49ers owner Jed York says do not compare Ray Rice and Ray McDonald to each other
“Ray McDonald is not Ray Rice,” York said on the KNBR Morning Show, via CSNBayArea.com. “And as a society we have a sense of saying, ‘You didn’t do it right with Ray Rice right away, so you need to overdo it with Ray McDonald or whoever else it is.’ And I don’t believe that that’s the country we live in. I don’t think that’s a fair way to approach it. . . . I think you have to be very careful not to punish somebody that’s in a different situation than the last one and apply what happened in the last one to this one.”
McDonald was arrested on felony domestic violence charges and police say they saw “visible injuries” on McDonald’s pregnant fiancé. But the 49ers are standing behind him, for now.
“I will not punish somebody until we see evidence that it should be done or before an entire organization, an entire legal, police investigation, shows us something,” York said. “For me to look myself in the mirror and say ‘I’m going to punish somebody, whether it’s not playing them, cutting them or suspending them or whatever that punishment is, before you can go through an entire legal process and an entire investigation,’ that’s not who I am.”