aren't breaking the law regardless of where you are and regardless of who else in the general vicinity may be breaking the law. We don't know exactly what happened but Benson's story has a lot of backing and we should certainly wait until it all plays out before convicting him of anything.