Press and police are rapidly learning more details about a shooting at Michael Vick’s ‘All White’ themed birthday party in Virginia Beach.  The celebrity affair was intended to lavishly celebrate Michael Vick’s 30th birthday, but trouble is no stranger to Michael Vick.

What Happened at Michael Vick’s 30th Birthday Party?

Update

Sporting News is now reporting that Darnell Phillips either threatened or succeeded in throwing birthday cake in Michael Vick’s face.

Around 2:10 am a fight that began inside the restaurant moved outside and ended when one of the fighters shot the other in the leg.  The shooter disappeared and the victim attempted to elude police and head for the hospital.  It was only later learned that the man that was shot may have been none other than Michael Vick’s dog fighting codefendant Quanis Phillips.

Police have not identified the shooting victim, but a spokesman for Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital confirmed that Quanis Phillips – one of the co-defendants in Vick’s 2007 federal dogfighting trial – was admitted early this morning and was listed in good condition. The spokesman would not discuss the nature of Phillips’ injuries, and he said Phillips has declined to speak with media. source . . . .

Phillips, who was a high school football teammate of Vick’s, was also sentenced to 21 months after pleading guilty.

Tip to Michael Vick’s PR agent! Next time you attempt to throw a bash for Michael Vick and his felon friends, make sure there are metal detectors and security present to shake everyone down.  Don’t you think there is enough blood on Michael Vick’s reputation already?  (sarcastically disgusted)

Breaking Parole – Vick Not Supposed to Associate with former Dog Fighting Partners

According to Daily Press reporter David Squires, Phillips showed up to the party even though Vick is not supposed to be associating with any of his dogfighting co-defendants.
Squires writes that there was a confrontation between Phillips and Vick inside the party, that the confrontation then moved outside, and that’s when Phillips was shot.
Vick’s lawyer, Larry Woodward, says Vick was not involved and was not present when the shooting occurred. source . . .

History of Crime between Vick and Phillips

In 2004, Vick was present when Phillips allegedly stole a Rolex watch from an airport X-ray belt. source .. .

Most Disliked Man in Sports (Not the Most Hated)

Separately, Michael Vick also achieved the dubious honor of being the most disliked or disapproved man in sports.  Forbes incorrectly used the headline of ‘most hated’ but that was likely just a ploy to sensationalize a headline as the survey in question did not ask respondents if they hated Michael Vick or any of the other professional sports players or coaches.  This is the second year in a row that Vick has won this dubious distinction, guess that BET thing really paid off for him.

Related posts:

1. Nightclub Video Puts Michael Vick at Crime Scene 4 Minutes before 911 Call
2. Will Michael Vick Go Back to Jail Like Younger Brother Marcus for Violating Parole his 1st Day on the Job?

 Imagine Your a little kid, and your principal tells you that an NFL Quarterback and superstar is going to visit and talk to your school.  Your principal tells you that said superstar did some very bad things to dogs, so bad that he went to prison for what he did after he confessed to being guilty.

The big day comes, and you file into the gymnasium filing into the wood bleachers.  Everyone is excited.  Its not very often that you get to see a person that plays in the NFL, in fact this might be the ONLY day you ever meet someone that has played in the NFL in your entire life.  It is something to remember.

Your belly rumbles a bit because you didn’t have any breakfast that morning.  Lunch starts after you get to see Michael Vick the player that is coming to talk.  You are anxious to see him, but lunch is one of the few meals you get every day.  There’s rarely enough food at home except some chips and things, unless your grandparents or aunt happened to stop by and bring some groceries.  Those are bad days however as it just pisses off your parents and that is never a good thing.

Finally, the adults straighten up a little, your principal announces Michael Vick of the Philadelphia Eagles.  A tall man wearing an expensive suit walks up to the half court circle.  He starts talking about how de did all these bad things to dogs, how he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do, he wasn’t taking care of his family or kids, how he’s going to do better now. 

All of that sounds familiar, its the same thing you’ve heard adults say over and over when ever they are trying to get out of trouble.  They make promises and say nice crap like that to get the preacher, the parole officer, the counselor out of the house and moving on down the block.  As soon as the door slams behind them, they start acting the fool.

All the time this guy is talking you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Hell even if you get rich and famous you still might end up in prison. But look at those rocks that guy has in his ear.  Those diamonds have to be as big as his eyes almost.  Shit, each of those diamonds must cost more than my parents car when it was new.”

…….

I watched the first episode of the Michael Vick project the other night. 

The word "project" in the title indicates that we are meant to take this seriously (its meaningless use in "The Rachel Zoe Project" notwithstanding). It suggests hard work and the possibility of transformation. That the subject of the series is also one of its producers is worth noting but also par for the course in the new reality we call "reality." ~LA Times

I have had to do some pretty nasty jobs over the years, and this was no where near as bad in comparison, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.  The whole time I was watching I kept seeing these talking head clips of Michael Vick and Marcus Vick.

Both brothers played in the NFL.  By the accounts of the Michael Vick project, Marcus helped to be the father figure for Michael’s kids while Michael was locked up in prison.

Both brothers wear huge diamond earrings in the ears.  I mean large, Ivana Trump would be envious. 

Now, I could care less about Michael Vick’s money.  I do not care that he was successful, that he made a lot of money, etc.  My point here is not about the money he made nor in this article about how he spent it, even though bankrolling a dog fighting ring comprised of criminals and drug dealers is pretty low.

But I’m watching this show and thinking about what the kids that listen to him speak are going to think when they are watching him, listening to him, weighing in the balance the things that he has done and the rewards he has received.

There’s a reason why drug dealers spend money on clothes, on bling, on cars, etc.  Its marketing.  They are marketing themselves to kids saying, drugs make me money, money gives me power, money gives me things that my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t.  Money makes me cool.  Drugs make me cool.  That is the marketing message that drug dealers convey, re-enforce, and build upon.

So when Michael Vick, ex-con, walks into a school sporting expensive clothes and wearing massive diamond earrings in his ears, he’s marketing himself as successful. 

They say you have to dress for success.  Michael Vick is general is attempting to regain his past glory, glory that was earned at the same time he was committing despicable crimes against nature and dragging his friends and relatives down with him at the same time.  I can understand the dressing up, but sporting the bling at an event where he is essentially trying to teach kids a lesson, teach them not to make the mistakes he made when he is WEARING the SPOILS of his past illicit accomplishments seems like a mistake.  It seems like something that is going to SPOIL THE MESSAGE.

I recognize that Michael Vick probably thought this was a good style.  Hell, it may not be a bad looking style at all.  And after watching him dress slightly on the thuggy side for years before his crimes were revealed, I understand that this may just be an expression of the mental image that he has of himself.

Ergo, He has not changed his own mental image of who he is.  Ergo at least on the superficial level, he has not changed, entirely.  (I do think he has changed somewhat, but I’m not going to go overboard with how much he has changed).

Help the Kids

I do not want to see Michael Vick in the NFL anymore, because I do not want to see him do additional damage.  That said, I hope that I can appeal to his own greed at a minimum.  If you want to be successful again, if you want to make the big bucks again, if you want to earn enough so you can feel like this is behind you at least . . . .

TAKE THE ROCKS OUT OF YOUR EARS, SELL THEM AND DONATE THE PROCEEDS TO HUNGRY CHILDREN

Don’t wear them to events where you are talking about discipline and making mistakes.  Kids are not going to see the mistakes when you are wearing the rewards.

Vick wearing the massive diamond earrings on the ride home from prison.  He must have either worn the diamonds to prison and put them in when he checked out, or his wife brought them to him and he put them in for the ride home, even before he saw his own kids.

Crowd listening to Michael Vick at the Boys & Girls Club of Virginia where he had his first job after prison.

Even at the Boys & Girls Club where he’s been going since he was a little kid himself, he’s wearing the diamond earrings that could probably put one of those boys through college for a year, if not 4.

Appeal to Michael Vick’s handlers, if you want to help Michael Vick, even if you don’t give a damn about kids, dogs, the NFL or Michael Vick, at least fix the image so that the message Michael Vick conveys when he is acting on stage in front of kids is not completely negated.  Go back and talk to Michael Vick’s former handlers during the trial.  He did not sport the diamonds when he went in for sentencing, now is not the time to do it either.

If Michael Vick runs into a burning barn and rescues a few hundred dogs harbored in a dog fighting ring single handedly, things might be different, but so far all Michael Vick has done is throw a few passes and run a few yards.  All of the public speeches he has given so far have been 100% compromised.  He needs to start over again and do it right.  Do right by those kids, don’t reinforce all the things that led Michael Vick himself astray in the first place.

Appeal to Michael Vick’s family, the same sycophants and enablers that surrounded Michael Vick in the past are still present, just not as close.  Don’t be fooled by the mock awards from the Eagles or polls from BET.

That Vick’s Philadelphia teammates recently voted him the Ed Block Courage Award, for players who "exemplify commitment to the principles of sportsmanship and courage," seems to indicate that it is, as does a BET online poll in which 85% of those responding agreed that the quarterback had already done enough to "repair his image." It also indicates that the likely audience for this show is already on the star’s side. ~ LA Times

True enough, I’d prefer that Michael Vick would just go live a hermits life somewhere where he can’t do more damage.  Short of that, I’d prefer he work as a monk traveling the earth doing good deeds, but that’s not going to happen, is it?  So please help him see a new image of himself, or at least convince him that he needs to portray a different image publicly.  Just because Michael Vick has influence over kids, it doesn’t mean that he should USE that influence.  If Vick can’t do right by kids, at least help him to fake it.  Doing no harm, should be the first goal.  So far he is doing it wrong.

Related posts:

1. Let’s Not Forget About the Kids that Michael Vick Has Un-Inspired
2. CBS Miami Interviews Michael Vick After Humane Society speech to Kids

Video Clip (where Vick also pledges to continue making these speeches for the next 10 years)

Michael Vick spoke out against an illegal blood sport he once participated in to Miami’s children; Vick spoke to Overtown Youth Monday as part of the Humane Society’s campaign to end dog fighting.
Vick, now the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, served an 18-month sentence in jail after pleading guilty to federal dog fighting charges because of his involvement in a dog fighting ring.
Now, he’s on a mission to educate and warn youths against participating in dog fighting.
He said it was a series of bad choices that got him in trouble and the consequences that followed: "I stayed involved in things that I was never supposed to be involved in. That was my downfall."
Vick says nowadays his priority is helping children make better choices for themselves. These youths are about the same age Vick was when he got involved in dog fighting.
"I want to contribute; I never thought about doing this before I was incarcerated, before my situation happened. I want to turn lives around. I want to help kids believe that they can achieve and succeed."
When he played for the Falcons, Vick said, he would go home every week to fight dogs.
"For what reason, I don’t know to this day," he said in September. "Something so pointless."
Now he is a spokesman for the humane society, and goes around the country talking to children.

Source CBS 4 in Miami

Related posts:

1. Michael Vick Talks to Kids About Getting Caught Wearing Diamond Earrings Larger than his Ear Lobes

On Sunday, a team of 11 Red Star Animal Emergency Services responders from the American Humane Association will return to a shelter near St. Louis to help care for and socialize some 500 dogs that were rescued in a July dogfighting raid, the biggest in U.S. history, which spanned Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas. This news comes on the heels of guilty pleas from Robert Hackman, Teddy Kiriakidis, Ronald Creach and Michael Morgan entered Monday to conspiracy and other crimes, admitting their roles in breeding, trafficking, fighting and killing pit bulls in a lucrative dogfighting network, the Associated Press reports. A fifth co-defendant, Jack Ruppel, pled guilty Sept. 4.

Humane responders take on task of socializing 500 dogs from raid – Paw Print Post: A community for Dog, Cat, and Pet Owners – USATODAY.com

Related posts:

1. Michael Vick’s Abused Dogs on Dr Phil – Voice Your Opinion!
2. Feeding Rescued Dogs to People – Bad Idea – Already Happening?
3. Michael Vick’s Dogs Heading West

Michael Vick’s dogs will be receiving some media attention today, helping to focus the spotlight on some of the victims of his crimes as opposed to shining the glory of the lights on the criminal as has been done all summer long by most news and media outlets.

Dr Phil’s looking for feedback – Should Michael Vick have been reinstated?

“Do you live in the Philadelphia area?  Do you feel that Michael Vick should have been reinstated to the NFL? Yes or No?  Why do you feel this way?  If you think Michael Vick deserves a second chance to play professional football, please let us know, and give us your reasons why.”

If you want Dr Phil and his audience no how you feel about this situation, leave your comments here.

September 15, 2009 : 8:44 AM ET

On Wednesday, Sept. 16, some five million to seven million viewers of the popular “Dr. Phil” talk show will get a look at the Vicktory dogs at Best Friends Animal Society.

A segment of the show will be devoted to NFL quarterback Michael Vick, who recently suited up with the Philadelphia Eagles and returned to the football field after serving a 23-month sentence on a federal dogfighting conspiracy charge.

But more importantly, the segment will feature some of Vick’s victims — 22 of whom came to Best Friends in January 2008 to heal from the trauma they suffered at the hands of Vick and others in his dogfighting ring.

I’m a lover…

“What is important to us is that people consider the dogs,” says Ed Fritz, campaign specialist for ‘Pit Bulls: Saving America’s Dog,’ one of four Best Friends’ campaigns aimed at reaching the goal of No More Homeless Pets. “There’s a lot of talk about Michael Vick and if he deserves a second chance, but no one is talking about the dogs. Don’t these dogs deserve a second chance? As long as Vick is playing with the NFL, it’s up to us to support the victims of his cruelty. Michael Vick didn’t serve one day in prison for animal cruelty. He was punished for dogfighting conspiracy.”

Vick has apologized publicly, but many question his sincerity.

“To our knowledge, neither Vick, his handlers, nor the NFL has called to ask how the dogs are doing,” wrote Best Friends co-founder Francis Battista in a moving commentary in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “And these very real, living victims of the crime are nowhere to be found in the continuing debate about Vick’s rehabilitation.” Read the entire commentary here.

Related posts:

1. Just a brief Glimpse into what People Like Michael Vick do to Dogs
2. Michael Vick’s Dogs Heading West
3. Don’t Let Barking Dogs Lie, Train Them

I was reading an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News today.  The article managed to sum up a number of items that seem to result in the most arguments here in our comments section, which have been upgraded a bit so that you can now click on a persons name and view other comments they have left in other threads or articles.

The Dallas News article ends with the following question essentially, “Does it matter if Michael Vick showed remorse?  and if so has he shown Enough remorse yet?”

Now personally, I view the situation differently.  Michael Vick lied about dog fighting for years and years, even after his home was raided and he was caught by the feds, even after the Falcons and the NFL commissioner spoke with them he still lied and they all bought it at the time.  This tells me one thing about Michael Vick, he is good at telling lies.  So with that in mind, I personally don’t care how much remorse he ‘shows’, because he has a long long history of telling lies and making people believe him.  Could be he’s a great actor or could be he’s a sociopath and doesn’t know the difference between a lie or the truth.  I don’t care either way, it is still just a lie being told by Michael Vick.

However, I don’t represent everyone but a long shot, so what do you think?

[poll=2]

Watch CBS Videos Online

Please share your thoughts here, but also stop over at the Dallas Morning News and let them know, or drop an email over to Mark Davis the reporter of this article at mdavis@wbap.com

A jail term and NFL consequences are one issue. Public opinion is another. What do we think of Vick’s return? Does he deserve the honor of putting on an NFL uniform ever again? In an NFL that features the occasional wife-beater, whoremonger and drug user, we must prioritize: Where does animal cruelty fit on the indignation spectrum? From the beginning, I’ve found a demographic component in the varying answers to that question. Many in the black community, and many people of all races who live in rural areas, still wonder why this is a big deal at all. I guess it depends on whether the dogs in your life sleep in your bed or in the back yard. But there are enough dog lovers in America to give Vick a rough ride as he travels with the Eagles this year. At Eagles road games, look for picketers outside the stadium and taunts inside, whether he’s playing or not. Dec. 6 should be an interesting exercise as Vick returns to Atlanta, where he rose to NFL prominence. Meanwhile, I will wait for that Humane Society PSA campaign and other evidence that his remorse is real. Mark Davis is heard weekdays from 8:30 to 11 a.m. on WBAP-AM, News/Talk 820. His e-mail address is mdavis@wbap.com.

Mark Davis: Sorting out questions about Michael Vick | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Opinion: Viewpoints

No related posts.

I just finished previewing the show produced by the Discovery for Animal Planet titled Animal Witness: The Michael Vick Case.  It did an excellent job of walking through the the timeline of the case, interviewing the investigators of the case and delving into the background of dog fighting.  The show will air on August 24th at 10pm eastern and then repeat at several different times on Animal Planet after that.  It is rated TV-14 for violence.

The show goes in depth into many of the dog fighting practices employed by Michael Vick and his partners.  The details and timeline of events help to paint a very clear picture of when and how things happened.

The documentary does an even better job of detailing the rehabilitation of the Dogs that Michael Vick bred and trained to fight in dog fighting rings across the South East.  The rehabilitation of Vick’s abused dogs has been a topic that we have not covered here at SackVick.net in a great deal of detail.  This documentary walks through the process that was used and even uncovers some interesting new findings as the rehab groups and efforts involved had to learn how to deal with dozens of dogs all at once.  This definitely makes for an uplifting side of the story as you watch just how successful this process was.

That said, this documentary is targeted towards Animal Planet.  It does not delve into the human toll, the suffering and the death of people involved in the dog fighting rings and partnerships associated with Michael Vick.  It is eye opening for the toll on the dogs and animals, some of the primary victims, but does not delve into the victims that were human and were indirectly harmed by the illegal gambling pools, drugs and weapons rings, and other activities that plagued these events and groups, resulting in many more serious crimes and at least one unsolved murder.

It is a good documentary that definitely highlights information that has not been presented before and not been presented as well or as completely in relation to Michael Vick’s dogs and the nature of Pitt Bulls in general.  I would like to see Discovery dig further into these related crimes because many people often just offer up the defense that all Michael Vick did was torture and kill his own dogs.  They don’t recognize the other crimes that were committed against actual people as a result of the illegal activity and criminals that were involved in Michael Vick’s dog fighting rings.

Related posts:

1. Judge Rewards the First and Most Cooperative Witness in the Vick Case – Is that Fair?
2. Pro Animal –Anti Vick Protest This Sunday
3. Falcons owner Shocked by Witness Statements – Expects Plea Deal tonight