Roger Goodell's Bodyguard Accused Of Assaulting Photographer, More Bad News For NFL

The bad news continues for Roger Goodell and the National Football League. In a season already littered with assault charges on a handful of its players, violence continues to be a theme in headlines across the league.

This time, Thomas Crowe, Roger Goodell's personal bodyguard and the head security officer at the NFL's Manhattan offices, has been accused by a photographer of assaulting him on the streets of New York City.

On Monday, Gothamist.com reported that J.B. Nicholas, a freelance photographer for the Daily News was punched and choked by Crowe on East 93rd Street and Park Avenue in New York's Manhattan borough.

"I hold him off with a stiff arm in the intersection and then my phone fell, so I figure I'd just sit down at the end of the flower bed in the median and wait for the cops to come and arrest this guy," Nicholas said. "Then he tackles me backward and puts his forearm into my neck and starts choking me."

At that point, Nicholas said, he thought he was going to black out.

"So I grab his tie and say, 'Stop f---ing choking me!' And he loosens up and puts his hand on my diaphragm," Nicholas recalls. "That's when I hear sirens, and Crowe says, 'The cavalry's coming.'"

According to Nicholas, he and several other photographers had holed up outside the NFL offices that day (Sept. 17) waiting to get a shot of Goodell. Eventually, when he saw Crowe leave the building in a Cadillac Escalade with whom he assumed to be the commissioner, he followed the car hoping to get his sought-after shot.

Then all hell broke loose.

"I saw the driver get out of his car very aggressively, grab the photographer, and shout, 'You're under arrest, I'm a policeman!'" said Joshua Holland, a witness on the scene. "The driver pulled the photographer off his bike, wrestled him to the ground in the median, and punched him in the face once. Then he was on top of him holding him down with an arm bar, a forearm jammed into his neck. He was freaking out and shouting 'I'm a cop! I'm a cop!' I was like, 'Does this guy have a gun?' I was a little worried about that."

Nicholas, meanwhile, was arrested and charged in the scuffle, not Crowe.

"It just didn't matter to them what I said, they weren't gonna charge this guy," Nicholas said.

Gothamist reached out to the NFL for comment, but the league spokesman refused a statement. "We do not have a comment as this is an active law enforcement matter," he said.

Neither the NYPD nor the DA's would comment either.