Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates arrested

Parent Cafe
961

<p>“Obviously you don’t see this through the eyes of a PI lawyer. (I can assure you, the city attorney for Cambridge does!) – psychic injury counts, and by the time a claim like this gets to trial you could have a very long record of anxiety, nightmares, plus all sorts of attendant problems like high blood pressure or whatever combination of potentially stress-aggravated ailments Dr. Gates is likely to have at his age. On top of the medical & psychiatric damages, there’s the damages to reputation and the general emotional distress, shame & embarrassment. Plus Dr. Gates mentioned in the article he wrote that he’s claustrophobic & was scared to be locked in a jail cell.”</p>

<p>Not being a PI lawyer, I am willing to defer on this particular point. But its still rank speculation, particularly in view of my other points.</p>

<p>I want to reiterate in particular that quiet settlements are not what Ogletree et. al. are about. If there is some sort of large monetary settlement announced or leaked within the next several months, I will publicly concede error. But, in addition to my other points, there is one HUGE political barrier to the city agreeing to pay anything–the police department would go ballistic. So if there is a settlement in the fact of that reality, it would have to be because the tapes somehow supported Gates’ version.</p>

962

<p>Looks like one former prosecutor agrees with my take on the police report:</p>

<p>

</p>

<ul>
<li>Marcia Clark, [The</a> Coverup Is Worse Than the Crime - The Daily Beast](<a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-27/The-Coverup-Is-worse-Than-the-Crime/]The”>The Daily Beast: The Latest in Politics, Media & Entertainment News)</li>
</ul>

963

<p>And here’s a concurring opinion from a former member of the NYPD:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[What</a> a Cop Is Supposed to Do - The Daily Beast](<a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-26/What-a-Cop-Is-Supposed-to-Do]What”>http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-26/What-a-Cop-Is-Supposed-to-Do)</p>

964

<p>^^^</p>

<p>Another view from the same link:</p>

<p>

</p>

965

<p>Marcia Clarke the prosecuter and Edward Hayes the trial attorney that defended Chiefs of Police in big cities.</p>

966

<p>The summary from the police commissioner of the 911 call was not necessarily based on the initial call. The caller did not report the race of the men because she only saw their backs. When questioned by the dispatcher, she speculated that one of the men may have been Hispanic. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[Race</a> Not Mentioned in Harvard Scholar 911 Call - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com](<a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534902,00.html?test=latestnews]Race”>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534902,00.html?test=latestnews)</p>

967

<p>Here’s another article that goes into more detail about the woman who made the 911 call.</p>

<p>[Gates</a> caller didn’t cite race, police say - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/27/gates_caller_didnt_cite_race_police_say/]Gates”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/27/gates_caller_didnt_cite_race_police_say/)</p>

968

<p><a href=“Every%20cop%20who%20has%20ever%20come%20to%20my%20door%20with%20an%20inquiry%20has%20asked%20to%20come%20IN…%20of%20course,%20in%20that%20case,%20I%20always%20come%20OUT%20and%20shut%20the%20door%20behind%20me”>quote</a>.</p>

<p>-You’re kidding, right?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I always stay inside my house and talk to the cop who remains outside my house, but they’ve never shown any interest in coming in, nor have they asked me to step out. (It’s more that I don’t need anyone to see a untidy house.)</p>

969

<p>How often do you have cops coming to your door? Is it that often that you know whether they ask to come in IN or not?</p>

970

<p>A prosecutor who relies strictly on hard evidence:</p>

<p>

</p>

971

<p>My son’s neighbors called 911 when they saw a handyman walk into his apartment and leave the front door open. Cops arrive and enter apartment with guns drawn. S and handyman were asked to get on the floor and were handcuffed at gunpoint. S complied and then told to check ID in desk drawer. Apologies all around.
Neighbors were black, handyman hispanic, S white, cops white.</p>

972

<p>This is by one of my friends, Robert Jensen – not the racist Jensen-- but a white journalism professor at University of Texas -Austin, who is the author of the book: " The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege ." </p>

<p>"Honoring President Obama’s request that the controversy involving a black Harvard University professor and a white Cambridge police officer become “a teachable moment,” here’s my contribution to an old lesson that we white people tend to be slow to learn.</p>

<p>In lectures about the United States’ system of white supremacy and the privileges that white people have in that system, I have sometimes told a story about being stopped by police in Austin, TX.</p>

<p>I was driving home in a dilapidated old Volkswagen Beetle on a busy street, late at night after a long day at work. I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, feeling rather cranky and looking rather raggedy. Eager to get home, I saw the yellow light and gunned it. Next I saw the flashing red lights of a police car.</p>

<p>I turned off onto a dark side street and dug in my wallet for my license. Just as the officer got to my car, I was opening the glove compartment to get the vehicle registration when out popped a small knife I keep for emergencies. I looked at the knife, looked at the white officer, and wondered what he would say.</p>

<p>“Sir, would you mind if I held that knife while we talked?” he asked politely. I handed him the knife and my documents, and he walked back to his car. When he returned he handed me those documents, along with a ticket, and my knife, without comment. “Please drive safely,” he said. And safely I drove home.</p>

<p>When I told that story to illustrate white privilege, I asked people of color in the room what they imagined might have happened to them in such a situation. The black and Latino men, especially, laughed. “Do you mean before or after I’m on the ground with a gun at my head?” one of them said.</p>

<p>My point was not that every cop is out to harass or brutalize every person of color, but that people of color could never be sure a routine traffic stop would play out routinely. I could be reasonably sure that, barring unusual circumstances, such a stop would be uneventful. Even when the knife popped out, I didn’t feel at risk.</p>

<p>I was feeling proud of myself for making this point to the mainly white audience, when I saw a hand go up. I called on the young black man, assuming he would endorse my analysis.</p>

<p>“You really don’t get it, do you?” he said. “You think your privilege started when the cop came up to the car and saw you were white. Has it ever occurred to you that when you turned onto a dark side street you were taking your privilege for granted?”
<a href=“http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009073127/teachable-moments-require-willing-learners[/url]”>http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009073127/teachable-moments-require-willing-learners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

973

<p>“We white people are slow to learn”
Just because this is a white person stereotyping whites, this is what is wrong with this whole incident and the analysis of it.
All white cops’ actions are racially motivated until proven otherwise.
All white people have no basis to judge these cases as only black people have lived the life of a black person, yet the blacks are very ready to make judgement on the white population.
If we consider this incident racially motivated how will we ever get beyond skin color.
Whether you consider this incident and the way it was handled wrong or right it is purely conjecture that it was racially motivated.
How will we move forward if the past is used as justification for presuming incidents are racially biased?</p>

974

<p>Keymom, you missed his point. Jensen very clearly said, “My point was not that every cop is out to harass or brutalize every person of color, but that people of color could never be sure a routine traffic stop would play out routinely.”</p>

975

<p>Why is it that only one race is expected to learn, to consider other points of view, or to believe that they are the “privileged” individuals in a situation?</p>

976

<p>Posts #966 and #967 seem to me to indicate a problem for the city of Cambridge. It seems that the 911 caller did not mention the race of the two men on the porch and, when pressed, stated that one might be Hispanic. (She herself is Portuguese.) Yet the police report states that the caller reported “what appeared to be two black males.” It is very difficult for me to see this as a scenario in which race played no role.</p>

977

<p>Sorry didn’t make myself clear. The incident I referred to was the Gates incident. My reference to the article was only the “we white people”.
The problem is how does a white cop defend himself against actions towards a minority when the call of racism is based solely on past experiences and assumptions by the minority which I think is the case in the Gates case.
Just the fact that Gates is black is the only fact I have heard or seen that indicates this encounter was racially motivated.</p>

978

<p>Coronax’s posts #966 & 967 show the cop to have lied in his report. He specifically wrote that Whalen told him that she saw “what appeared to be two black males” on the porch, and that was the information he had in mind when he approached the house, saw an “older black male” inside, and “asked” him to step outside the house. But Whalen says she never saw the race of the 2 men, and the 911 tape backs up her account. So that pretty much shoots down the credibility of everything the cop wrote. And puts “stupid” in a whole new light. (Meaning – you have to wonder why a cop would commit such an easily disproven statement to writing).</p>

979

<p>While I still think Gates could have behaved less confrontationally, Stanley Fish, who hired him to head the Afro-Am Studies department at Duke many years ago, reports that when Gates hired workers to renovate his new home–the most expensive in town–he was constantly mistaken for one of the workers. I don’t know how he reacted in these instances, but they must have built into the “chip on his shoulder” that people accuse him of having.</p>

<p>I remember being ticked off by a marketer who wanted to talk only to the head of the household about–are you sitting tight?–what kind of orange juice we drank. I kept telling her that H and I were equally heads of our 2-person household. She got irritated with me as much as I was irritated with her. She only had a clipboard, though, no handcuffs.</p>

980

<p>I should make a factual correction to my post #976. According to the news report, the 911 caller is of Portuguese descent, not Portuguese.</p>