On Sunday, we reported that Giants running back Derrick Ward was present at the Latin Quarter night club on Friday night with receiver Plaxico Burress and linebacker Antonio Pierce.

A more accurate report would have been “New York police believe that Ward was present.”  As it turns out, New York police was wrong.

So why were they wrong?  As a league source tells us, NFL Security volunteered to the police that it “may have been” Ward with Burress and Pierce.  And so the NYPD concluded that Ward was there.

Apparently, NFL Security concluded that Ward was there because one of the security guards at the club said that a running back was with the other two.

But why would NFL Security give up Ward like that?  Maybe we don’t understand what the role of NFL Security is in matters of this nature, but we don’t think NFL Security should be implicating players based on hunches or assumptions.  

It since has come to light that Ahmad Bradshaw was the running back, and because it has been reported that Bradshaw will be interviewed by police, we assumed that Ward was in the clear.

But we also have heard that some members of the police department are still trying to interview Ward — even though other members of the police department have concluded that Ward no longer needs to be interviewed.  (Apparently, some members of the NYPD are freelancing on this one, in the hopes of getting their names in the Daily News).

So this whole thing has been a mess for Ward, who’s scheduled to be a free agent after the season, and who might have to deal with the still-lingering notion in some circles that he was at the scene of Plaxico’s pistol escapades.

He wasn’t, and it’s our understanding that because he wasn’t he has no intention of talking to the police about it.