Vanessa Bryant Has Blunt Message For L.A. Sheriff’s Department

Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, is currently engaged in a lawsuit with the L.A. Sheriff’s Department for sharing photos from the helicopter crash that took the life of her husband and her daughter, Gianna.

In a recent Instagram story, Bryant called out the Sheriff’s Department for seeking to redact the names of the deputies who took the photos. She pointed out that her late-husband’s name was released to the public when he was accused of rape in 2003, and accused the department of engaging in a double-standard.

“They want their names to be exempt from the public,” she wrote. “Anyone else facing these allegations would be unprotected, named and released to the public… Kobe’s name was released when he was accused in 2003. Why should sheriffs get away with hiding? #doublestandard”

Bryant’s lawsuit alleges that deputies in the L.A. Sheriff’s Department “showed off” photos of her husband and daughter’s remains following the crash that took their lives and the lives of seven others in January 2020. The department said last year that it ordered the deputies to delete the photos.

“We identified the deputies involved,” L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said last March. “They came to the station on their own and had admitted they had taken them and they had deleted them. And we’re content that those involved did that.”

But the damage had already been done.

Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in 2020 shocked the entire world. Many wondered how TMZ was able to scoop so many other outlets so quickly with news of the helicopter crash.

It was a horrible mistake for those deputies to make, and one that may be see them taken before a courtroom to account for what they did when all is said and done.

The post Vanessa Bryant Has Blunt Message For L.A. Sheriff’s Department appeared first on The Spun.