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<p>I think it says nothing one way or the other. They arrived late on the scene, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess they felt they weren’t in any position to know exactly what the situation was. They knew their colleague was arresting a man, and that the man was visibly upset. Other than that, what were they supposed to do?</p>
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He didn’t have to hear every word to report on what he did hear, and the implication that the door was open and he heard everything is also plausible. I haven’t heard Professor Gates every deny saying those things. Have you?</p>
<p>The fact that Sgt. Crowley is an expert is racial profiling and instructs others on how to avoid engaging in racial profiling tells me that the odds he acted out of race are slim to nil.</p>
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<p>This is probably because Gates is one of the most admired and respected black men in the country, but then again I’m just guessing (I’m not a black leader).</p>
<p>I mean come on, if you had heard that Jimmy Carter was suspected of breaking and entering and was subsequently arrested, wouldn’t you think there might be something wrong with the story?</p>
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<p>Perhaps you could provide a quote by quote of the disputed speech.</p>
<p>Gates and the Officer provided affirmative statements of what they said and what the other said. I don’t think that they’ve issued negative statements.</p>
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According to the report written by Officer Gonzales, he arrived in time to personally hear Professor Gates refuse to provide identification and make other statements.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine why anyone would think that Officer Gonzalez would lie and risk his job if he was witnessing racist aggression aginst a civilian. What wouuld he gain from that?</p>
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Yes he is. Without a doubt. And I’m STILL glad that he was not injured by the police or a possible burglar.</p>
<p>How many of you followed the story of the 72-year-old grandma who was tasered after a traffic stop? I think it’s an example of what can happen in this kind of situation even when race is clearly not involved.</p>
<p>“I can’t imagine why anyone would think that Officer Gonzalez would lie and risk his job if he was witnessing racist aggression aginst a civilian. What wouuld he gain from that?”</p>
<p>Many police of all races have lied to protect their fellow police officers. Why? Their fellow police officers may be their friends and what stands between them and a criminal’s bullet.</p>
<p>Story about how race relates to how people are treated by medical professionals:</p>
<p>" While it’s extremely difficult to tell in any given situation how much race – consciously or unconsciously – plays a role in a doctor’s decision making, multiple studies over several decades have found doctors make different decisions for black patients and white patients even when they have the same medical problems and the same insurance.</p>
<p>“It’s absolutely proven through studies that a black man and a white man going to the hospital with the same complaint will be treated differently,” Dr. Neil Calman, a family physician and president of the Institute for Family Health in New York, said. Calman is also Reid’s regular physician.</p>
<p>For example, a 2005 study found African-American cardiac patients were less likely than whites to receive a lifesaving procedure called revascularization, where doctors restore the flow of oxygen to the heart. The study authors at RTI International, a research institute, noted that all of the patients had Medicare, which covers the cost of revascularization.</p>
<p>In a study conducted in 2007, Harvard researchers showed doctors a vignette about a 50-year-old man with chest pain who arrived at the emergency room, where an EKG showed he’d had a heart attack. Sometimes the researchers paired the medical history with a photo of black man and other times with a photo of a white man.</p>
<p>The doctors were significantly more likely to recommend lifesaving drugs when they thought the patient was white than when they thought the patient was black."
[Does</a> your doctor judge you based on your color? - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/23/doctors.attitude.race.weight/index.html]Does”>Does your doctor judge you based on your color? - CNN.com)</p>
<p>So, no matter what the police officer says about his motivations, and no matter how his fellow officers back him up, there is no way he can be believed?</p>
<p>I don’t know about the Boston Police Dept, but most police internal affairs units use polygraphs as a method of determining whether a police officer has acted contrary to police standards. Sometimes the officer can refuse to take the polygraph but the refusal does not look good in the eyes of internal affairs investigators. If you think there is a chance someone may request a polygraph of you, I suspect you would be less willing to falsify a police report.</p>
<p>BCEagle, if you read the police report and Professor Gates’ statements on theroot, they’re pretty similar in the facts. It seems to me just the level of volume and the underlying emotion that’s in dispute.</p>
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<p>Excuse me while I go collect my eyeballs, they just rolled out of my sockets.</p>
<p>Sorry. It’s just that being “sensitized” in that institutional sense by no means ensures lack of racial bias. I’ve met way too many do-gooder types who perpetuate the same stereotypes, whether consciously or not, I can’t say.</p>
<p>Northstarmom’s quoted study hints at that.</p>
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That seems to be exactly it.</p>
<p>[So, no matter what the police officer says about his motivations, and no matter how his fellow officers back him up, there is no way he can be believed?]</p>
<p>Police officers are given a lot of credibility in our court systems, by prosecutors and the media. Perhaps that results in systemic corruption and the temptation to lie because the odds of getting away with it are better. Go through the articles linked on police officers telling lies for one reason or another.</p>
<p>“I don’t know about the Boston Police Dept, but most police internal affairs units use polygraphs as a method of determining whether a police officer has acted contrary to police standards. Sometimes the officer can refuse to take the polygraph but the refusal does not look good in the eyes of internal affairs investigators. If you think there is a chance someone may request a polygraph of you, I suspect you would be less willing to falsify a police report.”</p>
<p>The classic suburban nightmare: White yuppie couple Chuck and Carol Stuart go home to suburban Massachusetts from a birthing class at an inner city hospital. Black everyman, 5’5", 150-165 lbs., with a raspy voice and a ubiquitous black jogging suit with red stripes, abducts the couple, robs them, and forces them to drive back to his “home turf” of Mission Hill. There, with no witnesses, he shoots the pregnant wife in the head and her husband in the stomach, a surprisingly flexible move from the back seat. He then runs off to the sanctity of his crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhood. The husband’s first instinct, of course, is to call 911 on his car phone and give them all the details, ignoring his dying wife next to him. Police and ambulances, after tracking the lost gentleman by the frequency of his car phone, make a triumphant rescue that the television cameras which had rushed to the scene captured for the thankful nation.</p>
<p>The country was stunned and outraged by this senseless, random murder of both mother and baby. The familiar call for the reinstatement of the death penalty was heard, and the Boston police, aware that the eyes of the nation were upon them, rose to the occasion by initiating what is affectionately called the “stop-and-search” method: the idea being that if you stop every black man within a ten-mile radius, you are going to find your killer much more quickly. Civil liberties thus suspended, a number of black jogging-suit-clad men soon turned up. One might think that perhaps the easiest, most definitive (and legal) method of identification would have been to show Chuck mug shots… but he was apparently too weak and then too emotionally exhausted to take part. On Nov. 15, Willie Bennett, arrested on other charges, emerged as the prime suspect—thanks in part to the fine work of the Boston police who had thrown his 63-year-old mother against the wall and trashed her apartment. On Dec. 28, a rejuvenated Chuck Stuart picked Willie Bennett as the man who most closely resembled their attacker. The case was progressing to its inevitable and just conclusion.</p>
<p>And then it fell apart. Matthew Stuart, Chuck’s brother, identified Chuck as the real killer. Now Chuck Stuart has killed himself, Willie Bennett was freed, and the whole web of lies is finally being exposed.</p>
<p>Now, a shaken and polarized Boston tries to pick up the pieces. Ray Flynn, always one to take the offensive, said in his State of the City address, “We can’t let a single incident, no matter how terrible, set us back.” The evil thing about this awful fraud was that it hurt the heart and soul of a city that has worked so hard to break down the racial barriers that have divided it for so many years.</p>
<p>Actually, the most evil thing about this awful fraud was that it exposed the racism ingrained in this city. The residents of Mission Hill are now calling for an apology from the mayor and the police yet this apology is not forthcoming. The Mayor’s speech and his adamant refusal to apologize make it clear that race relations are not his real concern; what really matters to Flynn is the national image of Boston. Flynn makes the excuse that any mayor would have done what he did. This may or may not be true, but some mayors would now recant. Admitting that he, like many people, was wrong does not undermine the worth of the Boston police or the city administration. Unless Flynn apologizes, the incident may well escalate into another racial clash like the busing crisis of 1974-75, ignited by the attempted desegregation of South Boston High School. Young politician Ray Flynn spoke out against busing then, and has obviously carried this divisive attitude with him through the years. Carol Stuart’s family set up a scholarship for Mission Hill kids to heal some of the racial scars caused by her murder. Their kindness in the face of grief puts Flynn to shame.</p>
<p>The story went unchecked because so many people wanted to believe it. The three insurance policies worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that Chuck had on Carol, Chuck’s demand for Carol to have an abortion, and numerous comments made by Chuck about killing his wife all suggest that the idyllic marriage portrayed in the media was completely unsubstantiated. This myth only survived because no one in the Boston press wanted to ruin a good story. The Stuart case made much better copy than other, less melodramatic incidents like the shooting death of Anna Stroud, a black woman, mother of five, who was killed in front of her building on Mission Hill. The investigation into this murder dwindled in two days; Stroud’s brother later positively identified the killer but police said there was not enough evidence for prosecution.</p>
<p>What would have happened if Matthew Stuart had not come forward with his evidence? An innocent Willie Bennett would probably have gone to jail and possibly to the electric chair while the discrepancies in this case were swept under the rug. Reports are surfacing that police fabricated stories of Bennett’s guilt to obtain search warrants for his mother’s and girlfriend’s apartments, that people close to Bennett, including his young nephew, were pressured into giving false statements about his guilt, and that Chuck Stuart was told beforehand that Bennett had a heavy criminal record and was the prime suspect in the case. The Stuart family and some friends could have positively identified Charles Stuart as his wife’s killer, and it turns out that Chuck’s brothers Matthew and Michael both had figured out the crime within days of its occurrence. And we are left ashamed as hundreds of black men report being unlawfully searched. Numerous complaints of police harassment throughout the past months by Mission Hill and Roxbury residents were pushed aside in the search for the “horrendous killer.”</p>
<p>Imagine for a moment that Charles Stuart had described a white person as his wife’s killer. Would the case have become national news? Would the police have searched Charlestown for the white everyman? Or would such a violation of individual rights not have been tolerated? And in the aftermath, would people still be saying Charlestown is a pretty dangerous place and even if it wasn’t true this time, it could still happen and you can’t be too careful?</p>
<p>[The</a> Forgotten Victim](<a href=“http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/~perspy/old/issues/2000/retro/forgotten_victim.html]The”>http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/~perspy/old/issues/2000/retro/forgotten_victim.html)</p>
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BCEagle91, you quoted this, but I didn’t catch your answer. Is it yes?</p>
<p>I remember the Stuart case very well as I was at a childbirth case that very night. Is there any point at which it can be said that ugly things happen that involve racism and ugly things happen that don’t involve racism?</p>
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<p>Try hitting refresh. The response is there and it’s long overall. Maybe an html or temporary server glitch.</p>
<p>I certainly think that cases like this where there is a question of a racial element deserve close scrutiny, and I think it’s fair for black people to be highly suspicious when something like this happens. However, I think a rush to judgment on either side is wrong, and that’s what happened here, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, BCEagle, I saw your response–I just can’t glean whether it boils down to a “yes” answer to my question or not.</p>
<p>Don’t they have a procedure for investigating these allegations in the Cambridge PD? That would seem the most reasonable thing to me. And if those officers lied, they should be fired and lose their pensions.</p>