<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>
<p>Hm… What else is a “summary?”</p>
<p>"Despite efforts to heal past wounds, David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the book Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work, says incidents like the Gates case are reminders that law enforcement’s efforts at race relations remain a work in progress…</p>
<p>Because many white Americans have never had such an experience with police, Harris says, many think cases of racial profiling are overblown or that victims are playing the race card.</p>
<p>“They (whites) find it easy to dismiss those things as if in some way or somehow, the person deserved it,” Harris says.</p>
<p>Bratton, who served as police commissioner in New York and Boston, was hired in Los Angeles after a corruption scandal there enveloped the an elite anti-gang unit. Allegations of excessive force and racial profiling sparked Justice Department intervention in 2001, which forced widespread overhauls.</p>
<p>Among them: installing cameras and microphones in all of the department’s patrol cars. Bratton says the program, expected to cost up to $40 million, should be a valuable source of information and evidence in disputes between officers and citizens.</p>
<p>“This will be one of the strongest tools we have,” Bratton says. “We’ve come a long way in trying to deal with this (race) issue. The good news is that we’re getting better. But we’re also dealing with a very long legacy.”
[‘Long</a> legacy’ of race issues tails police - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-07-26-coprace_N.htm]'Long”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-07-26-coprace_N.htm)</p>
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Gates has said he did not give the cop permission to enter (he used the term “uninvited”) – and we know that the front lock of the door was broken, so if the cop had pushed the door open and walked in, there isn’t much Gates could have done to stop him… other than to start yelling. </p>
<p>I’ve never seen a police report before where a cop entered a house and didn’t say how he came in. If a resident invites them in, cops definitely say so… (sometimes they even said they were invited or granted permission when it isn’t true) – but this is a first for me to see a cop put himself inside a house in a report without explaining how he came to be there.</p>
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<p>Well of course race played a role, and since now we can see that the police report likely has a critical piece of false information, we can see race played precisely the role I have been saying here constantly. People just wish to ignore the truth and replace it with a lot of nonsense like this:</p>
<p>“The commissioner acknowledged that in the police report the caller is said to have observed “what appeared to be two black males” on the porch, but he said the report was a summary and not necessarily based on the initial call.”</p>
<p>This is quite underhanded. It allows people who have a preset commitment against Gates to continue in their dishonor. Whereas earlier they claimed the report contained “the facts”, now they can claim it is just “summary” and use this to dismiss a most critical aspect of this incident. </p>
<p>Crowley wrote the police report as a factual account of what happened, summary or not. The police report contains the information under which Crowley operated, including especially the race of the perpetrators. If the caller did not mention black men, then someone had to have inserted the notion of black men into this scenario and also into the report. Here is your racism, since someone must have done this dishonestly, or in response to the sort of racism I have been mentioning here for ages. I am being charitable when I assert that the latter case of the cop’s societal racism is what caused this matter to turn out as it did.</p>
<p>I think the report contains at least two, possibly three other such falsehoods. This is why blacks dislike cops. Cops are too often dishonorable when it comes to dealing with blacks. And if everything is as I think it is, then the sadness here is that Gates is just deciding to take this on the chin rather than cause Obama further grief. It is wretched, a result of America’s curse.</p>
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<p>From the NYT: </p>
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<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27gates.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27gates.html</a></p>
<p>My piont is that Whalen has DENIED making the statement attributed to her in the report, which is where the NY Times got its info. If it weren’t for the 911 call, I’d see it as a he said / she said situation. But I can’t fathom why a woman who tells a 911 operator that she didn’t see the race would tell the cop who arrived on scene a few minutes later that the men were black. So given that I can’t think of a motive for Whalen to lie – twice - and I CAN think of a motive for the cop to lie… I have to go with Whalen’s version of events.</p>
<p>A warrantless entry into the house was totally permissable under the exigent circumstances provisions of a specific 911 call reporting two intruders entering that specific address. A policeman is certainly justified in entering the house to investigate a 911 call. The whole point of the exigent circumstance exceptions are to cover situations when there is no time for a warrant – such as two intruders reported entering a house.</p>
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<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27gates.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27gates.html</a></p>
<p>NOT a good indication for Crowley - we know Crowley wasn’t in any sort of danger… so why didn’t he respond?</p>
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<p>No, she has NOT denied that. Her lawyer gave what was a presumably well-crafted statement to the press on Sunday, which I have already quoted. Her lawyer said that she did not know the race of the two intruders AT THE TIME SHE PLACED THE 911 CALL.</p>
<p>The woman stayed on the phone with dispatcher from the sidewalk in front of the house until Crowley arrived and then was the first person at the scene to talk to Crowley, telling him what she had seen to that point, a point that covered several more minutes after placing the 911 call. </p>
<p>She may have placed the 911 call when the two men first put the shoulder to the front door and couldn’t open it. After that, Gates went around back, entered the house, and opened the door for the “driver” from the inside, giving the woman more opportunity to determine their ethnicities (and see whether the “driver” had left).</p>
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<p>Did you watch his interview? Crowley said that the entire time he was in the house, Gates was screaming at him, to the point where he couldn’t even use his radio to call off the additional units. He left the house because he needed to use the radio to report that Gates had given him ID and to have Harvard police continue to the scene, but call off all the other units. Crowley didn’t really know he wasn’t in danger until Gates showed him his ID. He had already radio’d that he thought Gates was the rightful occupant, but that he was concerned by his unusual behavior and aggressiveness. In that first radio call, he still wanted backup units at the location. It was only after Gates showed him his ID that he tried to radio his dispatcher calling off additional CPD units. </p>
<p>BTW, the entire incident from the first radio dispatch about a break in to Gates being cuffed lasted six minutes – from 12:45 to 12:51.</p>
<p>Curious about what others think about Gates’ decision to introduce himself to the local police when he moved to Lexington, Mass. </p>
<p>"As the encounter between the two men escalated, the Cambridge police tried to reach Sergeant Crowley on his radio at least three times, but he did not respond, police officials said, revealing previously unreported details. Because of his worrisome silence, they said, six more police cars soon clogged the one-way street, surprising Professor Gates. By 12:51 p.m., he was in handcuffs, charged with disorderly conduct. Friends say the two men who met at the front door of the trim yellow house on Ware Street were the unlikeliest of people to be caught in such a struggle.</p>
<p>For most of his life, Professor Gates had gone out of his way to avoid confrontation with the police, even introducing himself at the station when he moved to Lexington, Mass., in the 1990s, in hopes that he, a black man driving a Mercedes, would not be pulled over constantly.</p>
<p>Professor Gates has dozens of honorary degrees and is such a fixture of Harvard Square that a beloved student hangout named a burger after him. Everyone at Harvard knows him — charismatic and distinctive with his impeccable suits and cane, the result of a longtime disability.</p>
<p>Sergeant Crowley was a trusted adviser of the Cambridge police commissioner, known for his even temperament and as a role model to younger officers. He is a new-generation officer who has not only been indoctrinated with racial sensitivity, but also teaches other officers how to avoid racial profiling.</p>
<p>A native son and by all accounts a by-the-book, 11-year veteran of the force, Sergeant Crowley is one of four brothers who work in law enforcement. Unassuming when off duty, friends say, he expects respect when in uniform.</p>
<p>The clash was one of two worlds within a city striking for its socioeconomic and racial diversity.</p>
<p>“In certain ways this case is more about class, deference and mutual respect,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, a nonprofit group focused on improving police tactics.</p>
<p>Even when Professor Gates produced identification in the kitchen of his home that day, Sergeant Crowley had no idea who he was. Days later, the sergeant was surprised when friends explained that he was one of Harvard’s most famous professors. …"
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27gates.html?_r=1[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27gates.html?_r=1</a></p>
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You know that after the fact. HE didn’t know that at the time.</p>
<p>Good point, interesteddad. In fact, it provides inferential support Crowley’s version of events. Why else would he not respond?</p>
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I don’t see it that way. Either he was getting radio calls while standing alone out front demanding that Gates come out – in which case it would have been logical for him to respond and ask for backup – or he was getting radio calls after he had already entered the house and could assess the situation-- old guy, walks with a limp, claims to be Harvard professor who lives there. Why not pick up the call? Why not use that opportunity to verify the ID? (Generally when I give a cop my driver’s license, they take it from me and call it in - if the cop did have any doubts about the ID, that would have been the easiest/fastest way to resolve them).</p>
<p>One thing that has been nagging at me is if one can really commit the offense of “disorderly conduct” in one’s own house or yard. The answer in Texas is no. I looked up the statute and every incident listed (and there are a lot of possiblities) must take occur “in a public place”…except for those involving exposing onesself or peeking into someone else’s hotel room or restroom stall. </p>
<p>The officer talked about Gates “starting to act disorderly” when he was inside his own home. That is not “disorderly conduct” - at least not in Texas. That is “contempt of cop.”</p>
<p>Good grief. Watch the man’s interview. He was attempting to call in Gate’s Harvard ID and stop other CPD units from rushing to the scene and couldn’t hear to talk on the radio because Gates was still screaming at him. That’s when he told Gates that he was going outside to use the radio and, if Gates had anything else to discuss, he would be on the porch.</p>
<p>In the four minutes he was on scene (assuming it took him two minutes to arrive), Crowley placed two radio calls “on channel 2” – one before Gates had provided ID and one immediately after. It’s not like he wasn’t using the radio.</p>
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<p>The answer in Massachusetts is that there is no difference between a porch and a sidewalk if someone is creating a public disorderly scene. The key distinction is public and outside.</p>
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<p>That’s why I looked up the disorderly conduct statute. If a cop comes into my home and I lose it and start screaming at him - no threats of violence, I’m just really mad (rightly or wrongly), is that a crime? It just can’t be. It really bothers me that yelling at a cop or TSA agent or airline employee gets people arrested…like it is a crime to not be able to remain calm under all circumstances.</p>
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<p>So is the sidewalk at the end of my front yard a “public place” such that I can be arrested if I’m on the sidewalk, but not if I step onto my lawn?</p>
<p>I think you could probably be arrested for disorderly conduct on your own property if your behavior had the tendency to incite others to riotous behavior (i.e., if there was a crowd in the street). That would probably be sufficiently public. The problem with Gates’ arrest on this charge was probably not so much that he was on his own property, but that his behavior didn’t rise to the level of incitement that Massachusetts court decisions have required to justify a charge.</p>
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<p>Which indicates to me that the arrest of Prof. Gates was done in unnecessary haste. Six minutes from the radio dispatch…how many minutes to get to the house, then talk to Whalen, then approach the house? If this is accurate, the blow up between Gates and Crowley was only a few minutes, not some protracted amount of time with Gates yelling tumultuously at Crowley and Crowley trying to explain his purpose and calm him down. </p>
<p>Sounds to me as though Crowley did not allow any time for an acceptable level of venting — described by an LAPD capt in an earlier post — before reaching for his handcuffs as soon as they were both outside. </p>
<p>Frankly, I seriously wonder if Crowley would have acted the same had this been an older, upper-middle-class local business owner who was white and agitated for whatever reason or if he would have given the man more time to calm down before taking the handcuffs out.</p>