<p>To my knowledge, the phrase “yo mamma” springs from a method of black cultural verbal sparring, a kind of trash talk known as “The Dozens”. The Dozens is many decades old and was (Is? I have no idea if its use is still common today) usually practiced by urban dwellers and others of limited economic and educational background. It involves telling an insulting joke at someone else’s expense, and when the person is unable to comeback with an equally clever retort, he or she may say, “Yo Mamma!”, indicating that whatever insult has been said about them applies equally to the insulting person’s mother. Everybody knows you don’t insult a person’s mamma. ;)</p>
<p>But, did Prof. Gates, a highly educated, and socially/economicaly well placed (until this incident, that is) black man, actually resort to shouting, “Yo mamma!” at the Officer in question? Doesn’t pass the smell test to many of us black CC posters, some of whom are neither as well educated, nor as economically advantaged as the professor. </p>
<p>But, apparently that’s what’s been reported in some quarters. Perhaps there’s an audio tape which proves he did.</p>
<p>Or perhaps not. It’s yet to surface, hasn’t it?</p>
<p>Oh well you see, I disagree. The leader who would have you to believe he is infallible, is the leader totally lacking in humility, and possessed of an over-sized, and ultimately self-serving ego. Even as others insist he must be some kind of god, he must hold on to the knowledge of his own humanity and a clear sense of its limits.</p>
<p>Doesn’t pass the smell test to me, either – and Gates specifically denies it - but it IS the kind of self-serving false claim that a police officer might insert into his report to justify his actions. (Again… I posted way back, as an attorney I saw it often – the cops made up up little details to embellish their stories. 99% of the time its one persons word against another over a trivial point, so the cops don’t get caught, and they know they can get away with it. But I won at least 2 cases-- one very memorable one in front of a jury, early in my career – when the cop’s lie fell apart due to a factual slip-up)</p>
<p>The other thing that I saw (again through lawyer-eyes) is that the Gates account matched up exactly with what I had suspected from reading the Crawley account. Way back in this thread I commented that I thought the request to Gates to step out was a ruse to enable the cop to get around the rule prohibiting cops from arresting people in their own homes without w warrant. It just stood out to me that way, in part because my experience with cops is that they usually are looking for a way to get IN to houses where they suspect criminal activity, not asking people to come OUT. (Every cop who has ever come to my door with an inquiry has asked to come IN… of course, in that case, I always come OUT and shut the door behind me).</p>
<p>(I also posted before that an ex-cop & expert in police brutality told me years ago that cops tend to get really ticked off about being asked for their badge number, so I agree with zoosermom that Gates pushed the officer’s buttons with his demands – the problem is that Gates was legally within his rights – thought it looks like both men were rude and demanding in the way they expressed their respective rights).</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Knowing where he lives and the likely consequences, why would Cowley want to pick a fight with Gates (simply saying he’s ticked off doesn’t cut it)?</p></li>
<li><p>Knowing what Ogletree in particular is about, why did they back off so quickly when they found out about the tape?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Honestly, I blame the whole incident on out-of-control testosterone and the territorial instinct. Kind of like when two guys get into a schemozzle over a parking place.</p>
<p>As I pointed out before, an arrest of a citizen in their own home for disturbing the peace doesn’t cut it no matter how you parse out the facts. So your question begs the question: the cop DID arrest Gates, and there is no possible way that the arrest on those particular charges in that particular place could be justified – so obviously he did “pick a fight”. </p>
<p>Let me put it another way: the purpose of laws against disturbing the peace are to give cops a way of dealing with people who are causing a problem in public. So they all have 2 basic elements: 1) the person is causing some sort of problem in a public place; and 2) the problem existed before the cop came along. </p>
<p>Gates was minding his own business before the cop came along. Gates never left his front porch. So clearly, the cop was looking for trouble by making the arrest.</p>
<p>(And the “not making sense” part is why people jump to the conclusion of racism – it certainly doesn’t make sense, given that the cop knew early on that Gates lived there and was a Harvard professor – no cop in his right mind would turn around and look for an excuse to arrest a resident in those circumstances. So when someone does something that crazy and stupid, you start looking for an ulterior motive.)</p>
<p>One more comment: I think its pretty discouraging that the cop did not seem to be aware of who Henry Louis Gates IS. He’s pretty well known – and while I wouldn’t expect some cop in Kansas to know the Harvard faculty, I don’t think its unreasonable to expect that the cops in Cambridge would know, just along the general lines that cops are expected to know people of prominence who live in their own communities.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, EMM1, but I don’t understand what you’re trying to say in point #1. And what tapes? You mean the tapes we’ve been told exist, but have not been proven to exist? And what do “we know” about Ogletree?</p>
Actually, I’d point out that no one knows what is going on behind the scenes between Ogletree and the city attorney for Cambridge… in terms of working out a monetary settlement of the false arrest claim. It is a HUGE potential liability for the city (older man, health problems, etc. – easy enough for a good p.i. lawyer to ratchet up the damages, and there’s a potential for punitive damages) — so it would be in the interest of the city to work out a quick settlement. And if there has been any contact along those lines… then it would be typical for the attorneys on both sides to shut up and avoid any public grandstanding.</p>
<p>I’d also point out that the attorneys involved probably have already listened to whatever tapes are available, and these things usually cut both ways. My guess: the tapes reveal Gates being rude and profane, but they don’t justify the arrest and they also document the cop’s refusal to show his badge number. Massachusetts law requires police officers to carry identification cards and present them upon request. [<a href=“http://www.slate.com/id/2223379/][/url”>A Henry Louis Gates Jr. Explainer roundup.][/url</a>] – so if you’ve got Gates on tape saying something like, “Show my your #!*& badge number!” and the cop saying ANYTHING that shows refusal… its bad for the cops. If the cop said, “If you want my ID and badge number you have to come out to the porch to get it”… then the city would be in serious trouble on the liability end… and reading between the lines of the cop’s own report, there’s a good chance that is exactly what he did say.</p>
<p>I doubt Gates or Ogletree really need money. I mean I think Harvard professors get paid alot, and Gates profile has been elevated greatly by this incident which could result in greater speaking fees and other such things. So I doubt money is an impetus.</p>
<p>Alan J. McDonald, a lawyer for Crowley’s union, the Cambridge Superior Officers Association, said that he is not pressing Cambridge city officials to release the recorded transmissions before a panel probing the arrest completes its investigation.</p>
<p>“It will certainly shed more light on the situation,” Stephen Killion, president of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association, told the Herald. “The city has nothing to hide. They have cleared Sgt. Crowley. He has done nothing wrong.”</p>
<p>Union lawyer Tom Drechsler said the tapes may or may not contain anything relevant, depending on their quality. “It might pick up the tone of voice of the professor and the volume,” he said. “But it will not be the whole picture.”</p>
<p>Oh what a surprise! It seems that the spinsters, the fabricators, and masters of denial are back in full force tonight. Smell tests, discussions of monetary settlements for false arrest. Is there more nonsense to add to all that BS of racial profiling and racial discrimination.</p>
<p>I agree with calmom on the point that the police tape probably contains language and information embarrassing for both Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crawley.</p>
<p>Ok, so we’ve established that Prof. Gates was within his rights to refuse to step outside when Officer Crowley asked him to. Calmom, an attorney, has said that the officer could not have arrested the proffessor in his own home without a warrant stating probable cause. Somehow, the professor, having reported feeling threatened (whether rightly or wrongly so), intuited that he had a legal right to refuse to step outside. Refusing to step outside apparently angered the officer, because when the Professor did ultimately step beyond the threshold of his home, the fact that the professor had finally complied with his first request was the officer’s stated preamble in declaring he was placing the professor under arrest.</p>
<p>I have read before (can’t remember where—perhaps Calmom said it) during the course of this controversy, that Officer Crowley was not legally free to enter the professor’s home without his permission. Professor Gates has indicated that no such permission was granted. Nevertheless, when he turned to retrieve his identification, the officer did indeed step inside the Professor’s home.</p>
<p>That the Professor became unhinged, and began to confront the officer is uncontested. That he demanded the officer’s name and badge number repeatedly is also uncontested. Also uncontested, is the fact that Massachusetts law states that an officer of the law must relinquish both his full name and badge number when a citizen asks for it. Was this act lawfully carried out by Officer Crowley? He has said that he told Prof. Gates his name a number of times, but that the professor was so irate, he never stopped yelling in order to hear it. If he did tell the professor his name, did he state both his full name and badge number? Is he required by law to relinquish this information in the form of a card whereupon this information is provided?</p>
<p>Calmom, once professor Gates stepped beyond the threshold of his home, did that legally constitute him no longer being “in his home”, and thereby legally free up the police to arrest him for “disturbing the peace”? And what, legally, is disturbing the peace?</p>
<p>The issues I raise here are quite aside from any allegations of racial profiling, or whether or not the professor was right to become distrustful and verbally “tumultuous” toward the police. The issue, for me, is this:</p>
<p>The Fourth Amendment of The United States Constitution
</p>
<p>I find it interesting that persons belonging to the demographic most prone to ostentatiously wave the sacred banner of our Constitution, are the same people who seem to feel that the professor’s behavior was so egregious as to warrant suspension of his Constitutional rights.</p>
<p>I think there’s a Right somewhere in that document guaranteeing Freedom of Speech, too—especially within the confines of one’s own property. But then again, what do I know…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>PH, may I ask you if you believe that the finer legal “debates” about the right of Prof Gates to refuse to step outside his home when first asked by the police, and the fact that the police officer might now have offered the details of his own ID in a format considered suitable by Prof. Gates constitute something worthy of a … national debate? </p>
<p>Are we really still trying to establish that Prof. Gates was correct in refusing to step outside and that he ended being arrested by a rogue police officer? </p>
<p>For some reason, I thought that all the hooplah around this case was the result of massive forces to make it ALL about racial discrimination and specifically about the racial profiling of blacks in America.</p>
<p>Lol, NCL … should I respond to you with a few of Prof. Gates favorites lines, and perhaps use the ALL CAP feature to accurately convey tone and degree of annoyance? And, by the way, thank you so much for letting me know about the nature and attributes of this forum. I am now so much wiser.</p>
<p>“it would be typical for the attorneys on both sides to shut up and avoid any public grandstanding.”</p>
<p>This is pure speculation and implausible under the facts as we know them.</p>
<p>This claim might make sense if the Gates/Ogletree complaint was primarily about the money. But there’s no indication of that; instead, there is every reason to believe their assertions that this was about a matter of principle. If they had any case, they should be shouting from the rooftops.</p>
<p>As to “huge” potential liability–on compensatory damages, doesn’t matter how old or infirm he is if you can’t show actual health injuries. Really difficult to do. Moreover, on this and punitive damages–do you really think a belligerent Black professor makes a sympathetic plaintiff against a decorated white police officer.</p>
<p>Third, you’re assuming that there was some sort of settlement reached or in the works and they were able to keep it completely buttoned up tight when every news organization in America is snooping around, and lots of people have incentive to leak.</p>
<p>Finally, I would note that Gates has not gotten ANYTHING that he wants from the police department–not one word of regret, not a suggestion that the officer might have handled things better, nothing. Why, then. back off if the tapes show any clear wrongdoing by Officer Crowley, who has gotten as much of an apology as Obama can give, consistent with political reality and is currently the clear winner in the public relations sweepstakes.</p>