Leaving jail, Bengals’ Jones says he didn’t deserve arrest

Authorities said Jones tangled with hotel security investigating after he was pounding on hotel room doors Monday night. Cincinnati police said he pushed a security employee and poked him in the eye, then struggled, kicking and head-butting, as officers tried to put him into a police vehicle on the initial charge of assault.

He was charged with two more misdemeanours, of disorderly conduct and obstructing official business, and a felony charge of harassment with a bodily substance was added after the sheriff’s office said he spit on a nurse’s hand at the jail.

A judge Tuesday set bond at $37,500 and ordered Jones to provide a blood sample and be tested for communicable diseases. The sheriff’s office said it had to wait until medical staff was available Wednesday morning, so Jones remained in jail overnight.

Public defender Lauren Staley said in court Tuesday that Jones “vehemently denies” that he assaulted anyone and will hire an attorney to contest the charges.

Jones will be subject to potential NFL discipline after the case is resolved.

Jones pleaded an equivalent of no contest to a misdemeanour charge of conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct in a 2007 Las Vegas strip club melee. Jones was blamed for instigating violence that led to the shooting by someone else of two club employees, one left paralyzed from the waist down. He was ordered to pay more than $12.4 million in damages.

He was suspended as a Tennessee Titan by the NFL throughout the 2007 season, then was suspended again during the 2008 season as a member of the Dallas Cowboys.

The Titans made the Atlanta native the sixth overall pick out of West Virginia University in the 2005 draft, and he started 28 games in his first two seasons. His NFL career was in doubt before he became a regular Bengals starting defensive back and punt returner.

In Cincinnati, he was acquitted in 2013 on an assault charge in Hamilton County after a woman accused him of punching her in a nightclub. Earlier that year, he paid a fine for disorderly conduct after police accused him of making offensive comments during a traffic stop. He also pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in January 2012 after an arrest at a Cincinnati bar.

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Dan Sewell, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Leaving jail, Bengals’ Jones says he didn’t deserve arrest

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