<p>Very fine and thoughtful posts by DonnaL, Poetsheart, Northstarmom, and a candid and equally thoughtful comment by Zoosermom. To all those who continue to rationalize and excuse the Police Officer’s mishandling of the situation, I’ll just refer you to Lenel Geter and invite you to ask him about mistaken perceptions and bad assumptions that lead to disastrous results. If you’ve forgotten, Lenel Jeter was the young corporate worker who was sitting in a Dallas park in coat and tie some years ago on his lunch break, reading a book. Responding to a telephone call that a ‘suspicious Black man’ was sitting in the park, Jeter was arrested, accused of being a bank robbery suspect, and subsequently given a lengthly sentence in a Texas prison, despite the vehement protests of his nearly all white staff of office co-workers, who testified to his good character and to the fact that since they had seen him in the office the day in question, there was no way on Earth he could have robbed a bank at the hour in question, many miles away in another town. Perhaps for a white “suspect,” the corroboration from co-workers would have been enough to resolve the mistake. True to form, the Texas justice system nonetheless convicted him. Thankfully, because the case had so many untruths, police and prosecutor misbehavior and and holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through, 60 Minutes got a hold of it and did an expose which led to a complete and unqualified exhonoration of Lenel Geter. Geter only had his friends and co-workers behind him, not the full faith and credit of a Harvard I.D. Do you think Lenel Geter and many others like him unequivocally put their faith and deference in the police?</p>
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<p>Back up. No such admittance has occurred. They simply didn’t press charges. He’s not apologizing; his union is standing entirely behind him. The city even chose its words carefully.</p>
<p>It’s in the misunderstanding, not “wrong”, category.</p>
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Do you think it’s ever really ok to say “Yo Momma” to a police officer? Seriously. If one doesn’t want to be treated like a stereotype, then don’t act like one. I still think it was a battle of egos between two men. So, really, the problem wasn’t race but testosterone. If a woman had been handling things, I’m sure all would have been well. (Kidding) I think the officer was absolutely wrong to arrest Professor Gates and I see no reason for that other than “mine is bigger than yours,” but I don’t get not being darn glad that your house is protected. What should the officer have done after receiving the call other than check it out?</p>
<p>The issue that’s interesting here (to me, anyway) is who was out of line, and when. I do think that the police officer was out of line at two points: (1) when he failed to give his name and badge number to Gates when he first asked for them and (2) when he arrested Gates. However, Gates’ version of the story depends on the police officer being out of line from the very beginning, and that I simply don’t see. I think it’s pretty clear that Gates was out of line in his actions. So I continue to think that he precipitated the confrontation, although the police officer should have walked away.</p>
<p><a href=“1”>quote</a> when he failed to give his name and badge number to Gates when he first asked for them
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The officer swears that he gave his name. So he-said/he-said again. So who knows? I don’t get arresting rude AT ALL.</p>
<p>Apparently Mass. law requires police to give their badge numbers as well, so it appears that he did fail to do this.</p>
<p>I see a little irony in the police expecting deference and exercising power and discretion with the ability to get away with it running up against a guy that has the same ability at a higher level and calling them on it. If you’re a police officer, do you really want to go after a millionaire or a billionaire? A billionaire can make your life and the life of your family miserable for generations.</p>
<p>We were in a restaurant in a city with practically no minorities earlier this year and walked into a restaurant. What was odd is that most of the patrons stared at us as we were walking to the counter to order. My daughter asked me why everyone was staring at us and I just explained that they probably don’t see very many asians here. That’s pretty minor stuff - getting harassed is a much bigger deal. I haven’t been harassed for being asian in a few decades but it’s pretty easy to understand if someone else has been harassed if you’ve been harassed.</p>
<p>This looks like it is mostly a case of police bullying which is a problem because police are people with legal authority.</p>
<p>One guy in the city where I work had a camera installed in the front of his house. The police came and wanted his son and were rude and belligerent. He took the video to the police department to complain about the behavior of the officers and was arrested for recording without notification. There was a sign about the recording though. The outcry from the public was pretty big and the department did find that their officers acted inappropriately. They did return his equipment eventually.</p>
<p>It is not hard to find examples of police officers behaving badly and that’s of the ones that are caught. I have had thoughts that our criminal justice system is too routine for a lot of the people that work in them and that they are dull and unfeeling to the real problems that they can cause.</p>
<p>The more I read about this case, it appears that Professor Gates has a racial chip on his shoulder. He took his opinion about the history of racism in American and imposed that opinion on the confrontation. In other words, Professor Gates presumed racism and became angry instead of looking at the situation objectively. Professor Gates should have remained calm and filed a complaint against the Sergeant. The Sergeant should have given his badge number, but his failure to do so would not justify an aggressive reaction from Professor Gates. When police are dispatched to a location, their identify and badge and unit number is recorded in the police department’s radio dispatch room. It would not have been difficult to identify the officers who went there regardless of whether the Sergeant gave his badge number.</p>
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<p>What is the penalty for failure to do so?</p>
<p>I believe it would be in Prof. Gates’ best interests to settle this case ASAP behind closed doors. Sure, the police officer was a jacka$$ and should apologize, but there’s no need to further discuss this unfortunate and unforgettable incident any longer in the media. It’s not helping his reputation. The person who initially called the police should apologize to Gates.</p>
<p>Gates was tired, Gates was riled, Gates took offense at being hassled in his own home and may have been offensive to the police officer. A prudent person would have been more conciliatory to the police (who was right in coming to investigate a possible b&e, btw). But is lack of prudence a cause for arrest, even if it does happen all the time? I don’t think so.
I also think that if Gates is going to demand an apology, the police officer might want to demand one for Gates telling him off with “your mamma.” Better to drop the subject all around.</p>
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But why? Would you really want your neighbors to be afraid to look out for you?</p>
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<p>Are you always completely 100% rational and unemotional?</p>
<p>“The Sergeant should have given his badge number, but his failure to do so would not justify an aggressive reaction from Professor Gates.”</p>
<p>How would he know that he was a real officer?</p>
<p>“When police are dispatched to a location, their identify and badge and unit number is recorded in the police department’s radio dispatch room. It would not have been difficult to identify the officers who went there regardless of whether the Sergeant gave his badge number.”</p>
<p>Police typically have a lot of equipment in their vehicles today. I would imagine that pulling up the information on the owner of the house would be trivial - I can pull up the owner of any property on the internet in the town where I live. So the name should be available unless it’s owned by a corporation or organization. Getting a picture and any criminal history would have been trivial for the dispatcher.</p>
<p>If I were the person who called the police, I would be hesitant to apologize to Gates. What do you think he might say?</p>
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<p>It’s still a work of fiction, and rather than create, react to and post about the work of fiction, how about dealing with the facts that are in evidence? Sheesh!</p>
<p>I am very well aware that racism exists. </p>
<p>I do not doubt, at all, that Gates has had people react to his skin color first, and to who he is second, for good AND ill.</p>
<p>I don’t see that here. The officer was investigating a burglary report; Gates opened the door. Of course the officer is going to question Gates; who else is there to question?! The officer doesn’t know Gates just flew in from China; he couldn’t possibly know that. What he DOES know is that a man – black, white, green, purple, whatever – is standing in a home at which a possible burglary has been reported. The officer has to question Gates.</p>
<p>Gates showed him ID; the officer was satisfied. Gates hassles the officer. Would Gates have hassled a black officer who did exactly what the white officer did?</p>
<p>The officer – any officer – needs to learn to control his/her reaction to someone acting like a jerk. This officer didn’t. But I agree with Hunt: Gates was out of line. Walking after the officer to yell at him? Gates felt threatened by ONE police officer on his porch, but not by all the others who showed up? That doesn’t make sense, at all. If he’d felt threatened by the one officer, would he really have been okay with that officer being in the house with him?? Doesn’t add up.</p>
<p>“They have a supreme weapon that can decimate whole police departments. It’s called the ‘race card’. The smarter they are the quicker they draw this ultimate weapon against which we are not protected.”</p>
<p>That certainly holds true on this thread.</p>
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<p>The house is, according to what I’ve read, owned by Harvard.</p>
<p>Since we’ve mused over how a white homeowner would have responded to the same situation, how do you think a black homeowner who wasn’t a famous Harvard professor would have reacted? I suspect that he might have felt mistreated, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t have ended up arrested.</p>
<p>All bets are off when you hassle a police officer, even when you are “in the right”.</p>
<p>True, LGM. And it does not make it right to be arrested.
What is interesting to me is that in the photograph of Gates being handcuffed, I can see another African-American policeman. I wonder whether he witnessed the whole of the altercation and what his take on it was.</p>