Bias, Racism, Being a Jerk, and Abuse of Power
Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (wikimedia)
One of the biggest reasons why it’s extremely difficult to have a real conversation about race in the United States is that every imputation of a racial dynamic immediately becomes a defensive spat in which the white person in question starts denying that he “is” a “racist.” Now we see the Officer Crowley edition of the saga, as he explains that he once tried to save the life of a black man, so he must not be a racist. And of course the great thing about the contemporary United States is that the number of people who are so racist that they would willfully let a black man die rather than lift a finger to save him is extremely small. But that’s not at all the same as saying that African-Americans don’t suffer from negative implicit biases or explicit “profiling.”
Race, in other words, exists as a negative factor in people’s lives without there needing to be tons of cartoonish racists running around.
Meanwhile, note that racial motivations or there absence have really nothing to do with the nature of Officer Crowley’s misconduct. What happened basically is that Crowley accused Gates, whether for good reason or not, of breaking into his own home. Gates, pissed off, offended Crowley. At which point Crowley, even though he was now perfectly aware that Gates was not guilty of anything, decided to exact revenge by manipulating the situation to create a trumped-up disorderly conduct charge. That’s not professional policing, and it’s not a good use of the City of Cambridge’s law enforcement resources. That’s why the charges were dropped, and that’s why it’s fair to say that Crowley was acting stupidly racial issues aside.*
Meanwhile, we see here yet another instance of one of my favorite themes on this blog. The conservative movement, which never ever ever dedicates any time or energy to the problem of racial discrimination suffered by non-whites, thinks it’s very important to draw attention to the social crisis of white people burdened by accusations of racism.
* To consider a race-free instance, I was actually treated extremely rudely by an MPDC officer yesterday. I, wisely, just decided to not worry about it and move on. But suppose I’d decided to respond to him being rude by overreacting and blowing up at him. And then he decided to respond to me being rude by finding some pretext on which to arrest me. Neither the fact that the cop’s not a racist nor the fact that I had overreacted would make retaliating with a trumped-up charge the right way for the cop to respond.
197 Responses to “Bias, Racism, Being a Jerk, and Abuse of Power”
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July 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Says who? It is routine for cops to mess with people who piss them off by arresting them for “failure to obey a lawful order” or whatever they think they can stick. Piss them off during processing? They’ll move your paperwork to the bottom of the pile so you’ll be there an extra three hours or so. Somebody mouths off to the cops? Arrest him and all his friends so they’ll be mad at each other.
That is the reality of “professional policing,” whatever the abstract ideal might be. Cops are like bureaucrats with guns: passive aggressive defenders of prerogative who will punish you with bs.
The cop doesn’t have to be racist to arrest Gates, Gates is just a softer target for standard harassment because he’s a more vulnerable member of society.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Chris Rock did a funny bit about this several years ago. But seriously, you make a good point, good advice to take it in stride within limits of course. I never did, however, understand when people said, “Thank you” after getting a ticket.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
One debate on this with statistics, Matt. Anytime, anywhere.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Or better yet, get whooped by the Queen herself, Heather MacDonald of City Journal.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Jeez, the second really good post by Matt in one day. What’s the world coming to?
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
“Spring 2001″
Yep. No problem with racial profiling after the spring of 2001.
Nope.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
All true. But who hasn’t seen this attitude among law enforcement? Racial profiling may be the chocolate (!) shell, but entitlement is the creamy center. Most have this notion that they’re due deference beyond the bare minimum required to do their job.
They’re not. The mentality of privilege starts with double-parking and ends with shit-storms like this one.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
DonkeyBoy,
Ooh, imagine that, you found a wealthy, white anti-intellectual who doesn’t think that racial profiling is a problem. Shocking. We must have been totally wrong, and all of my minority friends who’ve been hassled by the Little Rock PD for DWB/L must be lying through their teeth.
God, I’m glad you pointed out just how wrong-headed our loathing of institutional racism was.
PS. I read (ok, skimmed, mostly) Ms. Mac Donald’s screed and I didn’t exactly see a plethora of statistics–maybe you can provide some?
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
JM:
POW! Right in the kisser. (She, a woman don’tcher fergit, has written many articles on this topic).
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
wow this thread has me so depressed about the state of mind of at least 20% of our country:
“President Obama Owes Sgt. James Crowey an Apology”
http://www.redstate.com/swamp_yankee/2009/07/23/outrage-president-obama-owes-sgt-james-crowey-and-apology/
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I won’t get into the obvious Freudian implications of characterizing Heather MacDonald as the “Queen”, rather than some gender-neutral honorific to describe her putative (but actually dubious) authority on race matters….oops, I guess I just did get into those Freudian implications. Please forgive me, they were quite impossible to ignore.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Wow, the comments on the Herald site are just out and out racist.
And yeah, if this had been a white professor, especially a conservative-libertarian white professor, the right would be howling about this right now.
On the other hand, this really doesn’t have much to do with racial profiling at all. The race aspect itself doesn’t even seem all that strong to me, I mean the cop knew Gates was a professor before the arrest; this just looks an everyday, common occurrence of a cop wildly exceeding his authority and acting criminally.
And *that’s* something we should be having a conversation about.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Meanwhile, we see here yet another instance of one of my favorite themes on this blog. The conservative movement, which never ever ever dedicates any time or energy to the problem of racial discrimination suffered by non-whites, thinks it’s very important to draw attention to the social crisis of white people burdened by accusations of racism.
A well know fact but very nicely put Matt.
The cop doesn’t have to be racist to arrest Gates, Gates is just a softer target for standard harassment because he’s a more vulnerable member of society.
Huh? A Harvard professor with easy access to lawyers and many famous friends is a soft target? Otherwise I agree with this point, but the only reason I can only think of him being a “soft target” because of his race since he’s pretty privileged in every other area of his life that I know of.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Part of the problem is that “racism” is considered a hanging offense, regardless of the severity. So, if it were clear that Officer Crowley was operating based on racial stereotypes, to many, perhaps even his employer, he would be no different than a cartoonish racist MY mentions are relatively rare.
The result is what we have now. Any accusations of racism, even the mildest kind, are met with a vigorous defense. So, we can’t have a rational discussion where one side admits that Gates was being a bit of a jerk, and the other side admits that Crowley was a bit of a jerk, and may have been acting from a racial stereotype. And we get the shouting match we have now.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
What happened basically is that Crowley accused Gates, whether for good reason or not, of breaking into his own home.
What utter horsesh*t. Matthew isn’t even able to get the most basic facts correct.
The CPD got a call that 2 men were breaking into the house. He responded and investigated. There is no evidence that he accused anyone of anything.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Sahu,
Sure I can. Racial profiling in federal prison system, effect size 0.0, largest in rural areas, smallest in urban areas, varies by composition of jury, white people discriminated against in the latter, effect size becomes smaller the better the sentencing and victimization methodology one uses. There’s a large meta-analysis, written in 2005, on Google Scholar that I have personally read. I know about the UCR, the NCVS, and a plethora of other crime surveys. I know Blacks are 7x more likely to commit murder than whites, and I have personally taken courses in the subject matter. Do you know this stuff, Mr. Smarty Pants?
Blah, blah, blah, traffic stops by incident, almost exactly coincident with offenses committed. (See the second article on the New Jersey Turnpike study they tried to hide once the information came out).
I’m really not going to go on.
And, by the way, you’re lying. That’s because you obviously didn’t read the article(s).
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm
MattY – thrice or twice or does it really matter winner of the Amanda Terkel Award for Intelllectual Honesty – does it again. What he fails to note is that’s there’s an actual multi-million dollar industry dedicated to white racism. “Non-profits” like the SPLC, diversity trainers, and on and on. No such industry exists to oppose the “good” kind of racism.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I am reminded of this video wherein the cyclist, of course was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct or some such nonsense. It’s how they do.
Also, Officer Crowley may not be a racist, his attempt to save Reggie Lewis’ life is proof of that, but he is kind of an asshole. And a whiny one at that. He won’t apologize, huh? Guy talks smack about his mama and he thinks he has the right to arrest him? Man, NWA had it right, didn’t they?
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
“POW! Right in the kisser.”
That’s more like a weak, kitten-esque bat in the meatiest part of the arm. The report she cites (And let’s be clear, ONE report, obliquely cited, still isn’t a “plethora of statistics”), while interesting, doesn’t even prove that NJ cops aren’t racially profiling, much less, as she says, that racial profiling doesn’t exist, or disprove anything MY said.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“And yeah, if this had been a white professor, especially a conservative-libertarian white professor, the right would be howling about this right now.”
I’m not sure they would have. To me, the overriding aspect of this is the abuse of authority, and much of the right doesn’t mind that (though that doesn’t apply to the LIBERTARIAN right, of course).
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
“The CPD got a call that 2 men were breaking into the house. He responded and investigated. There is no evidence that he accused anyone of anything.”
Yeah, sorry, if you respond to a burglary call, find someone at the scene, tell them that’s what you’re there for and then start with the questioning, the implication is clear.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
To Donkey Benjamin,
I just read (most) of the Heather Macdonald piece, and I thought it was singularly unimpressive. If I read it correctly, black people themselves want *more* policing to deal with drug dealers and drug-related crime. But this is not the same as racial profiling; indeed, it’s what’s called “community policing”, and in fact, from what I understand, reduces racial profiling. If police spend a lot of time in the neighborhood, then they don’t sweep up random minorities, since they know the folks in the neighborhood personally.
Then there’s a critique of measurements of racial profiling. I agree that profiling is difficult to measure, and perhaps the extant studies are flawed … but is there a single study to the contrary? If there’s a lot of suspect evidence of profiling, and *zero* evidence that there is no racial profiling, well, I’m going to believe the ACLU on this one. I stopped reading after that because I judged my time more valuable. If I’m missing something, could you please fill me in on why you thought Macdonald’s piece was so great? Thanks.
S
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
In “Crash,” Matt Dillon pulled Thandie Newton out of a burning car. Still a racist.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Abstract:”Investigations of racial bias have emphasized stereotypes and other beliefs as central explanatory mechanisms and as legitimating discrimination. In recent theory and research, emotional prejudices have emerged as another, more direct predictor of discrimination. A new comprehensive meta-analysis of 57 racial attitude-discrimination studies finds a moderate relationship between overall attitudes and discrimination. Emotional prejudices are twices as closely related to racial discrimination as stereotypes and beliefs are. Moreover, emotional prejudices are closely related to both observed and self-reported discrimination, whereas stereotypes and beliefs are related only to self-reported discrimination. Implications for justifying discrimination are discussed.”
Link to actual paper.
In other words, actual discrimination is more related to personality factors, like, is Officer Crowley an asshole? rather than racial stereotypes or beliefs. If Officer Crowley treated Gates badly, it’s because he was an asshole, and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS RACE. But to certain personality types, like Gates’ or other leftists, would be likely to self-report discrimination anyway, EVEN IF THAT WAS NOT THE DIRECT MOTIVATION FOR THE ACTION.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@ David B.
He only did so so he could finger her some more.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Matt Dillon’s character in Crash is a perfect example. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT ACT ON THEIR INTRINSIC RACISM, when it comes time to execute their jobs.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I agree with Matt, especially about the racial motivations. Blacks can also behave in a racially motivated way where they are buying into the same stereotypes that black man=criminal. It is not the exclusive province of white people. Black people can also hold on to their purse a little tighter around a group of young black men. I rarely see that very obvious point mentioned in discussions. If a black cop would have been involved in the Gates dispute, the same thing could have happened. It certainly wouldn’t mean that there was no racial angle here. Buying into widespread stereotypes is the norm here, and it doesn’t mean that everyone is a racist.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I think this is a bad incident to start with ‘the cops are racist’ teachable moment stuff. I read the cop’s police report, and in the report he cites that the whole thing happened at about one in the afternoon and in the presence of multiple witnesses. He might be dumb enough to make up a story like that that will be contradicted by the witnesses,…, but I doubt it. I bet at the end that the *sshole, and there obviously was one, of the incident is going to turn out to be Gates. It does seem that Gates was returning from a very long trip (from China I think), so he was probably very tired and jet lagged, so when the cop asked him for his drivers license (which after checking out the address and matching it to the house, he would have left), he flew off the handle.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“If Officer Crowley treated Gates badly, it’s because he was an asshole, and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS RACE. ”
I can agree with that, at least in a “benefit of the doubt” sort of way.
Moreover, MY does as well- “Meanwhile, note that racial motivations or there absence have really nothing to do with the nature of Officer Crowley’s misconduct.” All he has said is that “Race, in other words, exists as a negative factor in people’s lives without there needing to be tons of cartoonish racists running around.”
So why, exactly, are you asking him to debate “with statistics” a point you agree on? And why are you linking to someone who’s saying something else entirely?
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Now we see the Officer Crowley edition of the saga, as he explains that he once tried to save the life of a black man, so he must not be a racist.
Looks like another appropriate time to cite this.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Just about everybody a cop deals with over the course of the day is having one of the worse days of their life. It tends to leave them a little…touchy.
I’ve found that if you demonstrate a standard level of civility and humanity to the police in your dealings with them, they are so grateful and surprised that they more often become quite docile.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
“he cites that the whole thing happened at about one in the afternoon and in the presence of multiple witnesses.”
The multiple witnesses were outside the house. So the meat of the officer’s claims are unsubstantiated.
…and will remain so, seeing as how the CPD dropped the charges.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
DonkeyPunchee,
Ok, you want to play, let’s play.
Here is a link to a page citing the now-infamous Maryland “drug-trafficker” profile which lead to the fun statistic that, while African-Americans constituted only 15% of all motorists, they constituted 73% of motorists stopped and searched. (and before you try to critique the source as biased, please consider the obvious anti-profiling stance of your own source and drink a nice cup of STFU).
Then there’s this fairly balanced media report featuring this salient breakdown of 2008 traffic stops in Columbia, MO:
“There were 12,268 white people and 3,914 black people stopped during traffic stops in 2008. According to the statistics, 704 white people were searched and 747 black people were searched.” (For the less math-inclined among us, that means that just under 6% of whites who were pulled over were searched, as compared to over 19% of blacks. In other words, black motorists were searched over 3 times as frequently)
I could go on, but I really need to get back to what they pay me for, which, thankfully, doesn’t involve embarrassing small-minded racist twits like you (that’s just a hobby).
Oh, and I wasn’t lying. I said that I skimmed those articles, and I did.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Uh, yeah. More poorly-written crap from a definitions quibbler.
How potent.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
If the Police Sergeant is a racist it would be easy to prove. File a FOIA request with the Cambridge PD an examine his personnel file. If he is a racist this will be apparent by examining his work record.
Or you could us the Yglesias method – if a progressive College Professor and a prgressive President point their fingers at a cop and “yell” racist pig. It must be true.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Al is reduced to some particularly absurd hair-splitting today.
In other words, actual discrimination is more related to personality factors, like, is Officer Crowley an asshole? rather than racial stereotypes or beliefs.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
And it doesn’t even address the issue I raised, which was over dumbass’ head.
I’ll try to be less subtle in future.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
On the Sen. Boxer thread, he was pretending he couldn’t tell the difference between always and never.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Hilariously, 24Ahead shows up on this thread.
You’d almost think that he’s permanently on the defensive about being a racist birther asshole, and feels compelled to comment on the topic.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Sahu,
Here is a link to a page citing the now-infamous Maryland “drug-trafficker” profile which lead to the fun statistic that, while African-Americans constituted only 15% of all motorists, they constituted 73% of motorists stopped and searched.
This the kind of facile statistic that damns you. You must be stupid. Do you not realize, that this could be easily explained, if the kind of cars that African-Americans drive, are more likely to possess drugs, that they are more likely to be drug-traffickers? (Or any other auxiliary properties of the “poor” and “criminal” — your liberal explanation, remember! — that cops are trained to look out for, say those who are recklessly speeding.) Do you stop a hoop-ti or a Prius on the Interstate if you’re a cop looking for drugs? If African-Americans are poor, and thus are driving broke-ass cars, when other cops radio in “Uhrr…be on the lookout for a Blue Cadillac, 1979, traveling northbound towards your location..over”, do you not realize that this will mean that African-Americans will be stopped disproportionately to their population size on those highways?
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Wow, learn to read. The “emotional prejudges” are not “being an asshole.” The term “emotional prejudges” is used, as most people would figure out just fine on their own, to emotional reactions that demonstrate racial prejudice. This is differentiated from ideological beliefs that have a racial component. The distinction is between emotional and cognitive, between attitudes and beliefs, between feelings and ideas – not between racism and asshole-ism.
Comprehension FAIL, Donkey.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
A discussion of potentially relevant (in the event of a 43 US 1983 suit) Federal case law here: Duran v. City of Douglas, by bmaz at firedoglake. com.
The nickle summary. “Contempt of cop” arrests are legally infirm:
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Bluesmoke:
“Or you could us the Yglesias method – if a progressive College Professor and a prgressive President point their fingers at a cop and “yell” racist pig. It must be true.”
Actually, Matt says nearly the opposite. His issue with the cop does not hang on race but rather on the policeman’s sense of intitlement. Cops are not allowed to arrest people for boorish or uncivil behavior. The police officer did not prove he’s a racist but he did provide evidence he’s a self important moron.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Do you think the Donkey realizes that he has now acknowledged the existence of racial profiling, and is now justifying it?
I don’t. Based on his fumbling of the paper he linked to, I don’t think he can even tell the difference.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
As did Barack Obama last night. Reading the hysterical attacks on him in the right wing media, you’d have no idea that he neither called anyone a racist, not stated that race was involved, but in fact, explicitly stated that he didn’t know if race was involved.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
@j mct: I think the cop is being dishonest. But even if his account is true, he’s still wrong. He merely got caught doing what he does _all the time_ when he thinks he can get away with it, but only now is getting negative attention for it. Gates got arrested because he wasn’t fulfilling his “role,” which was to be subservient to the officer. It’s conceivable that in other situations, with other people, the police officer would have been the one to defer to a citizen, but in this case the officer felt he had to assert his authority over Gates.
In fact, to push the issue even further, I’m willing to say that the problem here is that the police officer was not acting in the subservient role to which he should have adopted when dealing with a homeowner. _The officer’s recourse should have been to defuse the situation by leaving_, and perhaps passive-aggressively acting uncooperative in his future interactions with Gates. The officer, being unwilling to adopt this role, felt that the recourse to facing non-subservient behavior from Gates was to arrest him (because doing otherwise would have made him look bad). At worst, _if the officer is telling the truth_, Gates simply provoked the officer into overreacting. And even if this is true, the officer is still wrong.
So even the officer’s own spin on the scenario makes him look bad.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Yeah, sorry, if you respond to a burglary call, find someone at the scene, tell them that’s what you’re there for and then start with the questioning, the implication is clear.
The implication is clear? What’s this “clear” implication, exactly?
Or, let’s turn it wround another way – what exactly IS a cop supposed to do when he responds to the burglary call? Not ask any questions? Twiddle his thumbs? I’m really curious how a cop in left-wing fantasy land is supposed to act when called to a potential burglary scene.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
When you began this theme I kind of suspected you weren’t going to find a huge number of examples to back up your point. But it appears that I was wrong.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:42 pm
DonkeyPunchee @40:
So, let me get this straight. Your defense of racial profiling boils down to, “black people are more likely to commit crimes, so it’s ok to hassle all black people.”
I have profound problems with that premise (which primarily boil down to the often-wide gap between patterns of crime commission, and the very different, although not totally unrelated pattern of criminal punishment) but mostly it sounds to me like you are just using your own racism to buttress your support for racially-motivated patterns of law enforcement.
We get it. You’re a big racist who likes to try to obscure that fact behind a highly-selective reading of the statistics available. I’m just baffled why you think that that should enhance your credibility.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
NPR’s report included a truth-in-advertising version of a “disorderly conduct” charge that I’ve witnessed a number of times: “disrespectful to cop”.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
What misconduct is Matt referring to? Matt says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Well, I’ve lived long enough to see the cops focus on expensive cars (because drug dealers are egomaniacs) and poor cars (disposable for drug mules) and ordinary cars (because wily drug smugglers want to ‘fit in’). I’m guessing the reason they use is fitted to the car they stop.
I will thank Benjamin for making it plain how his feelings run. It’s always fun to be able to skip over some of the comments.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Not sure how you or anyone else can know what “basically happened” based on the scarce information made public – what, if anything, Gates said and did other than providing his ID has not appeared in any account I’ve seen. That goes double for your state-of-mind conclusions such as “offended,” “decided to exact revenge,” etc. You plainly lack the information necessary to draw such conclusions.
If there is some kind of implication in the actual, detailed facts of what happened that the officer had racist motives, Gates could bring a section 1983 civil rights action against him, which would allow him both to vindicate himself and to obtain a little free scratch, generally considered a winning combo. I’m sure there are numerous top-notch plaintiff’s attorneys who would salivate at that sort of publicity. Gates could obtain excellent representation at no cost at all to himself if his case has any merit.
I don’t see what’s the matter with allowing this to play out in the courts, and if it does not, to just allow it to pass without drawing conclusions that aren’t really warranted by the facts.
In that line, it was totally improper for Obama to comment on the matter at his presser. A public figure should not comment on the merits of pending cases – and there’s no doubt about the fact that litigation is VERY possible and a lawyer like Obama should know very well that this is a pending case for that purpose. (If Gates should decide to sue now, after Obama’s comments, the officer’s attorneys would make a ton of hay out of the prejudicial effect of Obama’s remarks. They would greatly complicate litigation of the matter.)
The ONLY exception that would justify a President’s comment on the merits of pending litigation would be if there were some independent reason that he NEEDED to comment on the case, e.g., to send a diplomatic signal.
In the past it has been primarily a practice of brainless Republican Presidents like Reagan and Shrub to comment on pending cases. Democrats tend to have the gumption to refrain from taking cheap political shots just because a matter happens to be in the headlines and in the public’s attention.
Throw in the fact that Obama’s comments were rather intemporate, and this was a genuine gaffe. Obama had a couple of doozy gaffes as a candidate, but this is his first significant Presidential gaffe to my knowledge.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Sahu, my understanding of vehicle search protocol is that probable cause plays a large role in the officer’s decision to search a car. Could it be that the black motorists who were stopped and searched were driving cars that lacked proper tags or that the drivers had a record of criminal activity that popped up once the the car was pulled over? I have a friend with a minor possession with intent to distribute charge/conviction on his record, and he’s been searched twice by the traffic cops. Could it also be that a disproportionate number of stopped and searched black motorists are under the influence when they’re stopped? And why were they stopped? Did white motorists tend to get nabbed for speeding or other routine violations, while a disproportionate number of black motorists were being pulled over for driving cars that might have been stolen or that matched the description of a car involved in a crime? Too bad those numbers/circumstances weren’t covered.
But I don’t know what any of this has to do with Gates. He wasn’t “racially profiled.” This is a sideshow – asshole professor meets asshole cop, hilarity ensues. Something shiny to wave in front of the thin skinned far left and the culture warmongering far right. It’s a good discussion, though. I live in a gentrifying part of a large city, and while we’ve largely eradicated crime in this area, I have friends who live in some “still-transitioning” areas who sure would like to see some more police in their neck of the woods. All of them are good libs, but there’s definitely a racial component, with the perception being that the black and more economically challenged original residents are preying on the white younger yuppies. The perception there is that the police actually prefer to look the other way, and that they sympathize more with the more down market crowd. Kind of a class thing, I guess – which maybe played a role in the Gates/Crowley kerfuffle.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Wow, the comments on the Herald site are just out and out racist.
They’re just trying to keep up with the columnists on the Herald’s pages.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Crowley arrested Gates knowing Gates was in his own home; thus, Crowley exercised very bad judgment, at the least.
A personal note: I met Gates and had a brief conversation with him at a conference years ago. Gentle but firm, the man has presence. He exudes “teacher.” I really can’t see him as a threatening figure in any way.
Bluesmoke: Obama didn’t say Crowley was a racist; he used the word “stupid” to characterize the incident.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Forget it. Joe from Lowell is too stupid to realize what he’s actually saying. If illegal guns are disproportionately found amongst African-Americans, then it racist and “profiling” to use that variable to separate criminals from non-criminals, even though race never came in as the instrumental variable. Sorry, there are correlations upon correlations in the data, and no amount of whining is going to change that.
Sahu, I have nothing more to say to you. Let the studies and the facts say what they may. Rest assured, I’m a HUGE, HUGE racist. Time to go pickle some more black people for my ghoulish stew.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
And of course the great thing about the contemporary United States is that the number of people who are so racist that they would willfully let a black man die rather than lift a finger to save him is extremely small.
That’s only one of the great things. The other is that we’re so fat.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Yglesias is just pissed that middle class civil servants no longer fear Harvard.
Love that Gates works in the title the documentary he was working on in every interview he gives.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Question for the Donkey: Approximately how many blog posts have you written in your life bemoaning clear-cut examples of racism against non-whites?
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Yes, conservatives are doing all they can to stoke up the fire and increase the hostility of the debate. But it wasn’t the right-wing who decided that this was all about race. Gates himself said that it wasn’t about him, it was about black men in America. I’m not so sure that it is. Gates is a mild-mannered professor type who lives in an upscale neighborhood and who’s never been in trouble with the law. So maybe he was genuinely surprised to discover how the cops often deal with people. He probably didn’t know that his neighbor called the police and reported that he was breaking into his own home (but apparently *she’s* not guilty of racially profiling her own neighbor, a famous Harvard professor who she probably should have recognized–”She probably did the right thing,” Gates said). So he decided to jump to conclusions that the officer was basing his suspicion on race. But now that Gates has been arrested and decided that it’s “part of the narrative”, he can’t back down and admit that he jumped to conclusions, that it wouldn’t have been so hard to show some ID.
I’m a 30-ish white male who’s never been in trouble with the law and I’ve been treated plenty worse than this by cops. How is Gates so sure that this is all about his race? If we want to change this conversation to a conversation about over-aggressive police who can’t handle mild confrontations without arresting people, I think that’s a great idea. But that’s not what Gates wants it to be about, so MY shouldn’t act like that’s what it’s about.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Love that Gates works in the title the documentary he was working on in every interview he gives.
Yes, it certainly seems that if you make an infinite number of complaints one of them will work.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I like the idea of releasing or requesting tapes of the Gates/Crowley exchange – some enterprising media outlet has probably already made the FOIA request (not sure if such requests can be made for such recordings). The question is, will that change the opinion of those who’ve faithfully defended Gates up to this point? I mean the guy is on record saying that he was not yelling and could not have caused a disturbance due to a bronchial infection. If there’s a tape of the “exchange” or some of the witnesses come forward and contest this, would that detract from Gates’ credibility in the matter? Speaking for myself, if a tape were to come out that matches Gates’ account of events (that he wasn’t being disorderly) I’d drop any/all defense of the cop and be in favor of his dismissal. My guess is that more info will come out, and Gates’ will not look good. Better for folks to move along. Don’t want Gates dragging things down. He’s a liability.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
re Al at 47:
I’m really curious how a cop in left-wing fantasy land is supposed to act when called to a potential burglary scene
At a minimum, once he has determined that no burglary took place, he is supposed to not arrest the guy who turned out not to be a burglar.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
(continuing from 65:)
Even if the guy acts like a jerk. Because acting like a jerk, in your own home, even to a cop, is not a crime.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
re: Brillo
What could “He’s a liability” possibly mean?
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
He’s supposed to knock on the door and ask to see some ID.
He’s also supposed to understand that this is going to be seen as an obnoxious intrusion if the person he encounters is the homeowner. He’s supposed to demonstrate sufficient judgement to realize that a 5′8″, old-looking man with a cane and a perfectly good ID should be treated in the manner befitting a respectable citizen. He’s also supposed to be sufficiently professional to avoid getting into a screaming match with the understandably-disgruntled homeowner, getting pissed off, and arranging a pretextual arrest to show who’s boss.
This is a situation that called for some delicacy by the boys in blue working to demonstrate Antonin Scalia’s “new professionalism.” It seems to have been handled with all of the delicacy of an ad for a monster truck show.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The idea that Crowley “trumped up” these charges is ridiculous. The disorderly conduct was witnessed by a handful of police officers (a group that included at least one black officer and at least one hispanic officer) and members of the public, as it occurred outside of Gates’s home.
Being arrested on a disorderly conduct charge basically means “pissing off a cop in public.” Getting someone to step outside (especially when there’s a crowd of lollygaggers) is a way to make the arrest. And in some jurisdictions, refusing to step outside can get you arrested for disobeying an order. Nice.
So spare us the fucking sanctimony.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I heard this cop on the radio saying his only concern while working was for his own personal safety.
Seems like the same mentality that leads troops to call in an air strike on an apartment building they’re afraid to enter…
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Wow, lots of really stupid stuff about cop’s sense of ‘entitlement’. You’d be right that ‘contempt of cop’ is a punishable offense pretty much everywhere, if not on the books, and is generally punishable by a trip to the police station, if not by fine or imprisonment. There’s a reason why.
If something bad happens, the police will get blamed, and they should be. If you want to hold cops responsible for something bad happening, you cannot do that without granting them ‘power’, they come together. The power cops have, is that they say ‘do this or that, or not’, that you do it, as long as it’s not that unreasonable, and the cop gets the benefit of any doubt. If the cops allowed people to argue with them every time they said ‘that block is closed, you cannot walk there’, everyone would and his job would become impossible. Then cops couldn’t make themselves master of the situation by using their mouths, they’d have to use their guns, or at least threaten to use them, which is not what the cops want, lot’s of police procedure is what is so the guns stay in their holsters as much as possible, or what everyone else should want.
If the cops let people get away with contempt of cop, every large city in the US would be chaotic beyond belief. It seems, though it may turn out to not be true, that Gates committed contempt of cop rather flagrantly, and in a very public setting, and he got the usual punishment, a trip to the police station. It doesn’t mean that every cop does all this well, and he is judge, jury, and executioner in such cases, but if they stopped doing it young urban hipsters would probably be the demographic that would like the consequences least, all the while blaming the cops for it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Right here, Thomas:
Becoming tired of being treated rudely by a homeowner in his home is not a sufficient reason to arrest somebody. Oh, there’s also that fact that Crowley arranged a pretextual reason to arrest Gates by telling him to come outside.
…as demonstrated by the fact that the Cambridge Police immediately dropped them.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Donkey whatsit sounds a lot like a guy who used to post under the name Healthy Markup. Same craptacular reliance on biased reporting. And not very deep interpretation of data either. That guy was very into definitions. Maybe they live in the same house.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
A lot of you are whiny bitches. I’m sure you’d let a cop rape your daughter in the ass, take your car for a spin, and then say ‘thank you officer, pleasure doing meeting you.’
You can’t actually be arrested for ‘disorderly conduct’ against a police officer. You need an actual an actual complaint by someone. When police do this, it’s call ‘contempt of cop’ and it is illegal. I’m disgusted some of you actually think it’s okay for a cop to to harass someone, and then arrest them for talking back.
I remember when America had actual men in it that stood up for their homes and their families. You’re a bunch of subservient bitches.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Ah,m Jmct, another apologist for the thugs in blue. Like I said, you’re a pathetic little bitch. I pity anyone that relies on you for protection.
Like I said, a cop could grope your child in front of you and you would sit there and take it. Because you’re not a man, you’re a punk.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Respect meh authorite!
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
My my, emotional little thing, aren’t you? I guess your argument isn’t strong enough on its own, so you decided it needed a little introduction in order for your comment to appear plausible.
Yes. It is racist and profile to use the fact of greater illegal gun ownership among African-Americans to justify looking at an African American and deciding, based on nothing but his race, that he’s probably carrying an illegal gun.
John is a man. Therefore, all men are John. How stupid of me to find fault here.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Just what statistics could possibly be used to justify arresting Gates? 90% of people who are rude to police while standing on their porch go on a killing spree?
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
He’s supposed to knock on the door and ask to see some ID.
According to colby, if you ask questions like this, “the implications are clear”.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
@j mct: I think the valuable thing here is that you said what you really think. To a degree, you’re simply reflecting my own argument back at me: that the cop was doing this because he needed to defend his authority over a citizen who was not acting in a subservient manner in his own home. You argue that this inappropriate reaction was “for the good of society.” We’re pointing out the ridiculousness of this when it comes to an innocent citizen in his own home. The proper response on the part of the officer was an apology and a deescalating.
Interestingly, you use a completely irrelevant example: Gates and the cop did not meet at a blocked intersection and had a disagreement. The officer met gates in his own home. It strikes me that it is Gates, the homeowner, who is in the position of authority in that case, and not the officer. How nice of you to go to bat for the precious and delicate sensibilities of the police officer, whose spirit was so horribly harmed that the only way to defend civilization was to arrest this perpetrator of barbarism! Does it not strike you that this situation would not have happened were it not for the possibility that Crowley is perhaps, too sensitive to handle the requirements of his job. While it is admirable we that delicate and sensitive flowers such as him have people like you to come to their defense when they have a disagreement with 60 year old professors, I am not sure how this is supposed to be some kind of defense of his actions.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
…as demonstrated by the fact that the Cambridge Police immediately dropped them.
The fact that the Cambridge Police dropped the charges can also demonstrate that the rich and powerful, and people with rich and powerful friends and connections, can get charges dropped. Not that the charges are improper.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
J mct,
First, please note my first comment on this thread, #31. I’m not anti-cop.
You write:
This was not a case of someone starting crap with an officer as he walked his beat. This was an officer in the kitchen of an innocent man, an incident that the officer, not the innocent man, instigated. I’m not saying the cop was wrong to be there, just that the context here makes your concern a little overblown.
In his kitchen? In fact, the entire confrontation took place inside Gates’ house, until the cop invented a reason to tell Gates to follow him onto the front porch, so they’d be in public view, so he could arrest him. That is wholly uncalled for, unprofessional, and unethical. This office was not faced with a set of circumstances that required him to make this arrest – the engineered them.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Let’s face it, there is one reason that the left defends Gates: the left absolutely LOVES the idea of falsely accusing people of racism.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
In the racial equivalent of bring a sword to a gun fight …
I suggest that Obama tell his good buddy “Skip” Gates to “cool it”
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Question for Al: What bothers you more, acts of racism or false accusations of racism?
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:43 pm
And he’s right. The implication is clearly that the officer is accusing the subject of being a burglar. There is no other way for a series of questions that amount to “show me some evidence that you aren’t a burglar” to be taken. I don’t disagree at all.
My point is that the police officer was walking into a situation, creating a situation, in which he’s going to be making that demand of someone. Even when it’s justified for an officer to do that, as it seems to have been here, that is still the clear implication, and it is both understandable and predictable that the subject isn’t going to like that.
A professional cop should keep his head. Not get pissed off and decide to show who’s boss.
Maybe, but I’m still inclined to take their word for it over yours.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
This is from the guy who has thus far accused Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, and Democrats as a whole of being racists; in other words, who cares?
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:48 pm
What no Mr. Crowley, what went down in your head? yet?
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
We don’t know for sure that Crowley was offended, decided to exact revenge or manipulated the situation. They’re good bets, but we don’t know for sure exactly why Crowley decided to arrest Gates on a trumped up charge. But we do indeed know that Crowley certainly did decide to arrest Gates on a trumped up charge.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
@ Jeffrey Daivs – by liability I mean that Gates is a liability to pushing for reform within the criminal justice system, and it’s foolish for progressive bloggers and for Obama to get involved before all of the facts are in. He’s a poor example of “racial profiling/abuse of power.” There are better cases out there, where the abuse was really egregious and totally unwarranted. The reason why this has gained traction among folks on the right and why it’s attracting so much attention in general is because it is kind of ridiculous. Gates does not look sympathetic to most of America, and it doesn’t have anything to do with race. To many outside of the progressive media sphere he’ll appear to be a nebbish professor with an oversized sense of entitlement and thin skin, someone who sees racism lurking everywhere. My guess is that Gates is going to overplay his hand. Similar to the incident at his house, he’s not going to be able to let the cop get the last word in, and he’s not going to stop until he gets an apology from Crowley. This isn’t going to happen, and while Gates may have had the momentum out of the gate, I imagine the PD will release evidence, eyewitness testimony, etc until Gates’ account of events is thoroughly discredited. Therefore anyone who ran to his defense before knowing what really happened is going to look dumb. Progressives have suffered electoral losses and policy losses in the past because they fueled the perception that they were opposed to “law and order” out of an ideological commitment to protecting the accused and being too quick to side against the police, or with the criminals.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
But who hasn’t seen this attitude among law enforcement? Racial profiling may be the chocolate (!) shell, but entitlement is the creamy center. Most have this notion that they’re due deference beyond the bare minimum required to do their job.
Unfortunately the legal system gives the police the due deference that you’re talking about. Judges will routinely side with police officers and give them the benefit of the doubt solely because they are police. It was one of my great disappointments in law school learning that this sort of thing is endemic and entrenched in the legal system.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
If everything happened exactly like Crowley says, then Gates is a liar, and Crowley still arrested someone for no good reason.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
It reminds me of a case in law school where the cops charged someone with public intoxication after they dragged him out of his house. Court didn’t stand for that one.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
[...] The idea is that white guys get the benefit of the doubt and black and Latino guys don’t, and its an institutionalized thing that maybe some people don’t even realize they’re [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
This is from the guy who has thus far accused Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, and Democrats as a whole of being racists
Now, now, I never accused Michelle Obama of racism.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Joe from Lowell:
No this is not an incident as you describe. The incident is that the police get a 911 call saying that two (black, but that doesn’t matter) men just kicked in the front door of a house, policeman goes to investigate, talks to the person who called 911, then goes into house. He asks man in house for ID, if the address on the ID matches the address on the house, he leaves. Gates pulls Harvard ID rather than a drivers license, which would have had the address on it which he could have checked against the house, so flatfoot radios for the Harvard campus police. (Maybe Gates was giving the I’m a Harvard Prof, dammit, spiel, a driver’s license would have much more appropriate to give in this instance). He goes outside for a minute, Gates follows him out. Per his report, he didn’t order Gates outside.
Again, maybe the guy is really stupid and would lie on the police report, even with lot’s of non cop witnesses other than Gates to contradict him, but I just doubt it, though I’d be willing to change my mind if someone other that Gates said the report was wrong.
In the end too, Gates was at the end of a long trip, and wasn’t in the best of moods, and was having a bad day, and it’s not the cop’s fault if he cannot assuage everyone on the edge that he meets. It also doesn’t mean that Gates is generally speaking a bad guy either. He was just having a bad day, but the law, in this case unwritten, doesn’t make exceptions for that.
I bet at the end of this, Gates will look like the bad guy, mostly for what he did after the incident, rather than for what he did during it. I could be wrong though.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
And he’s right. The implication is clearly that the officer is accusing the subject of being a burglar.
So, wait, since you said that an officer should ask to see some ID, and that asking a question is clearly implies “that the officer is accusing the subject of being a burglar”, you think that officers should accuse everyone they talk to while investigating a case of a crime? How interesting.
Now, I would think that asking for ID is just part of the investigating process, and doesn’t accuse the person asked of anything. But that’s just me.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Question for Al: What bothers you more, acts of racism or false accusations of racism?
Actual acts of racism. When Matthew posts about one, I’ll surely pipe up. That doesn’t seem to happen very often, though.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
What’s depressing about this comment screaming match is how quickly this devolved into the standard “You’re/they’re the racist(s) … no, you’re/they’re the racist(s)” flames. There needs to be a Godwin’s Law racial corollary. Once, whenever that law is violated, Matt should disable the comments.
I do wish that this incident would have become less of an racial issue and more of a modern policing issue. James Wollcott once remarked that people in Los Angeles — celebrity, middle class and poor; all races, all ethnicities — are united by one thing: their distrust of the police. If this happened in Westwood rather than Cambridge, even the leftest of the Westside liberals would have to admit “Coulda been race, or could be just another a-hole LAPD officer.” In the last few years, there have been very well publicized incidents of LAPD going nuts on a TV broadcast while she was taping a report, shootings in Oakland and New York, the Philly convenience store incident, a Chicago cop beating the hell out of female bartender, these are “Cops Gone Wild.” You could make a video series or start a blog, if, well, the Cops didn’t find you and eventually eff you up.
Still, it’s interesting that 1.) Obama never called Crowley a racist, said he acted “stupidly, and 2.) Obama didn’t make a gaffe, he really wanted to say what he did because, “politics” be dammed.
1.) As far #1, the number of conservative commenters who immediately substituted “racist” for “stupidly” is telling, and, to me, proves Matt point, which is that there are a decent number of conservative commenters who, through there posts, exhibit a level of racial insecurity and paranoia. Some of whom, um, comment regularly here … cough24dotaheadcough …
2.) As for two, I think Obama said what he said and doesn’t regret it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Again, maybe the guy is really stupid and would lie on the police report, even with lot’s of non cop witnesses other than Gates to contradict him, but I just doubt it, though I’d be willing to change my mind if someone other that Gates said the report was wrong.
Ah, you do not deal with the police for a living. In the very best police reports, perhaps 70-75% is true. The rest, either highly embellished or complete fabrication.
People who understand this: the Police, the Prosecutors, the Defense attorneys, the Defendant.
People who don’t: j mct.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
@ Nijorl – 91: “If everything happened exactly like Crowley says, then Gates is a liar, and Crowley still arrested someone for no good reason.”
If everything happened exactly like Crowley says, then Gates isn’t just a fucking liar – he was also guilty of disturbing the peace, and his arrest would’ve been justified. If Gates was lying and Crowley had some justification to arrest him, Gates’ release and the dropped charges would be evidence that celebrities and notable Harvard professors live under a different set of rules than the rest of us. It would be evidence (in the minds of some on the far right) that Obama, Deval Patrick, and the Mayor of Cambridge who jumped to Gates’ defense are guided more by racial solidarity with Gates than any concern for the facts. It would be evidence that folks on the left in general have a similar disregard for the facts. Very interesting, Njorl, to know that if Crowley’s version of events is true and Gates’ is false that you’d still side with Gates on this one. If there’s a tape, it needs to be released. Either Crowley or Gates is lying.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
What I like the most about Al is his deep and burning love for authority of all kinds. Just present a boot to him, any boot, and he’ll kiss it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Most incidents that police file reports on have no witnesses, excepting the people arrested, other than fellow police. Not true in this case.
I bet the woman who made the 911 call’s phone is ringing off the hook right now.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
It’s not just a burden, if it happens to you it can ruin your life. You will be fired from your job, suspended from school, sued, and possibly even prosecuted as a “hate crime”. This process begins long before your guilt or innocence of being a racist is determined. If you don’t believe me, look at the Duke Lacrosse players.
As far as discrimination against non-whites go, I would be up in arms about it, if I saw it. I’m sure it still goes on, but virtually no black people choose to enter my line of work (software development) and as such I really don’t know many of them. We do have some Mexicans and I have spoken up when my coworkers went too far with the anti-immigrant talk.
But, we what we do see is newspeople engaging in constant racial beancounting, injecting racial issues into events such as this one where it really wasn’t a factor. We see the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharptons showing up to cry wolf and advance their agendas whenever anything bad happens to a black person (whether it was true racial discrimination or not). Is it any wonder we’re a bit defensive?
Great article, BTW. A Liberal friend of mine forwarded it to me and I think the rest of your article is right on.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
From the AP:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – The white police sergeant criticized by President Barack Obama for arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Massachusetts home is a police academy expert on racial profiling.
Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class on racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.
“I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy,” Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The course, called “Racial Profiling,” teaches about different cultures that officers could encounter in their community “and how you don’t want to single people out because of their ethnic background or the culture they come from,” Fleming said.
Obama has said the Cambridge officers “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates last week when they responded to his house after a woman reported a suspected break-in.
Crowley, 42, has maintained he did nothing wrong and has refused to apologize, as Gates has demanded.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Where the lives of the Duke Lacrosse players’ really ruined? Sure the media, and a lot of other people jumped to conclusions, and the prosecutor seriously overreached hopping to make a name for himself, but their names were cleared eventually. False accusations of all sorts of things happen, and innocent people’s names get dragged through the mud.
Racism isn’t even the worst thing to be accused of, in terms of taring and feathering before any good evidence, that title has to go to pedophilia.
I’m a white male, I’ve never been accused of racism, and I’ve never met a black person who makes crazy claims of racism (although I’m sure they are out there), but I’ve met plenty of untalented and lazy white people who blame all their problems on affirmative action or immigrants.
Finally, as someone who is interested in history, it’s very disconcerning to me they way many white conservatives simply ignore the very recent history of serious racism in the country. Black people are going to be understandably touchy about even the appearance of racism for many years to come.
It took generations to normalize relations between the US and Great Brittan after the revolution, and British rule of North America wasn’t anywhere near as brutal as slavery or even Jim Crow (I’d much rather take the rights of an American under British rule, then the rights of a Black person in the south under Jim Crow).
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I really like this clip, “How to tell someone that what they said is racist” on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc
It focuses on a simple idea: I don’t care what you are, I care about what you did.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:11 pm
joe, pseudo, Crowley’s version of events is that he requested Gates come outside at the beginning, and, reading his report, it seems pretty clear that he left the Gates residence and offered to continue speaking to Gates outside as a way to defuse the situation with Gates. Gates had to choose to affirmatively go outside and continue his harangue. Doing that created a public disorder, but there wasn’t anything trumped up about it.
I really don’t understand the complaint now. Was Crowley wrong to respond to the call? Wrong to ask Gates for evidence that he was in his own home? Wrong to attempt to terminate the discussion when the evidence suggested that Gates was both lawfully in his own home and also fucking nuts? I mean, if a police officer can’t walk away from someone who is insulting him, he must stay, but staying inside would be wrong too. I think the conviction on the left is that Crowley is wrong, and the reason why will come later.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
j mct Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
WTF did you say? “If the cops let people get away with contempt of cop, every large city in the US would be chaotic beyond belief.” Is that your reality or were you just bs-ing?
If Officer Dickhead is being questioned all the time for what he is doing that means the community is pissed off at how he is doing his job. Officer Dickhead shouldn’t be a cop anymore.
at 61 # Colatina Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“I’m a 30-ish white male who’s never been in trouble with the law and I’ve been treated plenty worse than this by cops.”
– C’mon now. You gotta try harder than that. If you have “been treated plenty worse than this by cops” — meaning more than being arrested and released after four hours — you could not have “never been in trouble with the law”. If you have been arrested and spent some time in a jail – you had “trouble with the law”.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
As far as discrimination against non-whites go, I would be up in arms about it, if I saw it.
I have never seen discrimination against non-whites in my life.
All I see is white people oppressed by the blacks – poor white folks, forced to take most of the managerial and executive jobs, toiling in isolation, making heroic attempts to make life better for everyone else.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Al,
You’re just eliding what the term “implication” means, and retreating into vague language.
I, on the other hand, will use very clear language: Yes, the cop needs to check the id and confirm that it’s really the homeowner. Yes, the obvious implication of that is that the police officer suspects you of being a burglar. And therein lies the potential for trouble, and the need for police officers to behave in a highly professional manner. When they knock on a man’s door and make him prove that he has the right to be in his house, they need the let discretion be the better part of valor when he gets annoyed.
I believe you. Do you think that might have anything to do with your being a lily-white, middle class suburbanite who’s never had any experience with being hassled by the police?
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
# 108
You’re right, Officer Dickhead shouldn’t be a cop anymore.
But…
Cops are civil servants. Civil servants are people who cannot be fired merely for being incompetent, they can only be fired for basically something criminal, the best one can do with them is reassign them. It would be great if Officer Dickhead could be fired, but since Public School Teacher Dickhead, Sanitation worker Dickhead, Social Worker Dickhead, Zoning Board Clerk Dickhead, and all the Dickheads who are members of the NEA, AFT, AFSCME and the like, cannot be fired merely for incompetence, Officer Dickhead cannot be fired for it either.
I suppose a partisan point here is in order, but all aforementioned Dickheads in their capacity as govt employees are the core supporters of the Democratic Party, what’s good for them trumps all other considerations. If you vote for Democrats, though I am sure that all in you think that is the right thing to do, the Dickheads of the world not being able to fired is the consequence of your vote, though in this case, I don’t think voting GOP will change this at least as of the present moment.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm
omg – the guy from Lowell is going all more urban than thou
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm
@Seedee Vee:
You’ve found me out! I’m really just a priviledged white man making up stories of over-aggressive police so that I can smear the name of cops who are in truth only abusive to a small segment of the population.
The point is that it’s not in fact true it’s only some sheltered, unimaginative group of white suburban people who’ve never had bad experiences with cops who would question whether Gates was jumping to conclusions. On the contrary, a lot of people in America have been cuffed, have been in a patrol car, have been physically handled by police, have been asked point blank, without reason, “Have you been doing drugs?” and not all of them are black. Gates may have been missing this when he concluded what he did. “This would never happen to a white man!” Baloney–it happens everyday to white men. We could have a serious conversation about excessive force and police tactics but Gates apparently wants his experience to be a part of a simplistic narrative of racist cops. Obama is right that disproportionate abuse in black and Latino communities is an established fact that should be recognized. But there are other facts besides this one.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm
“The implication is clear? What’s this “clear” implication, exactly?”
That you’re being accused of the burglary. You know this.
“Or, let’s turn it wround another way”
We can try that, but first let me dispense with your blatant shifting of the goal posts ’cause you know you’ve been exposed for the fool you are…
“what exactly IS a cop supposed to do when he responds to the burglary call? Not ask any questions? Twiddle his thumbs? I’m really curious how a cop in left-wing fantasy land is supposed to act when called to a potential burglary scene.”
Let’s start here: go back and read what I said. See how I NEVER said the cop can’t ask questions? Right, that’s cause I NEVER SAID THE COP CAN’T ASK QUESTIONS. All I said was that asking questions after saying you’re investigating a robbery IS an accusation. Which is fine! Police CAN accuse people, even innocent people! But it exposes THIS-
“There is no evidence that he accused anyone of anything.”
-which you wrote, as false.
That’s all I’m saying. Not that the cop was improper to ask questions, just that you’re wrong that there was no accusation.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
When I was working in a campus bookstore that was near a large criminal justice program I got so tired of junior birdmen (and birdwomen)in training saying “you might beat the rap but you won’t beat the ride.” It was like a get into jail free card that they couldn’t wait to use. Unfortunately even mostly level headed and normally reasonable people were not immune to power tripping.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Al at 78-
Here’s what I wrote:
“Yeah, sorry, if you respond to a burglary call, find someone at the scene, tell them that’s what you’re there for and then start with the questioning, the implication is clear.”
And here’s what Joe wrote:
“He’s supposed to knock on the door and ask to see some ID.”
EVERYONE notices that those are two very different procedures in two different situations. I sincerely doubt you’re dumb enough to disagree with that. Now, I understand that maybe you have to lie about SOMETHING to make your point even remotely comprehensible. Just, for your own sake, don’t make your lie about what someone posted in THE SAME thread, ’cause it’s so easy to look it up and expose you for an idiot.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I think it ought to be repeated that Obama didn’t accuse the cop of racism. Just so everyone is clear about what the issue is.
As opposed to the manufactured one.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
“Most incidents that police file reports on have no witnesses, excepting the people arrested, other than fellow police. Not true in this case.”
Well, mostly true. For a large portion of Crowley’s report, he’s the only one in the house. For the rest, there’s one other officer, and gee, I’m sure the Thin Blue Line is going to chose the rigid formalities of a form over covering an officer’s butt. Only once they were outside were there any other witnesses (At least, according to the report), and by then, most of the action was over.
People need to understand, police reports are never treated as a full and accurate account of events, and police know this (they’re well aware that their reports won’t show up in court). They’re more about internal record keeping and letting the brass know what officers are up to.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
It should be noted that the other office present is hispanic. I’m not sure the point of diversity in our police departments if liberals insist on seeing only blue.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:42 pm
“You’re right, Officer Dickhead shouldn’t be a cop anymore.”
I’m not so sure. Yes, this was a screw up, but I dunno, absent other facts, if he should give up his job for it. Hell, there’s plenty of cops who make the exact same screw up, except the defendant doesn’t get the charges dropped, and they’re never fired.
“And he’s right. The implication is clearly that the officer is accusing the subject of being a burglar.”
I’m right about the scenario I laid out (of course
) but not so sure about the one you did- where you knock, announce yourself, and ask for I.D. I’m not sure that alone DOES imply an accusation (maybe if you knock, announce who you are and why you’re there, and then ask for ID). The scenarios are quite different.
However, what’s important is, just because something’s an accusation doesn’t mean a cop can’t do it. I never said that, I was just responding to Al’s erroneous claim that there was NO accusation.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:44 pm
“It should be noted that the other office present is hispanic. I’m not sure the point of diversity in our police departments if liberals insist on seeing only blue.”
It’s got nothing to do with liberals or conservatives; it’s cops THEMSELVES who put “blue” above any other color.
As they should, frankly. It’s kind of insulting to think they’d do otherwise.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
colby, an investigation isn’t the same thing as an accusation. Just isn’t.
The whole point of our rigorous programs to affirmatively integrate our police departments is that having a diverse police force will lead to more effective policing. But now we’re told that, no, there’s nothing that can be done, because all cops are the same. Well, ok, I guess we should drop these programs then. Right?
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Yeah, sorry, if you respond to a burglary call, find someone at the scene, tell them that’s what you’re there for and then start with the questioning, the implication is clear.
If I had just broke into my own home and the cops showed up and told me that they were investigating a report of a possible burglary, I wouldn’t freak out because they wanted me to prove I really lived there.
If I saw two guys breaking into my neighbor’s house I would call the cops no matter what color they were.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
“colby, an investigation isn’t the same thing as an accusation.”
Never said it was. Just that when you say you’re investigating a burglary of the home, and you start asking the guy IN the home for ID, you ARE accusing him. It’s not formal, it’s not even WRONG. But it IS an accusation. No matter how many times you say, “It just isn’t”.
“The whole point of our rigorous programs to affirmatively integrate our police departments is that having a diverse police force will lead to more effective policing. But now we’re told that, no, there’s nothing that can be done, because all cops are the same.”
That’s a pretty good strawman, as far as those things go, but I never actually argued that “all cops are the same”. Go ahead, re-read my posts. I might have implied that officers will back up each other’s accounts of events (indeed, I did), but that’s really quite different. I mean, just think about; validating (or not) another officer’s account of events is just one of many, many aspects of a police officer’s job. They can all act the same in THAT aspect, but still act very differently in terms of questioning witnesses, patrolling certain areas, finding Reasonable Suspicion for “Terry” stops, articulating their Probable Cause theory to a judge, being an effective witness at trial, or understanding their precinct.
Honestly- I’ll tell you they all wear the same uniform, too, but that doesn’t at all imply I think they’re all alike.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:18 pm
“If I had just broke into my own home and the cops showed up and told me that they were investigating a report of a possible burglary, I wouldn’t freak out because they wanted me to prove I really lived there.”
I’m not sure I would, either; but I’d understand that they think I was involved in the burglary somehow.
But then, I grew up in a very rural, conservative area- “a man’s home is his castle” kind of place. I’m quite familiar- and a little sympathetic- to the mindset that is immediately suspicious of ANYONE being on your property without your permission. Especialy if that guy is an “Authority” figure.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 pm
colby, on your view every question that follows “I’m investigating a burglary” is an accusation. I mean, if Crowley asked–as Gates says he should have–”is this your house” that too is an accusation, isn’t it? Because Crowley didn’t know, and not knowing and asking is an accusation. Which is nonsense, and it’s nonsense that results from your confusion about pretty basic concepts.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
colby, here goes again: it’s not that they “think I was involved”–it’s they suspect, and are investigating.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 pm
“colby, on your view every question that follows “I’m investigating a burglary” is an accusation.”
Well, that’s not my view now, is it? I mean, I’m sure you’re aware that I never SAID that, and you’re certainly not dumb or desperate enough to split rhetorical hairs when I spoke colloquially (”the questioning”).
“Which is nonsense”
Yes, it is; but it’s YOUR nonsense that has derived from an inaccurate (for whatever reason…) restatement of my point.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 pm
This via crooked timber is something I would have thought
yglesias might have digested instead of just venting.
Brandon del Pozo is a captain in the NYPD (now working for Internal Affairs on internal police corruption cases, but with plenty of experience as a beat cop in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and as a police instructor too). He is also a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at CUNY. He has sent us a post with a different perspective on police discretion and the Gates arrest than that of my last post. We are publishing his post in the interests of furthering serious debate. Brandon asked me to make it emphatically clear that all views expressed here are purely personal, and that he is not acting as a spokesperson for the NYPD in any way. His post is below.
*****************************************
From my own experience and what I have learned about the incident, I highly doubt that I would have ordered the arrest of Professor Gates for any charge. I do, however, think that based on his actions as alleged by Sergeant Crowley, his arrest was somewhat plausible within the universe of possible outcomes to the incident. That still does not mean that the cops in question weren’t acting “stupidly,” as President Obama suggested. It is possible to do a lawful thing that is stupid, and that is why officers have discretion in many cases. While it can be misused, discretion is there to prevent them from stupidly enforcing the letter of the law. That the arrest was unwise and imprudent has also been made clear by how quickly the charges were dropped and the apologies issued by the government of Cambridge.
On the other hand, I do feel that Professor Gates seems to have acted inappropriately. There was no good reason for him to converse belligerently with the responding officer from his first words, or accuse him of racism, or refuse to answer basic questions directly related to the scope of the officer’s legitimate investigation. Of course, Gates also had the prerogative to say nothing at all, but this is different from saying nothing constructive, and instead issuing verbal abuse. This is not how people should relate to police officers as officials who are ostensibly trying to ensure public safety, but at least as importantly it is not how people should relate to other people in their community whose behavior they haven’t had the chance to independently assess. Police officers are expected to bear much greater burdens than the average citizen in this regard due to the nature of their job, but the limits on these burdens acknowledge their core personhood.
So, to go through a few things:
Whether or not a person should be arrested for disorderly conduct depends on subjective assessments that are nonetheless important to make. (more on discretion later) These include the extent to which the interaction is actually in public, the extent to which he has genuinely impeded the investigation by being verbally combative with an officer who needs to elicit investigative information from him, or created a situation of genuine public alarm, and, admittedly more controversially, the extent to which he fosters a climate wherein it’s acceptable for people to harass, berate and otherwise annoy the police as they are trying to conduct routine investigations that are in the interest of public safety.
Two men are breaking open the door to a home in Cambridge, MA, in the middle of the day. Almost all residential burglaries happen during the day. This is when residents are least likely to be home. Commercial burglaries, on the other hand, almost all happen at night. This is when stores are most likely to be vacant. The time in question fits what we know about this type of crime.
Breaking open a front door is inconsistent with the behavior of people who live in that home to an extent that suggests the possibility of criminal activity to an impartial observer. In the widest range of cases, people who live in a home will enter with a key or be let in by another person who lives there. In certain, rare cases, a person who lives in a home will force its front door open. Unfortunately, this is one of the most common ways a person who has no permission to enter a home gains entry to it, along with forcing open a window. Good judgment, even by the layperson, indicates that a person breaking into a home is possibly committing a criminal act. This possibility warrants a call to the police, who have a duty to investigate such things; the citizen observer’s has no such duty to further clarify what she sees.
A resident of Cambridge is walking by, sees two black men she doesn’t recognize breaking open the front door to someone’s home, and calls the police to report a possible break in. This seems like the way a good neighbor should behave towards the people in her community. She should also have called if the men breaking in where white (as my own police experience has revealed a significant population of white burglars). The issue in that vein that troubles some is not that she called about Gates and his driver, but whether or not she would’ve called about Dershowitz and his driver. The important thing here is that what she did in this case was reasonable and in the civic interest. Suppose for a moment the woman knew a black man lived at the house, and made the call to protect his home from these other black men who were breaking into it. That seems like good civic behavior (and the source of many 911 calls in my career). It’s still good behavior even if she didn’t know the arbitrary fact that the home was owned by a black man.
To put a finer point on it: It does us very little good to wonder what the woman would have done if the door-breaker was white and anger ourselves with the possibility that there exist many people who wouldn’t have called the police on white door breakers but only black ones. What the woman did in the case of what actually happened with Gates was a morally acceptable act.
Sergeant Crowley responded to the scene based on the information provided by the 911 caller. He would have responded regardless of the race of the burglars; they are required to respond to all such calls. The police met the caller outside the home, and she reiterated what she said to 911. It appears she remained on the scene at the request of the 911 operator and made every effort to be a responsible witness to what she thought could have been a crime in progress.
The responding officer then encountered a black male at the location where he was informed that a black male had broken into a home. So far, then, he is confronted with consistencies that bolster, not diminish, the credibility of the caller’s account. It is now the officer’s duty to see if the person had permission and authority to break into the home or not.
The officer instructs the person to exit the house and talk on the porch. This is standard police safety practice. An unfamiliar building with unknown occupants that is the potential site of a burglary is not a safe place for an officer to enter, especially alone. If he is drawn into the home and attacked there, he can be locked in and will take longer to rescue. Kitchens have a variety of weapons, and rooms have limited sight lines and places for suspects to hide. Bringing a suspect to the porch is a prudent move for an officer.
The man knows what’s going on. He did, in fact, just force his own front door open. All accounts indicate the sergeant showed up moments later; the 911 caller personally informed him, in sum and substance, “he just went into the house a few seconds ago.” There is a continuity of events that indicates a reasonable person would understand why the police came to his door a few moments after he broke it open. The only thing that could indicate a race bias is the unobserved hypothetical that the police would not have been there if he was white. This doesn’t matter; for a homeowner of any race there is a facially plausible race-neutral reason why the police have come to the door.
Around this time, the person begins to accuse the officer of racism, at first refusing to cooperate with the investigation. This makes the investigation more difficult, and might make the officer wonder if he is safe. To assume Gates isn’t the type of man to use violence when he is angry and using obscenities is to emasculate him, or patronize him, or to resort to stereotypes based on age, stature, type of employment, etc. Anyway, early on, the sergeant concludes this man is not a burglar, but reports that the man continues to be verbally belligerent.
*[So at some later point the sergeant arrests Gates. I have said what I feel about his arrest. Some more general comments follow; the degree to which some apply to Gates and the sergeant depends on the relative veracity of differing accounts of the incident.]*
The police cannot be expected to leave a location simply because the person there is screaming at them and ordering them around, even if that person is apparently innocent and likely lives there. They should still thoroughly investigate. If this were a legitimate expectation of the police, then it would sometimes allow genuine criminals to berate cops into leaving the scene prior to a complete and thorough investigation of the crimes they have committed. Officers should leave when they are convinced that the investigation is complete, and that the situation is under control, regardless of the demeanor of a person.
The police need to foster an environment in which they can deliver public safety without being subject to obscenities, accusations and yelling from any party, even innocent parties. The judgments of policing are obviously difficult and subjective, and are often marred when they are made in the face of people issuing inflammatory comments even as the police are rendering routine services with an obvious cause. It is in the collective interest of citizens and police to promote an environment where the police can conduct an investigation calmly and with mutual respect. It cannot become commonplace for people to be allowed to scream at the police in public, threatening them with political phone calls, deriding their abilities, etc. Routine acts like rendering aid to lost children, taking accident reports and issuing traffic violations could be derailed at any time by any person who has a perceived grievance with the police. The police service environment is not the best venue for the airing of such grievances.
The police should not be cowed by threats of phone calls to people such as mayors, police chiefs and presidents of the United States, along with allegations that “you don’t know who you’re messing with.” It is traditionally whites who have had this type of crooked access and influence. These appeals to higher authorities are often meant to exempt the ruling castes from following the rules and laws that the rest of the community will be expected to follow. It happens, it is unfortunate, and it is not in the interests of justice for it to continue. Nobody trying to do their job fairly deserves to hear the equivalent of “My daddy donated fifty million to this university, and you’ll be getting calls from everywhere in the administration about raising my grade enough for this class to count as a distributive requirement.”
It is possible for a person to commit disorderly conduct by unabated screaming and verbal abuse in a public setting. Without drawing conclusions about the Gates case, there comes some point where a person is genuinely causing public alarm, and where he is acting with a rage that exceeds what we can expect from a reasonable person in a heated moment. The mere presence of the police conducting a legitimate investigation should not provoke continuous rage and epithets from such a person. One response is that the police should just leave if the investigation has been conducted successfully, and that this will calm the person down. In practice, this is indeed often the best thing to do. On the other hand, it should be noted that it is just as much the responsibility of the citizen to see that his actions are an inappropriate way to relate to police officers who have not, in the specific case at hand, acted unreasonably. This point may be hotly contested, but I believe it is true: there is no obligation for the police to hurry in their activities or to leave as soon as possible because they have incited the rage of a person who is acting unreasonably. There is a distinction between hanging around to show them who’s boss and working at a steady, professional pace, to be sure. But in the end the mere presence of the police cannot be seen as an acceptable reason for disorderly conduct, and should therefore not spur the police to leave a scene simply to de-escalate it. A police strategy of “winning by appearing to lose” emboldens citizens to attempt to get the police to lose in more and more serious matters, including walking away from situations where a person is genuinely guilty of a crime.
It is in the civic interest for cops to have discretion over violations and some misdemeanors. Any person who has been warned after committing a traffic violation, or told to empty a beer can instead of being summonsed for it, or who was let go with a warning from the clerk in the presence of an officer after shoplifting has benefited from officer discretion. Whether or not the sergeant in Cambridge used his arrest discretion soundly is a legitimate topic for debate, but the fact that officers should have it is pretty much off the table. I don’t think we want to live in a society where the police are obligated to arrest or cite for everything they observe or are informed of, and are limited only by practical constraints of how fast they can do these two things. In the end, the standards of proof that lead to arrests and citations are worded to incorporate the judgments of police officers and citizens: “reasonable cause to believe, etc.” and therefore we are better off selecting cops who are likely to have better judgment than taking the ability to make judgments away from them.
Assuming a cop is a racist is its own form of unwarranted bias. Because a person has chosen a career in policing does not mean that person is a racist. There are certainly racist cops, but if a person truly believes in the rights and responsibilities of the individual community member, then it will ultimately be that officer’s own conduct that determines whether he is a racist or not. Reports seem to indicate that Gates made accusations of racism before he had any meaningful interaction with the officer, who was called there by an impartial Cambridge resident to protect his home. Again, this is not a way to treat a person you have just met, regardless of the role he is acting in.
A responsible program of community policing would not have averted this type of encounter. Gates is not a store owner, hanging out in a shop all day and available to get to know the local cops. The last thing this professor wants to do is chum around with Cambridge cops so that they get to know him by face. He wouldn’t be inclined to make small talk with them about community issues, etc. Even if the sergeant were informed that they were responding to the residence of a notable (black) Harvard professor, this would not have necessarily helped: he would have responded thinking he was investigating the possibly burglary of a black professor’s home by one or two other black people. He would also assume that in almost every case, professors open their doors using keys in a routine manner.
The police are called to situations with the purpose of seizing control over them, examining them, and bringing them to a conclusion that serves the interests of justice and public safety as established by their oversight. Powerful/arrogant people—or those who have a certain idea of personal freedom that does not acknowledge emergency exceptions—find it annoying that the police can suddenly do this to their environment, when so few others can. This control also serves the safety of citizens who have become victims of a violent, uncontrolled situation. I am aware of the problems that this type of power can produce in certain people who wield it. All I can say is that I personally know cops who have been killed or badly injured at every time of the day, responding to both routine and critical calls, because they lost control over the situation or were unable to establish it in the first place. Police officers cannot be expected to do their work without this type of control, and they must be given a berth to establish it, or they have the explicit legal right to take that berth. It doesn’t matter who you are. Lives depend on it in a way that assiduously watching every episode of The Wire cannot adequately convey (it deals too much with long-term investigation and narcotics work and not enough with patrol operations, in any event).
This particular incident was not an instance of racial profiling. A small point worth clarifying. Profiling occurs when the police proactively investigate possible criminal activity, independently using the race of a person as a contributing factor for considering that person to be the suspect in a crime. For example, given a mixed population of drivers on a highway, they select out the black drivers for investigation with the belief that they are the ones who are most likely to be running drugs. This is obviously a whole other problem. In the case here, the officer was informed by a citizen that a crime may have occurred, and the woman stated the people who she observed were in fact black. It would have been profiling in this case if the sergeant went peering into the windows of Cambridge homes, leaving white occupants alone, and confronting the black occupants to see if they were burglars. It would also have been profiling if the sergeant drives past white door-breakers without investigating but stops and questions the black door-breakers he sees. Without a doubt, good cops stop anyone who is forcing a front door open. It should be followed by either arrest, or assistance.
I have come to expect a wide range of conduct from police officers, some of it excellent, most of it acceptable, and some of it sadly lacking. My feeling was one of being let down by both the sergeant and by Professor Gates. The sergeant is acting under the color of law, and all Gates is required to do is exercise his rights as a citizen. True enough. Still, I expect more from thoughtful and wise people than from people who are less reflective and considerate. Flying in from Asia can really wear a person out, I have experienced, and that’s worth noting on Gates’ behalf. Not being able to get into your own home after such a flight must be especially irritating. I don’t think it was a good outcome to have him arrested, but I also don’t think the officer involved did anything wrong initially to incite the very poor reception he got from of all people a man who is capable of making such exceptional observations and judgments. I have had hundreds and hundreds of encounters with every type of innocent person from every walk of life in every context, and the vast majority ended amicably. They ended this way, however, not only because I acted with dignity and restraint, but because the citizen did as well. I think that collectively our interactions resulted in not only a safer but a more civil and just state. This seems like the type of project Professor Gates is interested in and that the sergeant should be held accountable for.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
“colby, here goes again: it’s not that they “think I was involved”–it’s they suspect, and are investigating.”
Now you’re shaking my confidence that you aren’t just splitting rhetorical hairs.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm
I sympathize with Gates. He had just arrived home from a brutal trip back from China, his door was jammed, and then, when he was finally in his home sweet home, he’s asked to step outside.
So, Gates is tired and then he snaps, and starts making Ali G-level accusations of racism at a cop who is just doing his job. So, the cop gets peeved and hauls him off to the cooler.
But now Gates is trying to milk this for all its worth, and Obama has interjected himself into it. Why? Because that’s what Obama is really like, as he makes clear in Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Obama’s knee jerk reaction to side with the black guy is what made this racist.
Some people on the left are so blinded by political correctness, white guilt and the knee jerk assumption that it’s the white person’s fault that you honestly have NO ability to think logically on this situation. When you get past this stuff Matt and others THEN we can have a serious talk about race but until then you are just using this as a political axe to wield pretending you care more about minorities and trying to get them riled up. Quit this BS.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
“When you get past this stuff Matt and others THEN we can have a serious talk about race”
In point of fact, Matt, Obama, and many of the rest of us are saying that we don’t know if race was a factor in this (and many of us suspect it wasn’t). It’s more of an abuse of authority issue for us, in that acting like a dick in your own home isn’t a crime.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
“Obama has interjected himself into it.”
He didn’t interject himself into it; SOMEONE ELSE asked him a question, he just gave an honest answer.
I understand- though disagree- with the notion that maybe he should’ve dodged the question, but that would’ve generated just as much flack for him (probably from some of the same quarters). So, if you’re gonna get screwed either way, I understand wanting to say what you really think while it happens.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 pm
My sense is that, for all his talents and gifts, Professor Gates can be kind of an ass. This, however, is not a crime. There are many cranky old men in the country, and arresting them all for launching into tirades is bad policy.
What I’m pretty sure didn’t happen was the officer knocking on the door, and saying something like “Excuse us for bothering you, sir, but we’ve had a report of suspicious activity in the neighborhood. Have you noticed anything unusual around your property this evening? Could you tell us anything?”
If the original call had been about two white guys breaking in, and an affluent looking older white guy with a cane had answered the door, would the officer’s demeanor have been the same? Or was there some suspicion that, since they were looking for black guys, and here WAS a black guy, that maybe something was amiss.
As far as I know, old guys with Harvard ID’s are not generally involved in minor property crime. Once that ID was presented, I think it was time to apologize for disturbing the man, back away, and let the old coot rant all he wanted. There were real crimes to go deal with.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I like Steve Sailer, but I don’t think he’s obsessed enough with race.
July 24th, 2009 at 1:01 am
You know, black people actually are more likely to be criminals than white people. They are also more likely to be NBA players. Just the facts.
July 24th, 2009 at 1:24 am
So, Gates is tired and then he snaps, and starts making Ali G-level accusations of racism at a cop who is just doing his job. So, the cop gets peeved and hauls him off to the cooler.
What happened to your bullshit theory about the cop worrying about domestic abuse? You know, because Gates was so angry and black?
July 24th, 2009 at 2:16 am
OK, I would be offended if someone would call me a racist.
So I would not call a police officer a racist, and would expect him to be offended if I do. And I do not think that his duties, as police officer, include provision not to response to insults people hurl to him.
In other words, Gates had it coming. Why didn’t he try to politely calm the situation, but turned to insults? No wonder he get arrested.
If you think, however, that being (called) racist is nothing whatsoever to be worried about, then what all this brouhaha is about?
July 24th, 2009 at 2:20 am
“And I do not think that his duties, as police officer, include provision not to response to insults people hurl to him.”
Um, yes, they absolutely do. You actually think that a police officer, because he is personally offended by someone, can use his official power of arrest to make redress for that? He’s not arresting him as Mr. Crowley, he’s arresting him as the Cambridge Police Department. He’s expected to use that power for the purposes for which it’s intended—namely, protecting the public and stopping lawbreakers, neither of which are at all relevant here.
I mean, if you were mad enough at someone, you might punch him in the nose, and Cambridge was nice enough to issue Crowley a hand weapon. Why shouldn’t he crack Gates’s skull open? Actually, given what some people say about Rodney King, you maybe think Gates would “have it coming” in that regard as well.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:38 am
HOW ABOUT A FACT.
Ah, sorry to be a stickler on facts, but the Herald article that you quote Crowly on below is very misleading by your use:
“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man. I was working on another human being,” Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward’s fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer.”"”"
++++
So your argument is that this racist dropped to his knee’s, went lip to lip with a black man, rather than waiting for EMT’s or paramedics, and then went on to teach racial profiling courses that he was hand-picked to teach by a black police chief.
++
Man, you just to have to really hate cops to come with this line of thought.
July 24th, 2009 at 3:26 am
A few disjointed observations:
1. The white folks did not like the Rodney King verdict either, even though the man was beaten like a dog.
2. If Obama has just said ‘no comment’, he would have been Dukakisized by the same folks who are now denouncing the President.
3. As many have noted, Obama called the action stupid, not racist.
July 24th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Wow! yglesias has it all figured out, even though he wasn’t even there.
Whatever, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do in the racial hucksterism industry since the Duke Lacrosse embarrassment and the election of a black president.
July 24th, 2009 at 4:09 am
“Yeah. I’ll talk to your momma outside!” LOL – a Harvard professor. How low they’ve sunk.
July 24th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Shorter Gates: How dare you question me, peasant!
July 24th, 2009 at 4:16 am
1. The white folks and the sensible black folks did not like the OJ Simpson verdict either, even though he chopped up two human beings.
2. If Obama had said, “I don’t have all the facts and its a local matter that I’m going to let be resolved locally,” he would have been as smart as he sometimes seems.
3. Obama said the police “acted stupidly” but of course that carries, in gregor’s happy little world, no implication that the police were stupid. Just let Obama skate far, far out onto the thinning ice.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:40 am
On Tuesday evening I attended a committee meeting at my temple. The person who opened the door messed up the security code for the alarm system and a few minutes later a police officer arrived. I went out to speak with him, as he was investigating whether a break in had occurred. He questioned me and I answered him extremely politely as is my custom when speaking with an armed officer of the law. I am white and female and 51, and soon he was satisfied that all was ok, took my name, and left, but only after I thanked him for checking in. This encounter would have been quite different if I had challenged the officer for being there, told him this was my temple and I had every right to be there, accused him of being anti-semitic for showing up, and perhaps even demanded of him “Do you know who I am?” (No one much by the way.) It’s just common sense folks, like it or not.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:43 am
[...] the other side of the aisle, Yglesias: One of the problems with accusations of racism is that bigots try to defend [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 9:30 am
I think they would probably have arrested anyone regardless of color in that situation, so racism played a small part probably, if any. And yes, professors can be arrogant blowhards. But on the other hand, the facts speak for themselves. There was no crime : the charges were dropped.
Therefore it was an abuse of police power and a waste of time and taxpayer money. President Obama was right — did they really need six policemen and handcuffs and hours of time and paperwork to avenge a case of non-criminal le’se maje’ste’?
Aren’t there real criminals out there? Don’t the Cambridge police have anything better to do with their time than to harass law-abiding citizens in their own homes.
If the police had just apologized instead of trying to justify their bullying stupidity there would have been no more story.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Nice work Barack… with one comment you managed to alienate 75% of America.
And anyone who has spent any amount of time in the “higher” education system knows the Professor Gates type: bitter, spiteful, bigoted racist with a position of power who felt emboldened to make a political statement.
This is the type of Professor who would change the subject on you when you attempt to engage in a debate- or would give you a poor grade because you actually have an opinion, and done research outside of marxist texts and such. You are fooling no one, Mr Gates.
And Mr President, is this “nuance” you’ve spoke of? “the police acted stupidly”? -please
Obama is out to rip this country to shreds in EVERY way- who can question that such ill-advised statements are divisive… and NOT helpful? He has no idea what happened, he admitted it- and apparently doesn’t care, either… he’s picked his side.
But back in reality, the childish and paranoid Gates completely baited the cop, who acted with admirable restraint, IMO… all he had to do is show his ID and shut up, he was treated with respect. This guy was clearly looking for a fight… and he ought to thank God he didn’t find one.
Obama is going to destroy race relations in this country with his vengeful “get even” mentality… some messiah- Americans should have chosen a fair and sensible human being instead of this embittered nut.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:35 am
The right-wingers clearly want to have a “He’s a racist/No he’s not!” shrieking match, because really, taking the side of people accused of racism is what they’re most comfortable with.
Unfortunately, the liberals don’t seem to be accommodating them, and the discussion about policing tactics just doesn’t seem to have the same emotional appeal.
So, the right-wingers’ reaction is to pretend that there’s a racial shrieking match going on anyway, and insist that it makes you an elitist to suggest that a cop might ever do something wrong.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Wow. Judging someone based on their “type,” and accusing others of being prejudiced, in the very same sentence.
If you people had the slightest bit of self-awareness, Congress would look very different.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Jimw & crooked timber:
”
He was asked to step outside and arrested after the officer knew that he was not the burglar but rather the legitimate occupant of the house and a Harvard professor. So no, he was not a suspect. It was just an act of pique on the part of the officer. By the way, what happened to the taxi driver who helped Professor Gates open the door?
July 24th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Matt:
“What happened basically is that Crowley accused Gates, whether for good reason or not, of breaking into his own home.” WTF???
You have finally gone off the cliff. As a police officer, Crowley was responded to a phone in call of a possible breaking and entry. It is his JOB to question anyone and everyone he sees at the scene to determine if indeed it is a true B&E or a mis-understanding (as does happen).
You seem to assume, correct me if I’m wrong, that Crowley was a racist by “exacting revenge” with his arrest of Gates. You are truly full of s***. You can no more assume that Crowley is a racist or exacted revenge than can others assume that no racism exists among police.
From reading his report (at Smokinggun.com), Crowley continually acted in a professional manner and attempted to de-escalate the situation. Notice, he called in for the campus police to come and assist.
What would your reaction be as a cop if the person at the residence refuses to provide ID (as most states have laws requiring you to do so) and almost immediately accuses you of profiling and being a racist? What would you do Matt? Believe his initial claim, without proof of ID, and meekly walk away? As a lib I bet you would.
And finally, if Gates did, in short order, begin to accuse the white cop of profiling and being a racist; is that not in itself racist? Is that not assuming that all white cops are racist? Is that not the same as assuming all (insert minority here) are “this” or “that”?
You actually get paid money to write this tripe of yours? How do I get such a job?
July 24th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Ooops… just caught a typo.
I should have written responding not “responded”
July 24th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I just take that as proof positive that cognitive dissonance theory is incorrect, as it appears the conservatives engage in such double think all the time without apparent effect.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:03 am
The cop doesn’t have to be racist to arrest Gates, Gates is just a softer target for standard harassment because he’s a more vulnerable member of society.
True. Cops are, by definition, pigs. It’s their job to phuck with people whom the deem their (and by extension, their constituency’s) inferiors, to keep ‘em off balance, and moving along. Gates, a black fella living in a “white person” house in a “white” town, is and was a natural, easy target. The cop was not happy that Gates, an inferior, had the stones to ask him to reveal his identity, because by doing so Gates revealed his desire to bring the cop to account for his actions. The pig did what he had to do to cover his ass, and created a situation where it was not clearly a matter of screwing with the “ni**er,” but one with more ambiguity.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Black people are so arrogant. As soon as they get a little education and money, all courtesy of affirmative action and all the other goodies that the white liberal guilt so generously provides, they become angry at cops for coming into their house and asking for their ID.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Clearly, you didn’t read Matt’s piece. Or rather, just can’t comprehend the language.
What other assumption can be made when someone quotes a specific sentence where a writer explicitly states that the outcome a specific scenario is irrelevant to larger conclusion? At several points in the piece, Matt says that the concept of whether or not it was racially motivated doesn’t matter, by stating that it could be the case or not.
I swear I’ll never understand the way people seem unable to read the language presented to them.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:13 am
“And anyone who has spent any amount of time in the “higher” education system knows the Professor Gates type: bitter, spiteful, bigoted racist with a position of power who felt emboldened to make a political statement.”
You don’t have to use a “type” to judge the guy. His work is well known and there are plenty of people who can vouch (and have vouched) for his personality and character. I’m disappointed in some of the things he’s said precisely because he’s proven to be a very mild, reasonable voice. But for “Reaganite Republicans” this is just another story of fake racism with all the usual cast of liberal villains.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Of course it’s a racial incident.
Murka is still a fundamentally a racist nation.
Unnerstan? The mixed race of the curren t occupant of the White House notwithstanding, Murka is shot through with racism. What the “birthers” are really shouting about is not the fact that they cannot get at Obama’s birth certificate. That is a just surrogate for standing on the sidewalk shrieking “HE’S A FUQQING NIQQER.”
Any interaction between police and blacks is always, already, intrinsically, a ‘racial” event, since for 400 years the cops have been white-people’s preferred instrument of oppression of blacks.
Jaysus! History, people!!!
The cop was stupid. But cops can’t admit that, es[pecially when their victims are membersx of despised minorities.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Well, Mr. Smith, let’s consider the fact that the person who wrote that Barack Obama is going to harm race relations in this country (!) calls himself “Reagan Republican.”
You remember Ronald Reagan: went to Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers had been murdered by the Klan and talked about how much he loves “states rights.” Liked to refer to young black men as “strong, young bucks.” Frequently spoke about Welfare Queens and their Cadillacs (why is it always Cadillacs, btw?) After 12 years of of Reagan Republican governance, we got the LA riots.
But this guy, who identifies himself as “Reagan Republican,” thinks that the president who gave the “More Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia, who went out of his way to say that he didn’t know if race played a role in this episode, is going to destroy race relations in this country.
Talk about your cognitive dissonance.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:22 am
# gregor Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Black people are so arrogant. As soon as they get a little education and money, all courtesy of affirmative action and all the other goodies that the white liberal guilt so generously provides, they become angry at cops for coming into their house and asking for their ID.
It’s true. If Gates had just known his place (sucking the cops drooping dick, would have done nicely), none of this would have happened. I blame uppity negroes world-wide for their oppression…
July 24th, 2009 at 10:25 am
It’s very easy, Geoff. People see what they want to see.
Conservatives, ever attuned to the public mood, have decided that race-baiting – that is, trying to stir up conflicts over issues of race and racism – is a good idea politically. Because it worked so well during the presidential campaign and during Sotomayor’s confirmation battle, I guess.
So, no matter how clearly Barack Obama or Matt Yglesias says that the issue here isn’t race, but police procedure, the conservatives are going to continue one side of a racial shrieking match.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am
…and if the conservatives can’t get anyone to take the bait for their hoped-for racial shrieking match, they’ll just invent a liberal sock puppet and post some inflammatory stuff.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I see a lot of people who are apparently not in the pay of police unions who apparently think cops should be able to do whatever the fuck they want. Look, it appears that Gates acted just as “stupidly” as the cop in getting riled up. It’s never wise to get into a confrontation with a cop. But that’s not because it’s illegal to get pissed off at a cop. It’s because cops are known to abuse their authority.
I think this incident really says very little about race at all. But what it does nicely point to is the strong ties which conservatism bears to its roots. Conservatism always has been, and remains, basically authoritarian. For all the pseudo-libertarian veneer that some conservative intellectuals like to put on it, the basic issue is that conservatives think that cops should be able to do whatever the fuck they want.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
If is is irrelevant to the larger conclusion, then why bring up that issue right off the bat? What is the larger conclusion? If Matt does not believe there was a racial component here, then why does he go to the point of bringing up the Boston Globe mentioning of his previous CPR attempts on the NBA player? Matt himself states: “And of course the great thing about the contemporary United States is that the number of people who are so racist that they would willfully let a black man die rather than lift a finger to save him is extremely small.”
My question to Matt would be, is it only a few whites who would not help a black man in distress? Are there no individuals of any group (take your pick) who would overlook a person of another race in distress? Knowing human nature I would assure you there are.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Because others have raised that issue – you might have noticed that – and you want to explain why race is not, in fact, the central issue.
For chrissakes, he explains this right in the post!
Perhaps this:
July 24th, 2009 at 10:55 am
(sigh) So many faux news braindead comments. A competant officer knows how to diffuse a situation, not escalate it as Crowley did. I agree that was ‘acting stupidly’. But, after many utube examples of similar stupidity and abuse of authority, I think the core issue of how police are trained and selected is the lever of truth. I wonder about Gates’ neighbor actually. The whole picture does not strongly suggest a break in. Well, new rule: if locked out late at night, shout out your plan to get back inside loudly, call neighbor on cellphone to assure them that you’re locked out and ask them to help you. Better yet, call the police to get you back in. Do you think they’d say “be right there”?
July 24th, 2009 at 11:21 am
btw Brandon del Pozo is a captain in the NYPD’s assessment is fairly plagued with holes… one could insert provisals everywhere justifying Crowley and impuning a tired, old man like ‘except if you are Larry Craig’, for one.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Yglesias, as a conservative who reads your blog and other liberal blogs to stay aware of all sides of the issues, and to be confident in my own opinions, I have to say that I think you might be wrong on this one. Based on the police reports, Crowley did exactly his job–nothing more, nothing less. I, like you, don’t think race plays into this incident in the slightest. Cop receives possible break-in call. Cop responds. Man in home is confrontational from the outset. Cop remains polite and requests ID. Confrontational resident finally provides ID. Cop leaves residence. Man follows cop outside of home and continues to harass officer in front of on-lookers. Cop arrests man (very politely, it appears) for what was essentially disturbance of the peace. That’s it. Story over. The cop didn’t assert HIS power over the man by arresting him–he asserted the power of the law. If your goal is to present a balanced-but-liberal view to your audience (attractive to moderate conservatives like me), I would suggest doing another post and correcting yourself. I’ll continue to read your blog regardless because I consider many of your points to be thoughtful, but this particular post was kind of a turn-off.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Now we see the Officer Crowley edition of the saga, as he explains that he once tried to save the life of a black man, so he must not be a racist.
Not exactly. Actually, not even close. Crowley explains that he was accused of racism (after Reggie Lewis died) by people who contended he hadn’t done enough to save a black man’s life.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:53 am
For exactly the reason Joe from Lowell said.
The issue of racism has been brought up many times over in regards to this incident. Matt, therefore, brings it up and states that it is irrelevant to the larger conclusion of what misconduct he thought was there.
It’s really that simple. And frankly, you prove Yglesias’ larger point of how so much goes into defending non-white racism by immediately declaring that he was calling Crowley racist despite the obvious declaration that race was beside the point in the incident.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Since Ogabe and other far leftists are always saying that minorities are “disproportionately” stopped how about this “disproportion?” Blacks account for a hugely disproportionate amount of crime in America. It is smart police tactics to suspect black men whenever a crime has been committed because they are very likly to be guilty.If innocent then the courts will release them.
As for racial crimes- despite Hollywood, the lefist media and tv in almost all interracial crimes the victim is white and the perp is black. Go figure on “profiling”????
July 24th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Cops learn what their communities expect in terms of the treatment of despised minorities along with the locations of the donut shops with freebies.
They act according to their understandings of the attitudes and sympathies of their (voting) constituents.
SO if cops act like dicks to minorities, you can be sure it reflects the consensus of the community as to how treated.,..
July 24th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Fred T,
Men commit a disproportionate share of crime in this country. Shall we therefore conclude that males are “likely” to be guilty of a crime?
Whites commits a disproportionate share of insider trading in this country. Shall we therefore conclude that it’s reasonable to assume that whatever white person you encounter is “likely” guilty of insider trading?
In freshman year logic, they teach the difference between the statements “John is a man,” and “All mean are John.”
July 24th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Of course if by men you mean “black men” – Fact: Blacks are 12% of the population and commit 56% of violent crimes. If there were no blacks in this country our crime rate would rival Switzerland’s.
How many people are maimed and killed or raped by “insider trading”- do you fear most major cities because of insider traders?
And I have to agree with you: “All MEAN are John” is incorrect. Is English your second language? – just asking.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
That is NOT what Officer Crowley said. Also, Crowley did not accuse Gates of “of breaking into his own home”. You are twisting and misrepresenting the facts of the case show the officer as racist, when actually the only racist in this event was Gates. Gates saw an opportunity to make some headlines and garner some sympathy and grabbed at it.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
“Now we see the Officer Crowley edition of the saga, as he explains that he once tried to save the life of a black man, so he must not be a racist.”
Flat-out falsehood, that’s not what Crowley has claimed at all. You owe him an apology — and perhaps you ought to think about another line of work, or at least a return to J-School for a brush-up on the basics of unbiased, factual reporting.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Megan Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 11:38 am
“Based on the police reports, Crowley did exactly his job–nothing more, nothing less. ”
That is your problem Megan. You have based your opinion on a “police report”.
If you haven’t noticed, police reports are always treated as probable fiction (not a legal term) – that is why they are not allowed to be evidence. Do you really think a cop is going to write in his report that this man (Gates) asked repeatedly for the cop’s ID (as Gates says he did and is more likely than not true) and refused (illegally) to provide it? That should piss of any true conservative – one who values individual rights over state rights – one who despises the nameless faceless bureaucrat .
That cop was an abusive prick who will be sued, along with his police department and trainers. Gates will probably lose, since there is usually too many cop-lovers in our jury pools. But it will get that cop off the street for a few days. Hooray!
fred t Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am
You are full of stuff. Blacks get detained and/or framed and/or convicted and/or punished much more harshly and frequently than whites. Add in the parole violation nonsense and stats get lopsided. Look at the illegal drug usage and who gets targeted in our Drug War. This drug usage is steady across racial groups. The focus of the criminal justice system is hardly colorblind, which you can easily prove to yourself if you just read any modern research.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Blacks account for a hugely disproportionate amount of crime in America. It is smart police tactics to suspect black men whenever a crime has been committed because they are very likly to be guilty.If innocent then the courts will release them.
From 174 above. Just wanted to highlight this stellar bit of conservative “reasoning.”
July 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
It’s always amusing watching illogical people try to grapple with logical fallacies by shifting to morally assumed high grounds.
You’ll notice no attempt to argue the underlying fundamentals. That being, is his statement meant to imply that simply because one is black, one is more likely to commit a crime? As Joe pointed out, if that is the end of the variables, we can also state that far more men commit crimes than women, therefore, shall we then wish all men would leave the country to reduce our crime rate?
July 24th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I have no trouble “grappling” with your PC, leftist, apologia for blacks. So how about you grappling with the facts, as in facts, and your weak-kneed leftist cant, that blacks in general and black men in particular are responsible for crimes all out of proportion with their numbers.
Ogabe didn’t take very long to revert to his Rev Wright, community organizer, race baiting demagoguery, did he?
July 24th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Then, one is tempted to ask why you display nothing but a total inability to respond to the problem of correlation without causation that is demonstrated by such statements as:
Is your argument merely that they are more likely to commit crimes because they are black or not? If it is, then yes, it’s racist tripe. If not, then one needs to deal with the logically false application. That simple, yet you’ve not come close to trying to explain that.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Anytime I’ve been stopped by the police it’s ‘yes sir’ ‘no sir’. Why? Because they could take you away, kill you and get away with it.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Mr. Yglesias gets the reason for the arrest and the rest of the incident thoroughly wrong. As he is wrong on the facts, he is wrong in his conclusions. It’s of little use here to provide the facts, but Mr. Gates’s many errors began when he decided, for whatever reason, to force open his front door. He did not have to do that; he should not have done that. His errors and blunders continued from there. Other than demonstrating a poor ability to reason, Mr. Gates acted as a deeply prejudiced person would.
Large and general errors often fail to register with people. “Good job, Brownie,” hurt George W. Bush; he meant well, but Brownie was not doing a good job. President Obama no doubt thought he was doing the right thing by siding with his friend. He said “that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”
But Mr. Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct. His behavior, like that of President Obama, who offered a judgment on the police with almost no knowledge of the facts, ought to doom both men, but sadly will not. Obama reacted similarly when the government of Honduras acted to prevent its president’s attempted repeat of the Chávez takeover in Venezuela, violating a key part of the Honduran constitution. Obama sides with people who think as he does, and does not bother himself with knowing the facts concerning them before reaching his conclusions.
It is well past time for people on the left to rethink their attitudes and beliefs. At some point, somewhere in the early stages of their lives, perhaps they had good intentions regarding their conduct and regarding doing that which would improve the lot of their fellow citizens. I dissent so strongly with their beliefs and behaviors that my evaluation of them places them among the worst people in human history. Even so, hatred destroys the haters and insults insult the people who use them. I will settle with feeling great contempt for leftists like the President, Mr. Yglesias, and Mr. Gates, and leave my feelings there.
Retreats are unpopular these days among Catholics; a retreat center near my city recently had to close. I wish something of the sort existed for leftists. It would be nice if they reconsidered their views and actions and tried to reconcile them with the realities of our society, the best aspirations of humans, and the civilized behavior that marks human beings at their best.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Megan:
“Based on the police reports, Crowley did exactly his job–nothing more, nothing less.”
How about that? It’s almost as if the police report was a document written by Crowley to put himself in the best possible light! Just as Gates’s comments were framed to put him in the best possible light…yet for some reason you don’t seem concerned with the idea that Gates might be more truthful than Crowley.
Let’s put it this way: if Crowley’s statements were totally accurate, maybe the charges would have stuck:
“Cop arrests man (very politely, it appears) for what was essentially disturbance of the peace. That’s it. Story over.”
Except it’s not over: the charges, strangely, get dropped. I don’t understand! It looks pretty open-and-shut from Crowley’s report; why wouldn’t they move forward with it?
Your decision to totally believe the cop’s story and totally ignore Gates’s is clearly biased (note I’m not saying “racist”), especially since all of the circumstances (old man with bronchitis, charges dropped) tend to support Gates rather than Crowley.
***
Alfred J. Lemire:
“…Mr. Gates’s many errors began when he decided, for whatever reason, to force open his front door. He did not have to do that; he should not have done that.”
Why not? It’s legal to break into your own home. Do you have a good alternative? As someone said above, maybe he should have called the police for help; I bet they’d have come running.
“It would be nice if [leftists] reconsidered their views and actions and tried to reconcile them with the realities of our society…”
We’d better do that soon, otherwise we’ll never take back Congress and the White House!
July 24th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
It’s even more fun to watch them mutter about spelling errors when they can’t defend their argument. You sure told me, fredo, pointing out that I inserted an A in to “men” as I demolished your reasoning!
And there we have it: what kind of person sneers at someone for objecting to an attack on people for the race? Pretty much answers itself, doesn’t it?
July 24th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
What really enraged me about the response was the constant misquoting of Obama by conservatives, saying “he called the officers stupid.” It makes me want to punch them in the face. Don’t lie! Is that so much to ask? Don’t lie!
July 24th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Hell has just frozen over. The Kenyan community organizer has gone on tv to apologize for his racist prior statements. He might be an affirmative action lawyer but he is at least was smart enough to know that when you are in a hole it is best to quit digging. That makes him far smarter than the leftists on this board who will defend black crime right up to the time they are mugged.
The policeman, being a fair minded and upright citizen has accepted the apology and will show the grace and intelligence that Gates so obviously lacks.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:08 am
re 186
I dissent so strongly with their ["people on the left"] beliefs and behaviors that my evaluation of them places them among the worst people in human history.
And you say “people on the left” need to rethink their attitudes and beliefs. Lord.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:28 am
Donkey whatsit sounds a lot like a guy who used to post under the name Healthy Markup. Same craptacular reliance on biased reporting. And not very deep interpretation of data either. That guy was very into definitions. Maybe they live in the same house.
Nice to see you, Hugh. I miss Healthy Markup, but at least we have Donkey and fredt, so there’s no shortage of self-pitying racist stupidity!
July 25th, 2009 at 9:10 am
The mental midgets of PRI’s the Takeaway played the same incendiary game as the right wing, or near to it. If I hadn’t woken up to their yakking concern trolling about Obama’s remarks the other morning I wouldn’t have given the Gates incident another thought. Bush may be gone, but we are stuck with these morons polluting Public Radio — to think that I used to rely on them for news.
July 25th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“One of the biggest reasons why it’s extremely difficult to have a real conversation about race in the United States is that every imputation of a racial dynamic immediately becomes a defensive spat in which the white person in question starts denying that he “is” a “racist.””
But of course, as all the “enlightened” “progressives” like Yglesias and Obamass know all whiteys ARE racists.
“At which point Crowley, even though he was now perfectly aware that Gates was not guilty of anything, decided to exact revenge by manipulating the situation to create a trumped-up disorderly conduct charge”
Because Henry “affirmative action” “y’all don’t know who yer messin’ with” Gates, the learned “ooops that’s not Shakespeare” Professor, Doctor of Yinglish could not possibly be guilty of disorderly conduct. Screaming, yelling, and verbally abusing a cop simply doing his sworn duty, is not dicorderly conduct; at least not if you are a professional race-baiting a#@#le, like Gates or Obamass.
To quote Inspector Cluseau “good one”.
July 25th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I love these guys who have never met a black person they consider qualified for anything or who didn’t get his position by leapfrogging via affirmative action over these guys’ buddies, Clem and Lamar, who then accuse of us being the “real racists”.
July 26th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Hey bub, I’ll have you know that after being denied entry to Harvard because they didn’t fill a quota, both Clem and Lamar graduated with honors from University of North Dacota.
July 26th, 2009 at 1:19 am
I’m currently writing from South Dakota and know professors at UND. They don’t pass people who can’t spell the state’s name.