It really poisons debate when you argue against positons that your opponent simply does not hold.

Now back on topic …

assuming that lawyers are not thick on the ground out in the countryside, one feels sorry for your local bumpkins, who have no other choice when seeking legal advice than to turn to a liar, and an incompetent one at that.

You know, I don’t dislike the police, actually; certainly not in the blanket sense of disliking “the police” in inverted commas. I do dislike, very strongly, authoritarian bullies. I dislike their apologists even more, and your penultimate paragraph exposes you as an apologist par excellence for (let me borrow, for irony’s sake, a phrase popular with the American political faction you doubtless support) jackbooted thuggery.

You’re also a fairly stupid apologist. The responsible prosecutor’s office very prudently elected to drop all charges. But then, the lawyer responsible for that decision is almost certainly at least moderately competent, and knows why it would be for the best not to have Crowley’s report examined too closely. But hey, why don’t you get in touch with our colleague in Cambridge, urging him or her to reconsider and prosecute Gates to the full extent of the law? What could possibly go wrong? You could point out that judges are predisposed to give cops the benefit of the doubt. A successful prosecution (and, as you so compellingly argue, there can be no doubt that the prosecution would succeed on all fronts) will teach John Q. Public the important lesson that he had best remember his place when being questioned by the police.

In fact, when we come right down to it, that’s what’s really important, isn’t it? I mean, even though Gates had adequately identified himself to Crowley as the legitimate occupant of the house, and even though Crowley subsequently arrested Gates after Gates demanded (as was his right) that Crowley identify himself with name and badge number—in other words, even though Gates was right and Crowley was wrong—what matters here is that a civilian got uppity with the state security apparatus, and quite properly felt a bit of boot for it. So go for it, counsellor. I’m sure the prosecutor will give your professional judgement the full consideration it deserves.

ahh, I see, I’m having a version of my old classic “signal/noise ratio” troll thrown back at me.

This is certainly some strong and clear-headed oversight you’re applying to your own police force.

But my “snark” function wasn’t set to “on.” I merely summarized certain kinds of claims and attitudes, call them what you will, in this and the related threads.

Since I am personally well aware of the perils of driving, walking, and being on one’s own property while respectably black, I agree with your statement about “political normalness.”

I would only note, in slight disagreement, that police often don’t give a damn that some black person has attained “elite” status. Actually, it can be worse than that: see the joke dsquared references, or the Gates affair.

when police officers cause a great deal of trouble for members of ruling elites, without good cause, they almost always have to back down and apologise with extreme deference. This is true in all democratic countries at all times. The problem is that in the US being black is very good prima facie evidence that you are not a member of the ruling elite, and cops therefore are more liable to make that this mistake with blacks. Political correctness gone mad? No, political normalness, which may always have been mad.

definitely and obviously untrue, as shown by the inquiry report.

dsquared, the rape conviction rate is a proportion of the reports. It’s not relevant how the reporting rate has been increasing

ahh, I see, I’m having a version of my old classic “signal/noise ratio” troll thrown back at me. NTMY, bbye.

I once considered writing a science fiction novel, set in a world in which time travel was ubiquitous, so much so that normal concepts of cause and effect had completely broken down because everyone was always going back in time and changing the way things happened. The idea was that in such a society, they would still need some way of handing out praise, blame and punishment, and that they would settle on “narrative unity” as a weaker replacement for “causal responsibility” – ie, you would be considered guilty of a crime and sent to jail if that was the explanation of things which seemed most satisfying to a judge and jury of literary critics. My central character was going to be a hardboiled cop/deconstructionist called Bugsy Derrida.

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting words” those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.

– Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942

So yes, a certain level of verbal belligerence towards the police is a crime. This is also initial source of the legal leverage for establishing laws for both hate speech and sexual harassment. Now you are seeing the cost.

dsquared, the rape conviction rate is a proportion of the reports. It’s not relevant how the reporting rate has been increasing. What’s relevant is that there are 9-fold differences between areas in the UK, and every area’s rate is shite. That is either incompetence or malice.

Police in all the countries I mentioned – the US, France, Australia, the UK - seem to be bad and/or incompetent. The common factor is young men with power. Justifying away this power with ajay’s style of feeble “he deserved it” logic, or trying to pretend your own police are better, is pretty silly. Given the universal nature of this phenomenon, oversight and stiff penalties are the only solution. Inquiries, whitewashes and mealy-mouthed apologies are not.

Although one could argue that if you are acting as an asshole, loudly insulting and upsetting anybody, cop or no cop, you can expect some sort of unpleasantry. Common sense.

Now that’s the authoritarian personality type at work. It’s your fault because you didn’t behave nicely. And anyhow, you haven’t been punished much this time…What is scary is how many other Americans on this thread take it for granted (even if they don’t approve of it) that if you upset a cop you can expect to be made to suffer for it. Once the police stop respecting the fact that they are servants of the public, you are on a very dangerous slope.

In any case, Prof. Gates should have been prudent enough to know not to be disrespectful to an authority figure who is licensed to kill. Still, it isn’t a big deal to be arrested and released four hours later.

Another officer, who has a Hispanic last name, witnessed the professor’s tumultuous behavior and confirmed the arresting officer’s report. So, on balance, we reasonably can conclude that Prof. Gates is a liar.

If Prof. Gates had been fully and respectfully cooperative with a hardworking law enforcement officer who was simply investigating a reported burglary in progress, the ensuing situation would never have happened. After all, Prof. Gates is a wealthy, well-connected Harvard professor, and race was probably irrelevant—until the professor tried to martyr himself and cried racism.

Maybe Prof. Gates harbors intense resentment toward the police in particular and whites in general, which would explain why he was so quick to anger. Such feelings were often warranted in the past, of course, but are largely unwarranted today.

Sgt. Crowley was only doing proper police work upon discovering an almost 60-year-old, slight, moderately disabled man inside the house. In fact, the officer might well have been concerned for the man’s safety: two black men suspected of breaking into the house had not yet been located.

To be clear, race has nothing to do with any of this, since Prof. Gates is a person of high socioeconomic status—even if Sgt. Crowley either wasn’t aware of this or didn’t care.

That the Cambridge Police Department and the mayor of Cambridge have apologized to Prof. Gates is more a sign of political correctness or deference to elites than of the possibility that Sgt. Crowley might have acted inappropriately, for whatever reason, in arresting and charging Prof. Gates.

I couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s here on CT, of all places.