Racial profiling or honest mistake?

I don't understand this statement and I'm not looking for an explanation.

It was an emergency response to protect his property, a response that was completely reasonable, Mr. Gates should be grateful for such a timely response to someone potentially breaking into his home.

It's more that police officers have a tough job and choosing to teach a civics lesson during a justified investigation instead of cooperating is inviting trouble.

You'll find that's true for most people, act like an asshole and you'll be treated like one.

But it's an act of righteous defiance to behave like a complete fucking asshole to a cop, even if the situation is trivial and your reaction disproportionate. Anyone who suggests the cop shouldn't just smile and put up with it is obviously a mindless, statist sheep who always sides with The Man and possibly hates minorities.

That is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The officer should put up with it, until you break the law.

Being a dick just because you can is something that only flies here, not in the real world.

You, Uncle Albert, would probably be weeping if you got pulled over - after all, you drug habit could land you years in jail.

^Try recalibrating your sarcasm sensors

I feel sheepish now.

I apologize for that, Albert.

Totally agree. But sadly that's not the reality in many areas of our great melting pot.

One man's 'racial profiling' is another, much smarter man's 'common sense'.

True, if you act like an asshole you do deserve to be treated like one. You do not deserve to be arrested for being one. Shit if you were, you'd be banged up for life! (Not a bad idea actually...)

Dave, if you act wrecklessly around a cop, you're gonna get arrested.

If the cops did fuck up, of course they would later claim that he was being belligerent. He claims he was being perfectly reasonable.

Bottom line... I wasn't there, so I don't know how it went down. Racist cops in the Boston area would not surprise me. An indignant black man facing arrest would also not surprise me.

No, here's the bottom line: Don't get in a dick-waving contest with the cops unless you're ready to go to jail.

Sadly it seems charges were dropped against this asshat.

LINK

Now normally I would be happy to see this, but I can't stand assholes who use bullshit charges of racism to avoid paying for their own stupid mistakes. If this guy was anything of a man he'd own up to his mistake, apologize for accusing people of being racist and we'd move on. Of course he wouldn't be a Harvard liberal if he could do that.

FWIW, Gates' account of what happened is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072101771.html?nav=hcmodule

In summary, he said showed the cops ID and then asked for the officer's ID. The officer refused. Then he said he was asking "Is this how you treat a black man in America?"

My personal take was both the cops and Gates were somewhat in the wrong.

Yes, it's a dangerous thing being a cop and there are hidden risks everywhere. But chances are one of them are not going to come from a 58 year old guy with a cane who was breaking into a house in broad daylight.

Yes, there has been and continues to be a long history of police mistreating minorities. But chances are, if Gates had been white and had given the cops lip about how "Is this how you treat a homeowner in America" or a Republican in America, he very well might have been arrested too.

I think there's a certain amount of naivete Gates was operating from, but also a certain amount of understandable anger. I think most people probably know they should restrain themselves and be polite when dealing with the cops. I assume he did actually display some belligerence despite that. At the same time, I think a ot of people wouldbecomeangry if the situation is similar to what he describes. In fact, if he didn't play the race card, I think most people here would be a lot more sympathetic to a guy who was arrested in front of his house whose alleged disorderly conduct (as near as I can make out anyway) consisted merely of yelling.

A couple more things: whatever this incident is, it's not "racial profiling." Racial profiling involves jumping to a conclusion that someone might be guilty of a crime because he's of X race. i.e., a black guy in a flashy car is more likely to be a drug dealer. I think it's safe to assume that the neighbor would have called police on Gates if he were white, and the police would have probably reacted much the same way.

It's possible that racism influenced the outcome of the incident, but there's no real reason to think that.

Finally, I would think this should be a little scary to people regardless of their background. If a famous, connected, rich person can be arrested and spend some time actually in jail on what seemingly is a BS charge lodged by a police force not known for being jaded or stressed or brutal or malicious or incompetent or anything like that, what happens to ordinary folks? Or in cases where police work for a more problematic department?

^ Of course, no 58 year old has ever hurt, shot at or killed a cop.

I find the sequence of events far from scary, the police department responded quickly, acted reasonably and no one was injured. I think Mr. Gates fame and wealth actually aggravated the incident, I'd imagine an ordinary guy wouldn't fancy himself above complying with the police officers given the circumstances. I wouldn't. Heck I'd be grateful for such a response, remember the responding officers thought someone had broken into Mr. Gates home.

More than that, nobody knew his age at the time.

In some areas there seems to be a "cops are harrassing us poor blacks" attitude until the "harrassed" need a cop.
Then if the cop doesn't show up within 10 seconds of being called it's
"the cops refuse to help us poor blacks."

The cops can't win for losing. And sending only black cops to a black neighborhood doesn't seem to help - cops are cops, period.

I've often wondered if some blacks wish they had something to fight for, like they would have if they had been alive during the civil right's movement, so they thus pick fights about racism in situations where no racism exists.

Never said that. Just that there wasn't that huge of a risk of it. Or do you honestly feel the cops in this case felt physically threatened by Gates out there on the mean streets of Cambridge?

I guess it depends on what account you believe if the cops acted reasonably or if anyone was injured.

If the truth is closer to Gates's account, then I would say actually putting the guy under arrest was unreasonable.

Also, in an earlier version of his account IIRC, he said he was put in pain by the arrest, even if only momentarily by being made to walk without his cane and by the cuffing.

Again, that's assuming he didn't comply with the police officers.

His account is he did comply, that he asked information of the police officer that he has a right to know (the officer's name and badge number) and the officer refused to give it to him. Only then did he (according to his account) act untoward.

As for ordinary guys fancying themselves "above complying with police officers," I think ordinary people make mistakes too. And police officers can act up and/or take any questioning as overly hostile and disobedient. I would consider myself an ordinary person more or less, but I found myself cuffed and cited for disobeying an officer during a traffic stop on a completely bogus charge when the officer had attitude from the start of the stop and I made the mistake of questioning whether he had the right to search my car.

Again, it depends on how the situation went down. If Gates for some reason refused to give his ID and gave the officers static, that's one thing, and it's on Gates.

If Gates gave the officers ID as he claims, he cleared them of the notion he was a thief well before the arrest for disorderly conduct.

In a vacuum, I would say that Gates' version probably makes more sense to me although it's not inconceivable that things went down the way the officers said.

In response to Clyde's point that "no one knew his age at the time," you can see what Gates looks like at either of the links posted in this thread. He's not a particularly young looking 58. While you probably can't guess his exact age, I think anyone first seeing him would correctly guess he could qualify for AARP membership.

Spoken like someone who has no clue about law enforcement.....

You don't have to be or feel physically threatened for someone to be a threat to you. In fact many officers get caught off guard because they make the mistake of assuming the person they are dealing with is no threat to them.

It's not unreasonable to respond to a break-in and when you respond to find someone in the house you are responding to to ask them for ID regardless of who they are or what they look like.

It's not unreasonable to put someone under arrest when after the situation is cleared up they continue to berate you and act like an asshole in front of the neighborhood. (hence the disturbing the peace charge)

times 1 million.

Everyone who gets arrested bitches about anything they can when those cuffs go on. If I had a hundred dollars for every idiot that complained of pain during an arrest when they walked into my jail I could have a few hundred thousand dollars by now. I'd bet Elwood whose had a longer career then I would have more money in the bank.

He gave the appearance to a neighbor who obviously didn't know him that he was breaking in the house. When the police asked him for ID he didn't comply at first but then changed his mind.

A flat out lie about his acting untoward only after the officer refused to give his name and badge. He was acting like a moron from the start. You can tell that by his opening statement to the police upon their arrival and asking him to step outside of the house (at this point the police still don't know he is the owner of the house): "Why, because I'm a black man in America?"

Dealing with you I can't say I blame the officer.

No. Just because you clear the notion that you are thief doesn't mean you have a get out of jail card for the rest of the fucking day.

After the situation was cleared up he continued on his little rant and got himself charged with disorderly conduct.

What he should have done was ordered them off his property and then gotten the car number. He really doesn't need their name or badge to find out who they are though there is no reason for them not to give their name or badge number (but I suspect they were fucking annoyed with someone calling them racist for doing their job and basically said fuck it).

Age is irrelevant. Criminals come in all ages. Sure the older you are the less likely you are to commit crimes but plenty of 58 year olds inhabit jails and prisons for crimes they've committed.

A disorderly conduct charge is a misdemeanor and is usually tossed out or the night you spent in jail is considered "time served" anyway by judge (unless the defendant is a real moron and pisses off the judge) so it doesn't surprise me that the DA themselves dropped the charges.

The accounts agree, his house was broken into, a neighbor notified the authorities of said break-in and police officers showed up to investigate. Nobody is disputing this sequence of events. You cannot believe one account without believing in the other.

After that the only difference lies in the motivation ascribed to the responding police officers.

Racism or responding to a break-in that Mr. Gates admits happened?

Hold up, you suggested his wealth and fame should've afforded him more justice than us regular folks.

I'm saying it probably worked against him.

On the long list of things the officers en route did not know is the age of the person breaking into Mr. Gates house.

Mr. Gate's wouldn't come out. Raoul, when did they start giving cops X-Ray vision? How do they know what someone behind a door looks like?

Broadly, the accounts agree up to that point, yes. But that's not the important part. The important part is the interaction between the police and Gates after their arrival.

Here is where I disagree.

The two sides give completely different accounts of what happens after the officer shows up on the scene.

Here's the police report on the case:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/Police report on Gates arrest.PDF

The cops' version is that Gates initially refused to identify himself and then gave a Harvard ID. The sergeant said he identified himself and explained what he was doing there. Gates immediately goes to a racial place and asks if it's being investigated because he's a black man in America. Eventually Gates does show that he lived at the residence. Gates alternately ignores the officer, threatens him by saying he doesn't know who he's messing with and trash-talks him about how he'll talk to the officer's mama outside. Gates started yelling things like "This is how a black man gets treated in America." And after mouthing off and getting a warning or two that he faced arrest if he wouldn't calm down, Gates got arrested for disorderly conduct.

If all that is in fact the case, that puts Gates in a far less appealing light and it makes it more reasonable that the officers would question what he was doing and ultimately arrest him.

A more complete account from Gates's perspective can be found here:
http://www.theroot.com/views/skip-gates-speaks?page=0,0&auto=true

But Gates's account has him identifying himself promptly. It also has him essentially saying the trouble starting when the cop refused to give his info despite multiple requests. And it has the cops arresting Gates immediately when he stepped outside his house, without warning. (I'm presumably, he can't be arrested for disorderly conduct inside his house.) Gates then asked "Is this how you treat a black man in America" after his arrest.

That account makes Gates' behavior look more reasonable and the cops look like unreasonable bullies.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle as it tends to be. Gates was probably a little more cheesed off than his account makes it sound and the cops were probably the model of restraint nor was Gates as bizarre as the cops' account made it sound.

I definitely don't think it "should" have afforded "more justice" than us regular folks if by "should" you mean in a moral sense, and by "more justice" you mean that a normal person wouldn't have gotten charges eventually dropped.

I do think that being a famous Harvard professor who could get another famous Harvard professor to the stationhouse as his lawyer within hours of his arrest, he probably was released sooner than a person who had less money or status would have been. And I do think that the prosecutors dropped the charges as quickly as they did in part because they knew that this was going to generate a fair amount of attention.

I do also think in Cambridge circles, being a Harvard professor lends a certain credibility that being a random resident would not.

It may have worked against him in some ways, sure. It may have made him more arrogant toward the cops than a random person would be, although obviously a lot of random people show anger to the cops.

Or it could have contributed to a desire by the cop to teach this stuck-up dude a lesson, whereas he might not have the same desire for an ordinary person.

On the long list of things the officers en route did not know is the age of the person breaking into Mr. Gates house.[/QUOTE]

I'm not talking about when the officers are en route. I'm talking about when the officer's at the door of the place.

The sergeant said in his police report he looked through the glass paned front door and saw Gates, and Gates saw him. No X-Ray vision required.

Can I fault a neighbor for calling the police when someone is observed breaking into a nearby house? No, that's what a good neighbor would do.

Can I fault the police for showing up and trying to sort out what happened? No, that's what the police are paid to do.

If it were me, and the officers arrived on my doorstep, I would've handed them my driver's license and said: "This is my home, but I had to break in because [insert reason here]. How can I help clear this up?" It would've been over and done in three minutes with no one getting angry or arrested.

You'd have to believe the cops were drooling racists just waiting for reports of a black suspect in a nice neighborhood to come in for them to arrest a cooperative person who could easily verify that the home was indeed his. I just don't buy it.

The guy made an issue out of it--more to the point: he tried to make a racial issue out of it--and he got himself arrested. Sounds to me like he had it coming.

Gates says he doesn't have a problem with her.

Essentially this is what Gates says he did. Only he said the cop asked him a question he didn't answer, and that he then asked for the cop to identify himself, and the cop refused.

Taking race out of the equation, I can believe there are cops who would refuse to identify themselves, and who would arrest someone who continued to in their view disrespect them.

Again, that's if you take the cops at their word. Which requires you to believe that someone who's never been in trouble with the police started mouthing off to them from jump street instead of just providing the ID that would have presumably cleared the incident up for the most part.

I've encountered my fair share of them while on the job.

Just because they "have to" tell you their name and badge number doesn't mean they "will". Then again, most police around here wear a name tag and I have, at times, resorted to zooming in tight on their police badge so I could read their number.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying here.

The only point I was making was that chances are he wasn't and shouldn't have been perceived as a threat. Sure, there's some possibility any encounter with anyone could culiminate in that person pulling out a gun.

IMO, the conditions as described here don't strike me as putting a reasonable officer in fear for his safety.

Agreed.

Depends. If the circumstances were exactly what Gates said they were, I would say the officers acted unreasonably and Gates didn't do anything wrong. If the circumstances were exactly what the cops said they were, I would say the officers acted reasonably and Gates deserved to be arrested.

Wouldn't you agree? If not, why not?

I don't mean to say it's a big deal. I just mean to counter the notion that there was no injury.

According to the police account, yes. I don't automatically assume the police are telling the truth, nor do I assume they are lying. I don't automatically assume Gates is telling the truth, nor that he is lying.

Like I said, the truth's probably somewhere in the middle.

Again, that's presuming the officer is telling the truth.

All's well that ends well. The case got dismissed for the BS it was.

And again, if the police are telling the truth, he deserved it.

On the other hand, if there was no rant and Gates only wanted to know information to which he was entitled, and he asked persistently but not impolitely as he claims, as Gates claims, then he shouldn't have been arrested IMO.

Good to know. Although technically the house belongs to Harvard, so I don't know if he could order the officers off his property.

But most of them are there only because they are serving time for crimes they committed when much younger.

Here is where Mr Gates' credibility falls apart. If a cop were to show up to investigate a break in at my house and ask me for ID to make sure I should be there, if I complied without a problem why would I be demanding his ID? The fact that he is so irate about getting this cops ID pretty clearly shows something else went on first that he is not telling us about. The cops story makes sense though.

It really sounds like this dude's towering fucking ego had him convinced that he didn't need to answer to the cops for anything.

In Gates' account, he said the officer asked him some question that he refused to answer. He doesn't specify what this question was. But it's certainly possible IMO that the question or its tone or something was enough to get him to want the cop's ID. In addition, it's possible that the cop had made the reasonable request for ID in a rude manner, or that Gates misperceived that he did.

The cop's story has its flaws too.

According to it, the cop promptly identified himself and identifies himself twice more. And yet, Gates keeps asking for his ID. And he can't contain himself from accusing the cop of racism while the cop's attempting to identify himself.

According to it, Gates says, "Why, because I'm a black man in America" instead of simply providing the ID that proves he lives in the house.

According to it, Gates makes a statement about the cop's mama.

According to it, Gates doesn't cool down despite at least one warning that he will be arrested if he doesn't.

According to it, Gates is doing a lot of yelling despite Gates' account that he was suffering from bronchitis and couldn't yell.

It's possible that Gates would be as agitated and hostile as he's portrayed. Is it probable? Not so much IMO.