TheAgitator.com
The Gates Arrest’s “Teaching Moment”
Monday, July 27th, 2009My crime column this week looks at the Gates arrest, and argues that we ought to put race aside and focus instead on the overly broad arrest powers afforded to the police.
Here’s an excerpt outlining a contradiction in conservative thinking that no one has ever really been able to explain to me:
Commenting on Gates’ arrest, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg wrote that he counts himself among those who are “deferential to police,” and willing to “give cops the benefit of the doubt for a host of reasons.” That’s a common position among conservatives. At a Federalist Society luncheon a few years ago, Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson praised the Supreme Court for “putting more trust in our police officers” in recent rulings. Los Angeles Police Department officer Jack Dunphy (a pseudonym) oddly concluded at National Review Online that the lesson from the Gates/Crowley affair is that anyone who asserts his constitutional rights when confronted by a police officer risks getting shot.
This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.
The only explanation I can come up with for the contradiction is that conservatives are more sympathetic to the targets of regulators (businesses, mostly) than they are to the targets of police and prosecutors (people accused of committing crimes). But that doesn’t change the fact that police and prosecutors are subject to the same trappings of power as other government employees, and so ought to be viewed with the same amount of skepticism. Moreso, actually, given that your average bureaucrat isn’t empowered to arrest you or put a bullet in your chest.
I think it’s the Military Fetish of the modern conservative. They love the military and anything that resembles it, as modern police forces do. This fetish seems to be one of their dearest-held beliefs.
I am generally wary of police, though in this case I think the cops were in the right. They were called to a house on suspicion of burglary. Rightful police power does include protection of private property.
They asked the people in the house to prove who they were, which they did, and then Gates flew off the handle. I dont’ think it was racially motivated or done out of spite. You have rights when you deal with police but you should still work with police on that front.
“Moreso, actually, given that your average bureaucrat isn’t empowered to arrest you or put a bullet in your chest.”
Not to nitpick, but those average bureaucrats have those empowered to put a bullet in your chest on speed-dial. Not much difference after all.
Great point about conservatives being the ones empowering police predations in this country. They are sympathetic to businesses and they simply can’t imagine police coming after anyone but hard core criminals. I have some friends on the staff of a huge Baptist church that think the police are angels sent from God or something because they are white, and affluent and the police never mess with them. It’s like they live in a different world.
I once complained to a friend that the checkout people at a local big box department store seemed to utterly hate the customers. Their response was that I should expect much from them because they were getting paid so little. I think this was right after I had been to Disneyland for the first time and was astounded at how well the workers treated people in the park. I’ve since had other discussions where I’ve been told that bad behavior is excused by low pay.
While cops are far from minimum wage employees, I almost get the impression that their management (chief, mayor, city council, etc) believes they can’t demand too much from cops and that we all just kind of have to learn to accept them as they are because that’s just as good as you’re going to get from “people like that”. On top of that, of course, management might fear they would all quit if better behavior were demanded, not to mention the likely push back from the unions who wouldn’t countenance “additional” demands without an accompanying pay raise…
Just talkin’ outloud….
In this case a large part of the problem is that Gates chose to frame this as a racial incident rather than as a case of overly broad arrest powers. Gates chose the wrong complaint to make, and he rightly failed to win wide support for that complaint.
I have often complained about this contradiction with conservatives. The general attitude seems to be that criminals are weak and unable to function properly our competitive world. These are the same nasty stereotypes they have of “bedwetting liberals”, so they see them all the same way. That world view is a religion to them. Question it, and you’re obviously one of those “bedwetting liberals”, the serpent in the garden of Eden that is trying to tempt them to side of evil.
It also makes you wonder how supportive the NRA and GOP would be of the boys in blue if all the police departments in the country wanted to do away with the 2nd amendment? Conservatives haven’t really grasped the fact they’re supporting one of the biggest enemies of the 2nd amendment.
I think JS’s comment (”[conservatives] they simply can’t imagine police coming after anyone but hard core criminals”) reflects my thinking on this pretty much. Conservatives tend to think government is either already doing the right thing with respect to crime or that it actually needs more power to do the right thing. Liberals tend to think that government is either already doing the right thing with respect to social problems and business regulation or that it actually needs more power to do the right thing. There is some sort of magic about certain areas of government authority where we should place our faith in our police or bureaucratic
mastersservants and assume they are angels.Both sides think that all the examples of government abuse of power are telling wake-up calls outside the areas they approve of, but those examples in the areas they prefer must be rare exceptions and those exceptions don’t justify any real limits on that power (besides toothless citizen review boards for police or hopeless “crackdowns” on waste/fraud/abuse for welfare programs).
Part of the problem, Dave K, is that the structure and staffing of police forces really haven’t changed compared to the society around them. The American model for a police officer has always been a fairly blue collar guy who operates in a blue collar workforce whose primary purpose has always been to keep other blue collars and coloureds in their assigned, subservient social places. (It’s what Orwell called acting as bodyguards to the propertied classes.)
Now police officers operate in a highly complex society which is constantly in flux and where they are supposed to deal with a wider variety of challenges and sophistication than ever before in human history. Yet, despite this, police forces still hire big guys who like to throw their weight around and who get pissy if you assert your rights. (Don’t forget, until fairly recently the targets of police interest, the poor, the accused and different races, had no real, enforceable rights; Miranda is younger than I am, for example, and I ain’t that old… and cops still hate the Warren Court.) They simply aren’t selected, trained, monitored or post-hiring educated to handle any of this shit. It’s one of the reasons why there is often such resentment against agencies like the FBI which don’t have the same resistance to the concept of education and perspective that more blue-collar forces do; the “I hate eggheads” dynamic, as it were.
The sense that “only a beat cop should move up the ladder” tends to produce command officers who fall into one of two groups: those who identify with the blue grunts to an excessive degree; and those amoral, smooth political operators who rise like shit to the surface of a pond no matter what organization they’re in, the guys who really don’t give a damn about anything except politics, the ones who don’t even have the saving grace about caring about their men.
European police forces get around this problem the same way that armies do: lateral entry for officer-track candidates and accelerated promotion into positions of responsibility for which they have better training.
By way of illustration within one organization it is interesting to note that Canada’s RCMP has a serious case of BPD in that it wants to be both a “boots on the ground” force for much of Canada on the one hand and Canada’s FBI on the other. The result? A command structure which rewards morons and bullies who hate thinking and a severe staffing crisis because the young men and women who could be the next Sam Steele don’t want to go anywhere NEAR the Mounties. If you are smart, educated, trained and ready for say, intelligence analysis or white collar crime work why on earth would you join the Mounties where they’ll send you to break up bar fights in Iktyiuyttuikukville for ten or fifteen years before they let you anywhere near a decent case? And get commanded by retrograde dinosaurs who despise everybody under their command to boot? Or risk losing your promotion because one of those smooth bastards decides that a political promotion will gain him favour in Ottawa? There’s no sane reason.
There’s also the reluctance of N.Am police forces to divide their “enforcement” and “intelligence” arms. There really is no reason why, say, a corporate fraud specialist also has to be a trained and armed officer. Accountants doing accountancy so that officers can arrest is a superior model to training officers to do basic accountancy and hoping for the best. In this day and age a police force’s unarmed specialist investigators should outnumber the boots on the ground by a very great deal, but they don’t, and they won’t. The “closed shop” mentality will prevent it.
Those who defend to boorish behavior of the police often cite the
dangerousness of the job as their excuse.
The fact is that police work is not all that dangerous. It is close to 16′th
on the list of dangerous occupations.
Garbage collectors face a for worse risk than the police as do Farmers,
Loggers and Taxi drivers.
I know I will get raked over the coals for this and that their aren’t many believers here. But if you read the Book of Acts, it was the officials (cops and jailers) who trembled with fear when Paul demanded his rights as a Roman citizen, such as not being bound (handcuffed) or not being punished before conviction (tasered and just about everything else).
As much as this lefty would love to pile on conservatives, I see this fetishism from both sides (albeit more vocally from the right). I’ve sat in mixed groups, from the right and left, discussing police abuses, often taken directly from your blog. Everyone will nod, and practically everyone will agree that a particular incident is highly unjust. Many, sometimes most, will even have their own story of police brutality, incompetance, or sheer stupidity. Despite all that, when you try and connect all those anecdotes (and even statistics) to show problems with the system, the conservatives tend to dismiss the evidence altogether while fellow lefties just shrug their shoulders.
As a whole, neither side wants to address this problem. There either is no problem or the problem is just too big.
Actually, I remember a lot of conservative blogs decrying the rampant puppycide. Maybe I read libertarian-leaning conservative blogs?
How ironic that power-worshipping bootlicker Jonah Goldberg spent an entire book trying to paint anyone who disagrees with him as a fascist. Look in the mirror much, Jonah?
Tom, you really should read the arrest report.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
By the officer’s own admission, he highly suspected that Gates was a legal resident of the home. It wasn’t until he encouraged Gates to step outside to continue the conversation and got angry that Gates was being antagonistic that he arrested Gates.
Chris Mallory #11, that’s true but of course back then a Roman citizen had rights that the police of that day were deathly afraid to violate. If you messed with a Roman citizen the Roman government would execute you and possibly come and wipe out your whole town. Cops today have no respect for American citizens. They know they can beat, humiliate and jail them all day long and there will be no negative consequences.
“I know I will get raked over the coals for this and that their aren’t many believers here.”
I’m a believer–a believer of the right of an American man to reside in his own house and profess his innocence
without being hauled off to jail, booked , and fingerprinted.
they also hate unions yet deify anything the police union says or does.
Police, and to a greater extent the military (formerly militas) exist in part to protect business and the “social order”. So a philosophy that opposes interference in private capital, and also supports the public force to protect that capital seems logical to me, albeit unjust and immoral.
killfile:
That’s a basic core of Marxism, no? Property only exists because of armed theft, and laws are the means by which that armed theft is made legitimate and maintained.
Radley — go be a cop for 2 year.
Then come back and talk to us about it.
#15
Have you read the report? I know it’s a one-sided view of what happened but since Gates has not refuted the cops story I’ll have to assume it’s true.
Gates was being a dick from the very beginning. I know a lot of people, including me, would like to think otherwise but cops are not always in the wrong.
Gates decided early in this encounter that the white cop was a racist pig and he didn’t have to comply with anything the officer requested. If he had shown just a bit of dignity in this situation the cop could have done his job and moved on. Instead he chose to insult the cop, the cops mom, the black cop, the hispanic cop, and american culture all at once. Gates may not be a racist, but he is a conceited dick.
Greg,
Should I have to be an elected official for two years before I’m allowed to argue it shouldn’t be illegal to criticize them, too?
#20 While a marxist would probably agree with that, as would most anarchists, I think if you removed my moral judgment, libertarians and most capitalists would agree with it as well. What else is the “night watchman state” for if not to enforce property rights and contract law and “govern least”.
Does anyone know of any products specifically designed to capture such abuses?
Examples:
Audio/video recorder hidden in cars that can easily be activated when pulled over? Allow data transfer over a cell connection to upload that video to a server where law enforcement have no jurisdiction?
An iPhone app that allows something similar using the phone camera and microphone?
It’s a shame I have to say this, but if every cop is afraid they are being recorded, then perhaps they will behave accordingly.
I think it’s simpler: To the conservative mind, policing is a justifiable use of government power, while regulating isn’t. In a black-and-white worldview, if it’s a justifiable power you can’t complain about excesses in using it, while if it’s unjustifiable it’s never OK.
The same manichean worldview is responsible for the calls to invade Iran, the full-throated support for Georgia, and all the other simplistic responses to complex situations we get from the Right.
Yep. So true.
People will do what they can get away with. It’s just human nature. The difference is that cops have been able to get away with almost anything in the past because they lie and their fellow cops lie to cover up their misbehavior. There has been no accountability.
Now, with people recording cops, lying doesn’t work so well, but changing a tradition that goes back since the beginning of time is not very easy, so they still misbehave, only now they try to eliminate any video evidence by confiscating phones or security tapes. They don’t want to give up that freedom to harass people. To them that’s one of the most important perks of the job.
@#2 and #22,
Everything you said about Gates being a huge dickhead is quite probably true, but you’re still a long way off from there to where he should have been arrested.
In other words, claiming that Gates could have/should have done or not done XYZ is actually not a defense of the officer’s decision to arrest him.
@#21 Do you support locking up drug dealers, petty thieves? If you do then I’m sure that means you’ve spent time growing up as a black kid in a terrible neighborhood, with a single mom and terrible schools and jobs everywhere you look. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do, and many of them make a lot of sense on a human level. But that doesn’t make their actions beyond criticism. I’m betting you agree with that in every opinion you hold except your views on police misconduct.
Tokin42,
Being a complete dick and insulting people isn’t against the law. Nor should it be. The officer had established that Gates was the owner of the home. He had no reason to demand any more from him, except to goad him into acts that would justify (in the normal police mentality) an arrest.
first, I too suspect that Gates was arrested for the un-approved law against “disrespect of cop”, and thats what we ought to be talking (mostly) about.
however, Obama has shown in this “teachable” moment that he is a bigot of the first order also, which is 180′ from his exalted position as the first “post-racial” president.
when confronted with sketchy facts about what happened to a FOO (friend of Obama), but knowing that it was a white cop, he immediately judged the white cop’s motivations as racial.
hmmm.
A pop radio morning show today was discussing this, and a local suburban cop called in. She said essentially this, “Gates was wrong to give the cop attitude. You give me attitude or talk back to me and you’re going to jail.” I almost drove off the road and almost called in. Almost. But I just don’t have the energy for that conversation at 8:30 in the morning.
Not surprisingly, one of the DJs took the standard response: if a cop asks you to do something, you do it (which, honestly, is the stance I would have taken a couple of years ago).
Surprisingly, though, another couple of the DJs were on the other side: the cop does this every day and should have been the one to maintain his cool and handle the situation appropriately. That’s part of his job.
With all due respect, has anyone gone over and read what Goldberg actually wrote?
With regard to being “deferential to police,” he said specifically:
” . . .as a matter of instinct, that’s where I come down. But I know plenty of conservatives — including many relatives — who instantly assume the cops are just taking advantage of a little power and are loathe to defer to them.
I don’t think this divide is unique to conservatives. As I say, I think it runs straight through the American, and, no doubt, human heart. But it’s interesting in this context because I think conservatives are expected to be far more deferential to law enforcement. And, when I read the Gates police report, I immediately sympathized with the cop who had to deal with a very high-status guy trying to bully the cop in part by accusing him — unfairly, by my lights — of racism. It’s very interesting to read lots of conservatives offer good faith disagreements.”
That seems about right to me. It’s fair to disagree with Goldberg; he’s a libertarian-leaning righty, but he’s still a righty, so he needs to taken to task fairly often. In this case, however, he wasn’t arguing that conservatives (or anyone else) ought to be deferential to the police, he was merely observing the demographic surprises he was seeing in his email, and comparing that with where he stood personally.
obama didn’t inaccurately call the cop racist, he inaccurately called him stupid.
The accurate word would have been a phrase: “grossly wrong under both civil and criminal law”.
By the way, scott, why does “post-racial” only get used when black folks have the nerve to complain?
Of course, let the same conservative get a speeding ticket and they’ll be frothing at the injustice of it all.
Surprisingly, though, another couple of the DJs were on the other side: the cop does this every day and should have been the one to maintain his cool and handle the situation appropriately. That’s part of his job.
Exactly.
I used to do customer service for a large mobile carrier waaaaay back in the day. I was paid like $9/hr with no benefits to work in the middle of fucking nowhere in a tiny little slot in a row of desks in an overcrowded building with the stench of the bathroom wafting through it. And all fucking day long I got calls from people pissed off about something or another, and it was my job to de-escalate them. If anyone was caught telling a customer “you better listen to me or I’ll disconnect your service” they would have been fired on the spot. And yet, somehow, with cops, de-escalation just isn’t an expectation. In fact, cops generally seem to be given freedom to do just the opposite: escalate a situation to the point where violence and/or an arrest is permissible under their loose policies.
You see this all the time, and the only thing considered in these cases is whether the cop’s actions were justified in that specific moment in time when they chose to arrest or shoot or whatever. Their actions leading up to that are disregarded completely, even if it’s clear that they had ample opportunity to turn the situation in a different direction.
#29
When gates came out of the home the cop still hadn’t seen a photo i.d. I’ve never suggested Gates deserved to be arrested, but I’m finding it impossible to feel sorry for him.
Message — The next time a white cop sees black men breaking into a home LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE.
Don’t confuse the issue by implying that the cop didn’t know Gates was the owner of the home and arrested due to that. Gates produced his university ID (not a photo ID, but not nothing, as you imply by omission), and the officer believed even before that (according to his own version of events) that Gates was the owner of the home.
Then he kidnapped him for a few hours for being obnoxious.
I dislike obnoxious people. I dislike people who kidnap obnoxious people even more.
Feeling sympathy or anything else for Gates is completely unnecessary to pass judgment on the cop.
One of my favorite articles you’ve ever written, Radley. Extremely well done.
(the cop) said essentially this, “Gates was wrong to give the cop attitude. You give me attitude or talk back to me and you’re going to jail.”
So very common among cops (heroes). Let’s apply their logic to other jobs:
Postal worker: “You give me attitude or talk back to me and I’m going to steal you mail.”
Wendy’s worker: “You give me attitude or talk back to me and I’m going to spit in your food.”
Nurse: “You give me attitude or talk back to me and I’m going to give you the wrong meds.”
Teacher: “You give me attitude or talk back to me and I’m going to make fun of your kid all year.”
Yes, I can see no flaws in police (heroes) logic.
“Radley — go be a cop for 2 year.
Then come back and talk to us about it.”
It’d be nice if cops (heroes) could get another job to see the other side, but 100% of them are unqualified for anything else above jerk wad.
The cop gets dispatched on a possible burglary call: 2 men breaking into a home. From a libertarian perspective there can be no more principled, ethical call to duty than one to protect someone’s property (including someone’s life). From all that seems to have occurred the owner of the house confirmed he did break in with his driver (ironically through a stuck door damaged from a prior burglary). The cop did not shoot anyone, not even a puppy. Didn’t even pull his gun. Yet apparently the berating started immediately, even after being convinced the owner was the owner. I am sorry but if a cop responds to a possible break in to my house in under three minutes I think I will cut him some slack.
After reading the police report (on Smoking Gun) Gates made the mistake of continuing his tirade on the officer from his porch after the cop was in his yard and on his way out of there. Press reports made it seem like he was arrested inside his house. The charge was disorderly conduct — so right away you knew the cops knew Gates was the home owner since they didn’t arrest him for burglary. Disorderly conduct inside one’s own home seemed like an interesting case. Yelling and cussing from your front porch at a guy who was trying to protect your property doesn’t strike me as terribly bright for one of the nation’s premiere (or prima donna) professors.
The cop should have kept walking and told his story of the A-hole from Harvard back at the station. He chose to arrest his A-hole on disorderly conduct charges. Certainly to teach him a lesson in respecting authority. And such was the power of the professor that 1) charges were dropped the next morning, (Think you would receive prompt similar treatment?) and 2) the President of the United States defended you on national TV. Indeed, this cop found out there are people who as Gate’s put it, “you don’t know who I am!”
So forgive me if I have little regard for the good professor (Would you want him as a neighbor?), and maybe a bit of sympathy for a cop who did a good job up until he didn’t walk away.
Here’s your teaching moment…..
When a police officer asks to see some identification,
just do it!
I’m no Havard Professor….but I’m pretty sure I learned
that in 1st grade…..maybe even sooner.
Wendy’s worker: “You give me attitude or talk back to me and I’m going to spit in your food.”
Unfortunately, I’ve known enough acquaintances in food service who would do exactly that to make me careful to not give fast food workers attitude.
If this was a white man who continued to yell and was arrested for disorderly conduct, would we be having this conversation?
Police for the most part follow their guidelines and the law when arresting someone. Because this man was black, should the Sgt show more differential treatment towards him? How many people are arrested and then let go because of lack of evidence to support the arrest. Does anyone have statistics?
too many love the police. too few love liberty
As I’ve suggested before, if doctors carried guns and shot patients who make them angry, conservatives would support socialized medicine.
Funny how liberals worship unions yet decry police unions.
Funny how liberals decry stereotyping and yet stereotype ALL police officers.
Who holds the greater responsibility to show restraint, the police sergeant or the world renowned scholar with the 27 page resume?
And the next time the police are called to protect the property belonging to a black man, they should just stay away and know they are unwelcome in black folks’ homes.
In the future, I hope all of you will refuse to show your id to any police officer who requests it whether he has the right to request it or not.
If both the cop and the prof acted “stupidly”, then why did the president excuse the stupidity of the prof who has a 27 page resume on Harvard’s web site and only focus on the stupidity of the cop?
I have almost always been very distrusting of the police, but for some strange reason, I never got all uppity to the police. I have had police act out of line with me and try to ignore my constitutional rights, but for some strange reason, it did not make sense to me to insult the next cop I met for the mistakes of the last cop I met.
59 y/o profs never do bad things, couldn’t hide a knife in his bag? The 59 y/o belligerent prof had already shown an inclination toward being unable to control himself.
RIGHTS usually come with RESPONSIBILITIES. The only people who get one without the other are called CHILDREN and senile older persons.
You have the right to free speech as long as you don’t scream “fire” in a crowded movie theater. All your rights are conditioned with responsibilities.
You have the right to scream at a police officer in a narrow hallway and the police officer has the right to go outside so your screaming does not hurt his ears more than necessary.
The whole point of arresting someone for the offense of disturbing the peace in order to PREVENT a riot, means that you don’t wait until the riot starts to do something proactive (that would be called being reactive, not pro-active).
I emailed Obama after the February “Coward” accusation came out suggesting that discussion of racism among the minority community would be a good start.
One of the reasons why most are unwilling to discus racism is specifically that minority racism is a taboo subject and white racism is ASSumed to be the only type of racism worthy of discussion.
I am on your side in general when it comes to the issues of police powers and abuse of authority, but this?
“Los Angeles Police Department officer Jack Dunphy (a pseudonym) oddly concluded at National Review Online that the lesson from the Gates/Crowley affair is that anyone who asserts his constitutional rights when confronted by a police officer risks getting shot.”
Are you kidding me? Did you really have to twist and mischaracterize Jack Dunphy’s opinion to advance your larger point? Zeal of that kind only undermines your cause, and invites suspicion. It does you no credit and I advise you to knock it off.
Who holds the greater responsibility to show restraint, the police sergeant or the world renowned scholar with the 27 page resume?
I dunno–which one of them has the gun?
@#50
“I never got all uppity to the police.”
Poe? Is that you?
Brad=embarrassed Dunphy
if anything Radley characterized his opinion graciously. Dunphy not only (plainly) said that if you assert your rights you risk getting shot, he also implied that it would be understandable. Radley could have said that Dunphy adopted a “girl was asking for it” defense of police brutality.
Comment #6 really captured the problem here. Yes, the police made a mistake here, but the “victim” of their mistake is so reviled and distrusted for his continuous BS that it makes a very bad example case, even making the officer look good in comparison.
Very unfortunate.
I’ve been thinking more about this contradiction you mention, and I think one thing driving it may be the way so many government programs and bureaucracies are just complete waste, but the police do actively save people from criminals on a fairly regular basis, despite what other problems the police, as an organization, have.
So, the benefits of the police force are real and, essentially, irreplaceable, while private bureaucracies and businesses could replace many government functions. Also, there are SOME good things done with the over-broad powers the police have (though I’m with you that they aren’t worth the price).
I completely agree that the police need better oversight and certainly that many police powers need to be severely reined in or removed altogether, but I think I can see some of the roots behind the apparent contradiction.
This site has for years railed against the so-called militarization of American Law Enforcement (I think some of which is over-reaction, but some isn’t, SWAT over-use is a problem). People who come here have called for a rolled back in LE, away from the “Law Enforcement” Officer model to the “Peace” Officer way of doing things, which as a police officer I whole-heartedly support. The job is and should be more about keeping the peace than enforcing arbitray government rules.
And yet, here we have a cop doing just, keeping the peace, and he catches hell for it. The prof decided to disturb the peace (from school property under his control sure, but in view of the public) and got arrested for it.
The Sgt didn’t shoot his dog, or play drug warrior, or kick down his door wearing fatigues and carrying a rifle, he answered a legitimate call for service and conducted the investigation he was required to (make sure the guy you’re talking to is the home owner and is not under duress from someone else in the house, for all a responding officer knows, some burglar is hiding in the back holding a gun to a family member’s head or something).
I wouldn’t have arrested the prof, being that he was mad at me I would have simply removed myself from the sitution as a solution to the breach of the peace, and if the man continued breaching the public peace after I’d been gone for a reasonable amount of time, then sure, i’d have gone back and made the arrest if there was no other way. But I won’t fault the Cambridge PD Sgt for acting like a Peace Officer in a field full of Law Enforcers…
And yet, here we have a cop doing just, keeping the peace, and he catches hell for it.
He didn’t keep the peace – he’s the one who disturbed it.
make sure the guy you’re talking to is the home owner and is not under duress from someone else in the house, for all a responding officer knows, some burglar is hiding in the back holding a gun to a family member’s head or something).
Wow, you would have concluded all that from a third-hand eyewitness? Talk about the Dog That Didn’t Bark. You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes to have deduced all that based on an open door!
I didn’t deduce anything Chet, and you’d know that if your rabid prejudice of all things Police weren’t showing.
I was attempting to explain why you don’t take things for granted where people are involved, because there is no such thing as a police issue crystal ball. Would you like to have to live with the fact that someone got hurt because you assumed everything was ok because the 1st person you spoke to said so. I wouldn’t.
It’s why on a domestic call you ask to speak to the spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend whatever, rather than just asking the word of the 1st person who opens the door.
For all you saying Gates should have just shown his ID: He did, although he had to go back to the kitchen to get it. It wasn’t a driver’s license – apparently he hires a driver – but the cop was satisfied with it. It was the COP who never showed ID.
Officer Crowley apparently followed Gates back to the kitchen. I say apparently because there’s a narrative gap in his report – he’s on the front porch, then he’s in the kitchen reading Gates’s ID card, with Gates screaming racism and demanding Crowley identify himself. I’m not sure about the sequence, but it seems likely that what set Gates off was turning around and finding Crowley in his kitchen, rather than waiting at the front door for Gates to get back with his ID. And I agree, it was irrational and racist of Gates to start hollering racism because of that. BUT – just exactly what was Gates’s rational for entering the house uninvited? It shouldn’t be hard to justify following Gates until he knew Gates was not a burglar, but I would expect an experienced cop like Crowley to have detailed the probable cause (or whatever the applicable standard is), to head off any questions about it. Instead there’s a narrative gap. Like either he hoped no one would notice, or he wanted to run his story by a lawyer first…
Crowley’s report says he identified himself verbally at the beginning (when Gates came to the door), but it’s obvious Gates didn’t hear him. Crowley says he tried to identify himself when Gates demanded it in the kitchen, but Gates wouldn’t stop hollering long enough to hear an answer over his echoes in the kitchen. All Crowley had to do was hold out a badge or the business card that most cops carry, and the acoustics wouldn’t matter. Furthermore, one of the commenters on volokh.com found a Massachusetts law that requires that requires cops to provide written ID upon request. Officer Crowley’s own report shows him in violation.
Crowley didn’t want Gates to take his card and shut up. He wanted Gates to follow him out on the porch – where he could claim to think “disturbing the peace” applied…
Gates was an a**hole (and the only racist in the story), but that’s not against the law. Crowley was an armed a**hole who violated at least one law and misused his power.
#55 “la Rana” said among other things…
“Brad=embarrassed Dunphy”
Can you really be that dense? Obviously I am not the pseudonymous Jack Dunphy. Or perhaps you intended a taunt that displays the maturity of 15 year old?
“if anything Radley characterized [Dunphy's] opinion graciously.”
Oh that’s rich. Anyone who has any doubt can easily follow the link that Radley Balko provided and read the original by Jack Dunphy for themselves. No one has to take your word (or mine for that matter) to easily see the truth. And the truth is that Radley so baldly dowdified Dunphy’s words that he remakes Dunphy into a Snidely Whiplash cartoon villain. That is unworthy of Radley.
I like coming to Radley’s blog to read up on his latest exposes of police abuses and corruption. Radley is doing a masterful job of shining a spotlight into dark corners which are too often ignored.
On the other hand Radley as a doctrinaire libertarian has definite chip on his shoulder when it comes to conservatives and Republicans. But hey everyone is entitled to their opinion.
My problem is if Radley’s animosity starts to bleed over into his reporting as it does in this case. What he claims Jack Dunphy said, is clearly a misrepresentation. I don’t want to have to start worrying that Radley is going to (or heaven forbid already has) make the same kind of errors in his reporting.
Now for you brown-nosing Radley might be fine, but I do not care to share your residence in Radley’s colon. And for you restricting Radley’s audience to fellow brown-nosers might also be fine, but you wouldn’t be doing Radley any favors.
If Radley is to do any good with his reporting on police abuses he must maintain his credibility, if he loses that he loses any chance of effecting meaningful change. A Radley which only preaches to a tiny amen chorus might be fine for you, but I hope his reporting will reach and effect a larger audience.
I was attempting to explain why you don’t take things for granted where people are involved, because there is no such thing as a police issue crystal ball.
Apparently there’s not police-issued sense, either, or else you’d have the sense not to spin ridiculous fables every time you make a traffic stop. Gosh, this next car could be full of ninjas dressed to look exactly like lost tourists! Better keep my heater handy.
I mean once you go into every situation expecting that, contrary to appearances, it’s the most cinematic, absurdly unlikely scenario possible, where does that end? And more importantly – what assumptions do you make about the people you’re there to deal with?
Gosh, mightn’t you do something like, oh, I don’t know, be told “two men with suitcases, maybe the residents” and hear “two black men with backpacks, maybe burglers” instead?
“I mean once you go into every situation expecting that, contrary to appearances, it’s the most cinematic, absurdly unlikely scenario possible, where does that end?”
It must be oh so nice to live in a universe where everything is exactly how it seems on the surface lol. I’m sorry, but that not reality. For example, a security Guard opened a door for a kindly elderly gentleman at a museum on DC a few weeks back. I mean really, what harm could a 70-ish year old guy do right? That Guard got shot in the back and died. Was what happened to him “probable”, not at all, it wasn’t, it doesn’t happen very often even when it does happen, but in THIS universe (unlike yours chet) anything is “POSSIBLE”.
A good peace officer who wants to do a good job and knows he owes a duty because he accepts public money takes these possibilities into account.
Had there been something else going on in the gates house that night and the Officer had left after taking things at face value, the exact same folks who are criticising the guy would be jumping up and down screaming about how lazy cops are for not following through. There’s no pleasing some folks, folks who don’t like cops specifically , and that naked prejudice feeds the so-called “us vs them” mentality everyone loves to complain about in cops.
“If Radley is to do any good with his reporting on police abuses he must maintain his credibility, if he loses that he loses any chance of effecting meaningful change. A Radley which only preaches to a tiny amen chorus might be fine for you, but I hope his reporting will reach and effect a larger audience.”
Preach it, brother, amen.
It must be oh so nice to live in a universe where everything is exactly how it seems on the surface lol. I’m sorry, but that not reality. For example, a security Guard opened a door for a kindly elderly gentleman at a museum on DC a few weeks back.
That’s great. Of course, the odds of that happening to a cop are far less than the odds that it happens to a cab driver or a gas station clerk; frankly, many more cops die in the line of duty because of traffic accidents than because they misread the danger level of the situation.
And if your response to our mixed-up dangerous world is to off-load that risk onto civilians – via unnecessary escalation of force, being trigger-happy, approaching each situation like it’s a Bruce Willis movie – then frankly you’re a pretty shitty cop, because you’ve failed to understand that your job is to shoulder that risk, so we don’t have to.
Man up. Act like a cop, not like a pussy with a gun. What the hell is wrong with you?
the exact same folks who are criticising the guy would be jumping up and down screaming about how lazy cops are for not following through.
Bullshit. If the cop had treated Gates like he would have treated a white man – “oh, sure, looks like everything is in order here, sorry for the inconvinience, hope you enjoyed your trip, have a nice afternoon” – it never would have been national news. At best it would have been an anecdote in someone’s “encounter with the police” story, like the time my father-in-law, bound for a college visit with his Filipino son riding shotgun, were pulled over by the highway patrol and grilled about what relationship, if any, they had with each other.
Nobody here thinks cops need to work harder to arrest homeowners for standing in their own kitchens. The problem comes when cops assume that black people can’t own homes.