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<p>And when you are perennially critical of black people in general, what card are you playing?</p>
<p>No, he was WRONG. This is why Mr. Gates walks as a free man today. If he wasn’t wrong in arresting him, Gates would remain imprisoned.</p>
<p>The cop taught a racial profiling course in racial profiling at the Lowell Police Academy in 2004. I just found the article and that’s the headline. Will proceed to read it now.</p>
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The supplemental report makes very clear that Officer Figueroa was there and personally heard what was said.</p>
<p>I just read that too BCEagle. [Crowley</a> teaches racial profiling class at academy - BostonHerald.com](<a href=“http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1186708&pos=breaking]Crowley”>http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1186708&pos=breaking)</p>
<p>Perhaps both gentlemen were wrong and racism wasn’t the problem. Sometimes white people act from reasons, good and bad, that aren’t racist. It certainly seems like the arresting officer has at least tried to be part of the solution.</p>
<p>So if there is a problem between a police officer and a person of color it is automatically a racial issue. The white officers account will have no credibility because of course he is a racist and what he says can not be believed. On the other hand the person of color should always be believed because there has been a history of race problems with the police?!
I will relate two stories that happened when I was in college (since anecdotal accounts seem to hold so much water on this thread in determining the motivations and actions in present day Cambridge).
A young woman saw a suspicious black man outside her apartment building. He seemed to be lurking in the shadows and was watching everyone as they went in the building. He tried to catch the door twice to get in the building but failed. Everything in her screamed to call the police but she didn’t because she didn’t want to appear racist (there were some tense racial interactions between the neighborhood blacks and the college students).
The next day she found out this man was arrested for rape after entering the building that evening and breaking into a student’s apartment.
The police arrived at a home for a call of burglary in progress. The home owner from inside his home assured the police there was no problem and everything was fine. White police and black home owner. They insisted he come out of the house and identify himself. He was indeed the homeowner but the burglar was inside the house with a gun.
I have not read anything that indicates that this police officer is a racist. I haven’t read anything that indicates the neighbor was acting out of anything but concern for her neighbors home. While we can disagree and argue about the outcome and actions of both men, I think it is wrong and a disservice to the police officer to make assumptions about his motivations just as wrong as making assumptions about someone because they are black.
And Obama was wrong to make judgements especially when he admitted up front he didn’t know all the facts.</p>
<p>Good catch BCEagle91. Here is some of the article I think you are referring to:</p>
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<p>[Cop</a> who arrested black scholar is profiling expert](<a href=“http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99KBEAO1&show_article=1]Cop”>http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99KBEAO1&show_article=1)</p>
<p>That some posters are so insistent that this has nothing to do with racial bias is pretty revealing. Just what it reveals is not so clear to me, except maybe an insistence on maintaining status quo (the power dynamic). This is generally true of most white people, from all political persuasions. Hell, it’s true of all people in power, for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>I imagine there isn’t a black person in America who can’t see Gates’ point of view, even if they disagree with his actions. (except maybe Clarence Thomas.)</p>
<p>As for the police, I don’t have much faith in them, and that’s from personal experience. I’ve seen blatantly racist behavior from black cops, from latino cops, from female cops. I’ve had cops lie to me, mostly for reasons of expedience. They’re no different from a lot of people in that way. I think expedience becomes a primary motivator when you’re a cop, and I can’t say I would be any different.</p>
<p>One thing, I find it very hard to believe that Gates would say “yo momma”, or whatever the ostensible quote is. That would sort of go against his entire life’s work, no?</p>
<p>Another thing I’ve observed in my 50 years on this earth: it is near impossible to really understand what it feels like to be in another’s shoes in a specific situation, especially when the other is truly an other. Human imagination is limited to the familiar. That doesn’t mean that you can argue that those feelings don’t exist, as much as you would like to deny certain truths.</p>
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I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think the charges were dropped so quickly because Gates is famous and has the ability to make waves. If he had been an ordinary black guy, would Al Sharpton be swooping to his rescue under these circumstances?</p>
<p>And mousegray, what exactly makes black people able to psychoanalyze the white cop, when white people lack the experience to psychoanalyze Gates? And I will note that plenty of black leaders immediately assumed that racism caused this incident before the facts were even spread.</p>
<p>“The supplemental report makes very clear that Officer Figueroa was there and personally heard what was said.”</p>
<p>Where did you find the supplemental report?</p>
<p>The discussion was certainly helped along when the President got involved. That and the fact that Professor Gates is famous certainly makes this newsworthy. I still think the problem here is two men having a you-know-whatting contest.</p>
<p>Hunt, you may be on to something. Could the decision to drop the charges against Gates have been racially motivated. Were the charges dropped only because the accused was a wealthy prominent African American at an elite university who played the race card? If so, it looks like the prosecutors have some explaining to do.</p>
<p>The supplemental report is the last page of the police report filed by Officer Crowley. I personally found it at the smoking gun, but it’s in plenty of places on the web, BCEagle and it is states without question that the second officer was in the house and heard with his own ears. I wonder why Officer Crowley would lie and risk his job. Same with the second officer, because the wording of the report says that there were plenty of witnesses standing on the street and to whom Professor Gates was yelling. If they lied, they should be fired. If they didn’t lie, how will they get their reputations back?</p>
<p>Nah, they would have dropped the charges against a famous white professor too, under the same circumstances.</p>
<p>As I read the report, Crowley wrote the part at the end, which is the actual report, and the part at the beginning is Figueroa’s supplement.</p>
<p>Have there been any incidents of arrested students? Makes me rethink applying to Harvard. ( no I’m joking, of course I’ll apply to Harvard and hopefully get in)</p>
<p>That’s not how I read it hunt, but whether the single-age supplement is at the front or the back, the wording remains the same. Officer Figueroa was present.</p>
<p>I just think the versions we saw had the pages in a different order.</p>
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<p>Technically, I agree that this is true. But, and this is a big but, it’s the hierarchy that forces people from the lower rungs of power to be extra sensitive and perceptive of those above them because their survival depends on it. People in power don’t need to worry about that kind of thing and can afford to be oblivious (and obtuse).</p>
<p>The more I read about this, the more I think it has to do with a power/class struggle that was exacerbated by racial bias (which I don’t believe is the same as racism, although the end results can be just as bad. see Amadou Diallo.)</p>
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<p>It also indicates that he stepped outside of the house to speak to the eyewitness. Which implies that he didn’t hear all of what went on inside.</p>
<p>“I wonder why Officer Crowley would lie and risk his job. Same with the second officer, because the wording of the report says that there were plenty of witnesses standing on the street and to whom Professor Gates was yelling.”</p>
<p>Why did Himan and Gottlieb lead the grand jury to indict when they knew the three weren’t guilty? The investigation continued even when DNA evidence cleared the entire team. And even after the story had been splattered on 60 Minutes.</p>
<p>Honestly, the problem here is that the facts are murky enough to make different interpretations plausible. If the police had tased Gates when he came to the door, or if (on the other hand) had had come after the officer with a baseball bat, it would be easy. Here, though, there was no overt racism on the part of the police, and no action by the police that would definitely be different if the homeowner had been white.</p>