<p>There’s a long tradition of African-Americans summering on Martha’s Vineyard.
from Wikipedia</p>
<p>The Cape did not use to be nearly as expensive as it is today. (Speaking as someone whose family has had a little house on the mainland for generations which is now worth big bucks, but wasn’t when it was acquired.)</p>
<p>“The issue that’s interesting here (to me, anyway) is who was out of line, and when.”</p>
<p>I just don’t understand why you care whether Gates was “out of line” in the sense of being snarky.</p>
<p>I care whether people were “out of line” in the sense of violating the law. Here, Gates was not, and the police officer was.</p>
<p>Why do you care who was rude to whom?</p>
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<p>Your legal conclusion is flat out wrong.</p>
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<p>Because some people are vested in proving there was justification on the part of the officer in order suppress any belief in the possibility that racism may have played a role in what happened.</p>
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<p>That’s interesting. When people compare Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, I often hear that Nantucket is full of Democrats and Martha’s Vineyard is full of Republicans. If demographics hold true, you might expect blacks to prefer Nantucket.</p>
<p>“Your legal conclusion is flat out wrong.”</p>
<p>Uh, care to elaborate? I’ve explained my reasoning repeatedly and thoroughly upthread (as has DonnaL, a fellow lawyer). To put it briefly, it’s legal to be rude to an officer in your own home, and there was no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed under Massachusetts law. You don’t make much of an argument in response.</p>
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<p>like Cornell West.</p>
<p>“yo mama” makes no sense anyway. Was he trying to get the attention(in a low-class way) of a female? The phrase “ya mama” is intended as an insult to one’s mother. That would have made much more sense.
Further reports now seem to back up my original supposition that Gates initially refused to identify himself. I think it is "out-of-line not to provide id to a cop. This isn’t just a case of white cop breaking into a black man’s home, and then problems escalated. SO much happened before that was within Gates’ control, but he either caused or permitted problems to escalate. He yelled “race!” too early. Sadly, false claims and premature claims make it tougher for real claims to be believed.</p>
<p>As for Obama mentioning past cases of discrimination in a recent speech, he mentioned many good real-life examples such as those who face East when they pray. All those examples he gave were good examples of past and recent discriminations. The one, big, glaring recent example of discrimination that the President left out was white firefighters.</p>
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<p>Clearly harmless-looking agitated people have been known to cause bodily harm to police officers and bystanders. Just ask the family of Richard Herzog.</p>
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<p>But it’s not legal to engage in disorderly conduct. If Gates is yelling at a police officer outside of his house on the sidewalk and yelling that the officer is engaged in racial bias and that he had not heard the last of Gates, and then the Sergeant warned Gates two times that he was becoming disorderly, yet Gates continued, and where others were watching it, is an easy case to prove disorderly conduct. You simply do not have the right to yell at police officers especially after they tell you to you are becoming disorderly. It’s illegal. It also would be illegal if Gates had engaged in a similar yelling match with a neighbor over some other reason.</p>
<p>Sergeant Crowley did nothing illegal. Police have the discretion to arrest or warn. If I had been the cop, I might have just warned him rather than arresting him, but it is a judgement call of the police officer.</p>
<p>razorsharp
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<p>I agree completely with this. Few people of Caucasian race can claim that they have not had the wonderful experience of encountering a cop’s bravado. I don’t even think bravado is the right word. The bottom line is that cops have a type of wall around them, and it is part of how most of them seem to need to do their job. </p>
<p>I know that I could easily have been arrested, as a Caucasian woman who is not a physical threat to anyone, in the exact same situation. I know this because I have come up against the cop 'tude - more than once. I don’t have a problem with it, as I feel they go out on a battle field every day. I have trained my kids to assume a very deferential demeanor if they ever come into contact with police officers (as a preventative measure).</p>
<p>I don’t get DonnaL and Hanna feeling that they proved legally that the cop was wrong. Maybe I missed something (I am not a lawyer, BTW, just a superhero), but from what I saw they only laid out how the charges would never hold up in court. Yet as the law is written, I don’t see anything preventing a cop from arresting the professor for disorderly conduct. Massachusetts law seems to give the officers broad room for interpretation, and cops will arrest someone even though they know that eventually the charges will be dropped.</p>
<p>"But, I suppose I’m just “playing the race card”</p>
<p>Yes you ARE.</p>
<p>“Once the cop knew that the perp was the homeowner, he should have apologized.”</p>
<p>Why would the cop apologize? His job was to investigate the complaint and that is what he did.</p>
<p>“If you are pushing from the outside and somehow end up inside, then there is a sufficient basis for a police officer to conclude that you broken in.”</p>
<p>The police officer only saw events after he was in the house. He didn’t see him push in.</p>
<p>“Another question that comes to mind, since when do college professors have houses on Martha’s Vineyard? College professors can be paid well, but Harvard must be off the charts.”</p>
<p>College Professors can make huge amounts of money doing research and consulting. Gates used to host a TV show on PBS and I saw other things that he did in an article somewhere. He seems to be pretty well of and very well connected.</p>
<p>“Police have the discretion to arrest or warn. If I had been the cop, I might have just warned him rather than arresting him, but it is a judgement call of the police officer.”</p>
<p>I’m glad that this incident will provide pause to officers to improve their judgement.</p>
<p>I have been following this thread and trying to understand the rational for why some believe Officer Crowleys arrest of Prof Gates was not racially motivated. My question is how many people have Office Crowley arrested in his entire career? How many 60 y/o has he arrested? How many has he arrested for being verbally rude (disorderly)? If he can prove he routinely arrest those who question his authority, and the arrest of Prof Gates is just one of many similar arrest, than the taint of racism would be dispelled.</p>
<p>In an urban environment, what is the ratio of </p>
<p>people breaking into their own houses : people trying to break into other people’s houses</p>
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Because it sheds light on the allegations of racism in the case, which is the main reason this case is interesting to anyone. I think it’s been fascinating how folks have jumped to all sorts of conclusions (on both sides), even to the extent of writing their own scripts of how it all must have happened. Certainly, I have my own biases, but I’ve been trying to analyze the facts as we know them.</p>
<p>By the way, I’m not sure a police officer is acting illegally if he arrests somebody on charges that are later dropped; if he knew the charges were false, then that would be false arrest, but it would be a more difficult question whether the officer had a reasonable belief that he could justifiably arrest Gates for disorderly conduct.</p>
<p>Tutu, does the participation of a black and hispanic officer in the arrest help dispel the contention of racism? Does the hispanic officer’s report, which backs up the white officer’s, help dispel that contention?</p>
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<p>It looks like he wrote up the report but that doesn’t mean that he was there when it happened. It looked like a he-said/he-said thing inside the house. It seems a bit odd that a third person wrote the report and not the person that was there when it happened. I believe that it is called hearsay.</p>