Police Discretion: A Different Perspective

Wait, doesn’t this misstate the timeline? I thought it was pretty clearly established that Gates was not asked to exit and speak to the officer on the porch until after it had been established that he was the owner of the home. That would make the decision to invite him on the porch unjustifiable in terms of safety and ease of arrest, as no legitimate arrest would, at that stage, have been planned. As this writeup says, it might make sense to talk to a “suspect” on the porch. The officer concedes that at the time of the request that Gates move to the porch, Gates was no longer a suspect. As whether or not Gates was essentially trapped into a disorderly violation by being intentionally invited out of the safe harbor of his home into the public where he could be arrested is the key of this matter to me, that pretty much dooms my opinion of this officer. It moves this officers act from improper use of discretion to intentional, knowing, premeditated and willful abuse of discretion.

As for the rest of it… del Pozo makes a great case for officers having arrest discretion, even if it can be abused. And I completely agree with it. Of course, I think that extending this sort of discretion must necessarily come with consequences for abusing said discretion- and even some degree of consequences for honest misuse. I only hope del Pozo agrees, because without that extra caveat, he isn’t advocating that we extend discretion to professional law enforcement officers, he’s advocating something far, far worse.

Police officers are expected to bear much greater burdens than the average citizen in this regard due to the nature of their job, but the limits on these burdens acknowledge their core personhood.

The law says otherwise, at least in the Ninth Circuit:

Thus, while police, no less than anyone else, may resent having obscene words and gestures directed at them, they may not exercise the awesome power at their disposal to punish individuals for conduct that is not merely lawful, but protected by the First Amendment.
…
No less well established is the principle that government officials in general, and police officers in particular, may not exercise their authority for personal motives, particularly in response to real or perceived slights to their dignity.

“The police are called to situations with the purpose of seizing control over them, …” – I find this disturbing and distressing. I would have thought that when police are called to investigate a possible burglary, it is for the purpose of determining whether one is happening, and if so, stopping it (or preparing the ground for an investigation if it has already finished). I really don’t understand why “establishing control over the situation”—using legal/physical threats (or just naked force) to coerce passive obedience from those in the vicinity—is a central part of this.

Very sad.

Around this time, the person begins to accuse the officer of racism, at first refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

Uh, according to the officer’s account he did. Gates’ account is different.

I think I want to elaborate the comment I just made (#5 above). Why “antidemocratic?”

1. It smacks of the privilege of rulers, of lesè majesté, of some idea that state officials are something more than ordinary citizens and entitled to some kind of special status-based privilege.

2. It smacks of a distrust of the populace. The idea that if citizens were allowed to yell at cops without punishment the whole system would collapse because the cops wouldn’t be able to set foot on the street without being subject to harpy-screams of rage with every step is, frankly, absurd—first, because it seems quite unlikely that the disorderly conduct penalty is a serious deterrent—those who are angry enough to start yelling are angry enough to do so whether or not it means a night in a cell—and second, because it suggests that citizens who have perfectly cordial and cooperative times with the cops are just dying to make their lives miserable.

3. It, like the constant attempts by cops to keep people from filming them, smacks of an attempt to take away a public check on official action. Sometimes the cops need scolding. Yelling at a cop might make the cop think twice, and might recruit the community to join in, in pressuring a cop to refrain from unreasonable or unjust uses of power. And that’s a good thing too.

I will be happy to discuss some of these comments at greater length, as they’re quite interesting. My inclination is to do so after many more of them are made, later on.

As for issues of timeline, my understanding is that the sergeant asked Gates to step onto the porch first thing. Later on, he also stated that Gates would have to follow him outside if he had any further business because he was leaving. This is when he said Gates enetered a public place and allegedly became disorderly. The account is open to question, naturally. The extent to which he baited Gates outside and the extent to which Gates pursued him are both very relevant, but will likely remain unknown.

Anyway, the issue is not about the extent to which yelling at the police bothers or insults the police. The issue is the extent to which it causes a genuine state of alarm and annoyance that nearby citizens have the right to be free from, and the extent to which it makes it difficult, as a practical matter (because police are people), to conduct a proper investigation of the incident at hand. The disorderly conduct statute and the one that prohibits obstructing governmental administration are not meant to work as deterrents, but are instead remedies to an ongoing problem that must be addressed. The fact that they are often dropped as charges speaks not only to the robust rights citizens enjoy, but also to the degree to which the courts view these types of arrests as such remedies. The power to physically remove people from a messy situation they’re perpetuating can be abused, and should not be taken lightly, but is useful even in a democracy.

Anyone who persisently screams at a doctor, nurse, lawyer or IRS agent will either be sedated, or strapped to his gurney, or wheeled away, or ejected from the location by security. Nobody will expect the practitioner to continue rendering his or her services in such an environment. Please do not underestimate the unique and challenging work environment of the police officer.

Most good cops like it when they are filmed. It invariably works in their favor.

I think that while Capt. del Pozo sets a slightly too low standard for police conduct, Paul Gowder may err a bit in the opposite direction. I can’t just forget that cops are sometimes in very real danger in the course of their jobs and that all too many have been killed in the line of duty. The need-for-control thing can be overdone (and I think it was in the Gates case) but it’s not just about machismo, or privilege.

“The responding officer then encountered a black male at the location where he was informed that a black male had broken into a home.”
—Somebody called the police on Gates? I haven’t been following this story. Is this what happened?

I think that A) Brandon has been interpreted somewhat uncharitably and B) some legitimate criticisms of Brandon’s message have been made, and I would be interested in hearing a reply, paticularly to the criticism that apparently Gates was asked to leave his house and come onto the porch after it had been established that he had a right to be in there.

So far the conclusion I’m tentatively tending towards is that neither participant in this sorry situation acted illegally; I’m almost certain of this with regards to Gates and about sixty-forty with the police officer. But it also looks like – though it’s diffcult to know for sure – that both participants didn’t act entirely admirably. On the whole though I think this situation is a lot more complicated than people on both sides are admitting and so I’m going to do something pretty uncommon for me and take a seat on the fence.

It is possible for a person to commit disorderly conduct by unabated screaming and verbal abuse in a public setting.

Not in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here is an excerpt from a 2008 Mass. Appeals Court case reviewing a conviction for disorderly conduct, Commonwealth v. Mallahan:

Following his arrest for assault and battery arising out of a domestic violence incident, the defendant launched a screaming tirade at the arresting police officers. The defendant’s loud yelling continued for some ten minutes, as the officers walked the defendant, in handcuffs, from an apartment toward the police cruiser. The defendant’s rantings included warnings that he would sue the officers, as well as loud protestations interlaced with profanities that he had done nothing wrong, including that he never ‘fucking touched that bitch.’ When they reached the cruiser, the defendant stiffened his body upright. One officer placed his hand on the defendant’s head in order to move the defendant into the cruiser. The defendant sat on the cruiser’s seat but left his feet outside. The defendant, who recently had neck surgery, yelled that the police had hurt his neck. The officers removed the handcuffs and called the fire department. An ambulance transported the defendant to South Shore Hospital and then to Massachusetts General Hospital.

During the originating domestic violence incident, approximately six people in the housing complex had emerged from their apartments and gathered outside. As the cruisers arrived with sirens on, additional residents emerged or peered out their apartment windows. At one point, it was estimated ten persons were outside.

The defendant was charged with assault and battery for the originating domestic violence incident and with disorderly conduct for what transpired during his arrest. The defendant was acquitted of the assault and battery, but was convicted of disorderly conduct. G. L. c. 272, § 53. …

While acknowledging the constitutional protections that surround speech, the Commonwealth asserts that the defendant’s loud and angry verbal tirade rose to the criminal level of tumultuous disorderly conduct … The Commonwealth argues that tumultuous behavior, ‘while perhaps not physically violent, may nevertheless be characterized as involving riotous commotion and excessively unreasonable noise so as to constitute a public nuisance.’ We conclude, however, that on the evidence presented, the defendant’s loud tirade could not be prosecuted as tumultuous behavior under this definition.

The Commonwealth concedes that ‘there was absolutely no evidentiary support for the hazardous or physically offensive condition prong of the statute. There was essentially no live issue at trial concerning a hazardous or physically offensive condition.’ Instead, the evidence (including the testimony of the two arresting officers) showed only that the defendant verbally protested his arrest, taunted the officers with possible legal action, and railed about the officers’ hurting his neck. Words alone are not sufficient to establish tumultuous conduct. The only exception for a word-predicated offense under G. L. c. 272, § 53, is for ‘fighting words,’ that is, words, ‘which by their very utterance inflict injury or intend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.’ The Commonwealth does not contend, nor could it, that the defendant’s speech in this case constitutes fighting words. That the defendant’s language was vulgar and unpleasant did not translate the speech into tumultuous, disorderly conduct. ‘To be disorderly, within the sense of the statute, the conduct must disturb through acts other than speech; neither a provocative nor a foul mouth transgresses the statute.’ ‘[T]he mere use of obscenities in public does not make out the crime of disorderly conduct. . . .’

The Commonwealth further argues that the defendant’s nighttime eruption outside the apartment complex was noisy enough to cause people to gather and neighbors to look out their apartment windows and, as such, was extreme enough to constitute disorderly conduct. However, the mere fact that persons may be drawn to a scene because of noise and ‘verbal cacophony’ does not mean that a defendant has engaged in criminally tumultuous disorderly conduct. On this issue, we note that in Commonwealth v. A Juvenile, ‘a crowd of approximately 100 shoppers gathered’ to watch the episode. That level of crowd gathering did not qualify the juvenile’s verbal tirade as tumultuous, disorderly conduct under that prong of the definition; nor did the lesser assemblage of the estimated ten or so persons who gathered outside the apartments in the instant case. (Moreover, in this case the evidence was mixed concerning the timing of onlookers gathering because certain of the onlookers came outside during the originating domestic violence incident and with the arrival of the cruisers—both of which events preceded the defendant’s arrest and loud verbal protest.)

Finally, the Commonwealth’s depiction of an extreme, tumultuous event is not persuasive. In this respect, Commonwealth v. Lopiano, 60 Mass. App. Ct. 723 (2004), is instructive. In that case, the police came upon Lopiano fighting with his girlfriend in a car and ordered him to exit. Lopiano approached the police officer yelling and flailing his arms, protesting that the police were violating his civil rights. The court held this episode did not ‘support a reasonable inference that ‘the noise and commotion caused by the [defendant’s] behavior was . . . extreme.”

(For the full opinion go here and search for “Mallahan” under “Parties”.)

But to add to that I still think Gates manifested a self-fullfilling prophesy

Trotsky, not true. Gates showed Crowley his ID before either of them went outside.

Richard, I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, but I’m wary of this way of approaching the incident because it obscures the crucial fact that Sgt. Crowley abused his discretion even if Gates acted exactly as alleged in Crowley’s report.

@ Cownie on 20
First I agree – nobody should be arrested on their own property simply for being agitated but you do a good job driving the point I’ve been asking.

Do we have class standards? – Do some people deserve special standards or exceptions by the way they dress, act, the people they know, the titles they hold, or the jobs they possess?

I think Billikin @7 may be on to something. I’d also point out something which already may have been mentioned in one of the other threads: namely, that Gates’s own previous experience might have influenced his behavior here. I believe Gates has written (unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly where I read this, but I read it a long time ago) about an incident that occurred years ago in which he felt he was unfairly watched with suspicion by a police officer (and perhaps followed, I don’t remember) b/c of his race. In that context he was defined by the fact that he was black, and his elite education (and socioeconomic class), for example, didn’t matter. I don’t know who is in the right or wrong in this current incident, and I’m not interested in excusing or apologizing for one party or the other, but I do think Gates’s past interaction w/ police is relevant, along w/ his (understandable) sensitivity to the whole issue of relations between police and minorities.

“Sgt. Crowley abused his discretion even if Gates acted exactly as alleged in Crowley’s report.”

Yes, but two separate issues are at stake here: a) the policing, and b) the reputation of a
very eminent academic. I don’t think we should trash Prof Gates by suggesting that he
was uncooperative, abusive, or even arrogant. Because firstly, it’s none of our damn
business how he acts in his own house; and secondly, there’s no reliable evidence.

I have an uncomfortable feeling that Prof Gates will be unfairly tagged as “that Harvard
prof who yelled at the police and got arrested” long after the issues of Cambridge police
procedures are forgotten.

@Steve,

Legitimate question and to the point I guess we are concerned with two different aspects. You seem most concerned with the legality and regardless of whether the police officer acted appropriately or in appropriately Professor Gates has made this issue about race. The racial issue is much greater than the legal issue from which it arose and I simply don’t see Gates argument as being persuasive in that regards and this concerns me. My point to that particular post was in response to Richard who suggested we should disregard the police officers accounts due to the Professors own distinction. The police officer is facing a much greater social issue, regardless of whether he stepped out of line or not, being branded a racist is a serious affair and could be much more devastating to him personally – I think it’s only fair to consider the broader issue.

I am struck by the fact that the original post seems to accept the police report as accurate. (If I missed something, apologies, and please don’t hesitate to tell me where.) I’m not a police officer, but I’ve written a lot of incident reports in my time, and I’ve read incident reports written by police about events at which I was present. IME an incident report bears about as much relationship to the actual event as a news article—which is to say, often it’s a very carefully framed and compressed selection of the facts.

I’d be interested to know how Capt. del Pozo generally perceives incident reports—- a good starting point? Roughly accurate? Depends on the officer? As an IA investigator, I assume he’s had a great deal of experience with selectively presented data and outright falsified reports.

“I highly doubt that I would have ordered the arrest of Professor Gates for any charge.”

Given the extensive arguments given by Brandon for why Sgt. Crowley might have done what he did, why the confident statement at the outset?

I have found incident reports, when prepared in good faith, to be thematically correct and to correctly convey the important details that stood out in the reporting officer’s mind. Errors creep in when dealing with complex or sustained sequences of events, large numbers, and recording spontaneous statements made by several people at once.

Generally speaking, I have found that reports that attempt to cover up misconduct tend to favor ommissions that the officer hopes will slide by rather than false assertions of fact that can be directly disputed by witnesses and the defendant. When they do make false assertions of fact, they will try to limit their exposure by narrowly choosing lies that do the work of covering up the misconduct. They will bury the lies in a larger body of truths that witnesses will want to corroborate because they are indeed accurate.

In the name of epistemological skepticism, in the report at hand, I think it’s fair to wonder just what “yelling” meant every time he states Gates was yelling. This may be filler; it may have only been sporadic comments that have, in the report, coalesced into yelling. It is also possible that Gates was enraged, and was indeed almost constantly yelling. I have seen this happen. I really wish these things were recorded so the issue could be settled.

On the other hand, the movements of the officer as alleged are very simple: up to the front door, into the foyer, back to the porch. I find no reason to doubt them for their simplicity. I also find no reason to doubt his statement that he engaged Gates from the door, asking him to step out, to which he refused. It is in line with direct quotes he attributes to Gates. When a cop cites a direct quote from a suspect, it’s usually because he’s pleased the suspect has said something that works against him so handily, and he is more than happy to memorialize it verbatim.

The 911 call can be independently verified and was, without doubt, recorded, as were all of the radio transmissions. Cops know lying about what was said by callers and what they said over the radio is a lost cause.

I find it most plausible that Gates acted basically as alleged, this called for a discon arrest in the sergeant’s mind, and it was a bad call. This cop didn’t know who Gates was and didn’t come to the house to prod a black man into being arrested. Recall, again, that a 911 caller summoned him there, and he did in fact break open his door. There was something in their interaction that led from the investigation of this act down a road to where the sergeant thought he had cause to arrest Gates, the appropriateness of which we are vigorously debating. It’s puzzling to say his motivation for arrest stemmed from things about Gates he simply fabricated in the first place. It’s more plausible to surmise the acts were genuine, but still insufficient or very ill-advised as a cause for arrest.

Finally, finally, this is why the word of the police must be unimpeachable: we need to place so much faith an officer’s reports and statements to do our job. The punishment for purjury in NYC is very severe, and I agree with that. It is the fastest nonviolent way to end your police career. People need to be assured that when a police officer makes a statement, it is overwhelmingly the case that it’s done in good faith and as accurate as he could render it. I acknowledge the problems police departments have with this issue; I am just lamenting them, because it derails discussions and casts doubt everywhere.

His sensibilities aside, Sergeant Crowley could well be a deeply honest person, but we have no way of evaluating that possibility here in this venue. It is my bias, however, to accept his basic statements at face value until presented with contradictory ones that offer a counternarrative of similar plausibility. This is my general epistemic stance, not just my law enforcement one.

I imagine Professor Gates had just been through Customs and Immigration at the airport. I wonder how that went, and whether that had an impact on his state of mind.
I know how it affects me, and I’m white.

I think the Captain’s post is a justification, out of tribal loyalty, of an inept and, yes, probably racist mishandling of an incident. I question its worth other than a fairly predictable account by one of the policeman’s cohort.

Several posters have stated that a person is free to do whatever they want to do in their own home. Yes, you can rant to yourself at home all you want until the neighbors call in a noise complaint. But Gates was talking to a police officer investigating a possible crime, a completely different situation.

I have not seen it established whether Gates’ ID had the same address as the location in question but even if it did that doesn’t necessarily end the investigation. In DV situations it is common for one party, usually male, to be excluded from his own home with a no-contact order. Police frequently encounter an excluded party going back into the residence in violation of a court order. I have no way of knowing whether any of this even entered the officer’s mind but it is a reality encountered in police work.

Many of the comments here and on the related thread leave me with the impression that some posters have never had any contact with law enforcement and are naive about the situations cops encounter. I find it ironic being in the position of explaining police conduct as being reasonable (the arrest itself may not have been reasonable legally depending upon facts we will likely never know) and Gates’ reaction possibly unreasonable; for the past 20 years as a criminal defense attorney I have almost always been in adverse situations with police. But I’m also familiar with citizens who can turn a traffic citation into multiple felony charges by their conduct post stop.

While I don’t agree with all of Brandon’s points in detail, he should be thanked for a reasonable, articulate and nuanced work.

trotsky- keep reading the report. After he’s satisfied as to Gates’ identity, he invites Gates outside. “I told Gates that I was leaving the residence and that if he had any other questions regarding the matter, I would speak to him outside of the residence.” Then, after Gates steps outside the door, he turns around and arrests him for the same behavior outside as he was exhibiting inside, because outside there’s a semi-plausible argument that Gates’ behavior is disorderly, and inside, in private, disorderly conduct is impossible.

It is this that I can’t get over. This looks to me to be pretty conclusive proof that the officer knew what he was doing, and intentionally invited Gates outside with the intention of arresting him once he got there on a pretextual charge of disorderly conduct. I do not consider it possible to engage in this sort of behavior and count as a worthwhile police officer. At the very least, in this particular instance the officer acted to use his authority and his office in the pursuit of spite. It raises questions about whether this officer has ever used this trick in the past on someone with fewer resources than Gates, and what damage that’s done to people’s lives.

Ironically, distasteful as it may have been, Gates angry comments of “do you know who I am?” may in fact be entirely on point. It may be that because of who Gates is, he was able to slip out of this trap where someone with less education and fewer resources would have ended up with a criminal record.

“There were other witnesses too, who viewed as much as could be seen from the street. I will bet they will corroborate the officers’ accounts.”

It’s clear that the key parts of the interaction took place inside the house. So what could
be seen from the street is irrelevant.

“Gates is a boor. He owes an apology to the officers and the citizens at large. I won’t hold my breath on that one.”

So what’s a black guy supposed to do ? He works quietly his whole damn life to become
a very distinguished scholar with an unblemished reputation, then one day an asshole cop
having a bad day comes to his house, and now for the rest of his life it’s “Henry Louis
Gates, the boor who got arrested” ?

“Furthermore, what a charmed life Gates has lived if this is the first interaction he has had with the police that was based on a misunderstanding (seems like he was just waiting for such an incident for a long time).”

Well, yeah, that would be very unlikely. It’s much more likely that a 60-ish black guy in
the USA has had plenty of encounters with the police, and that as a teenager in the 1960s
he learnt to be damn careful in such encounters, and so avoided any such trouble until
now. Another reason I find the police report very implausible.

Patrick: “After he’s satisfied as to Gates’ identity, he invites Gates outside. “I told Gates that I was leaving the residence and that if he had any other questions regarding the matter, I would speak to him outside of the residence.”

John: “I just don’t see the officer’s invitation in the same light you do. After all, what other option did the officer have? Was he supposed to stay in Gates’ house until Gates decided he was done yelling at him? Was he supposed to say “I’m leaving your house now, and I’m not going to listen to you any more even if you follow me outside?” That latter is the sort of enraging statement that really does jack up the probability that a person in Gates’ position actually will follow him outside.”

Crowley left the inside of the house shortly after refusing to give Gates his name and badge number. He told Gates that he had given it to him twice before. By that statement Crowley effectively ended communication with Gates. Why, then, should he offer to continue any exchange outside? Without ascribing any motivation to Gates, he was aware that if he went outside and Gates followed and continued to yell at him, that Crowley could arrest Gates. Crowley actions outside the house give no indication of any attempt to communicate with Gates, but rather to give orders and warnings that, if ignored, would justify an arrest. This does not excuse Gates’s behavior, but it appears that Crowley acted just as he would if he had laid a trap for Gates. Whether that was Crowley’s conscious motivation or not, who can say?

What could Crowley have done? He could have written down his name and badge number, plus the name of his superior and a telephone number where Gates could reach his superior, told Gate that that is what he was doing, informed Gates that Gates could call his superior now or talk with Crowley or his superior later, put the note on the kitchen table, and left the house. There was no reason at all to tell Gates that he would speak to him outside the house when he had ascertained that no crime had been committed and he had either chosen not to accommodate Gates’s demands or had given up any attempt at real communication with Gates in the state that Gates was in. Instead he chose a course of action that, in the back of his mind if not foremost in his consciousness, he knew could lead to a situation in which he could establish dominance over Gates.

There was no good reason for [Gates] to … accuse [the cop] of racism…

Wait, let me get this straight. There is no good reason for a black man in America to accuse a white cop of racism. Durrrr.

“b) the reputation of a very eminent academic.”

This whole business comes across to me as “class profiling”. Why aren’t we concerned with Sgt Crowley’s reputation? Is he a lesser member of society because he didn’t get a Genius award? Are Harvard professors entitled to insult cops because they’re uneducated underlings? Are we only reading Captain Del Pozo’s status quo opposing view (thank you for the only sensible reasoning on this matter I have read so far, by the way) as something to be debated seriously only because he’s a phd candidate?

He warned Gates. He did not speak with him. This is a dominance move.

If Sgt. Crowley’s report is credible, it’s fair to say by this point that “speaking” with Gates had not shown itself to be effective.

Billikin- for whatever little it’s worth, I read the report pretty much the way you do. The officer was concerned to establish dominance and to lay the grounds for a disorderly conduct arrest. This procedure for using such an arrest to regain control is well-documented in the excerpt from Peter Moskos’s book that Henry previously posted. I guess it has to be left as an exercise for the reader to ask whether this particular exercise of the technique- against a 58-year-0ld guy with a bad hip who was in his own house and not bothering anybody except (maybe) the cop himself- was justified. I tend to think that the answer, for anybody who grasps what a free society is all about, is pretty obvious, but maybe that’s just me.

Some responses to the original post: First, everything Brandon says about the legitimacy of the cop’s showing up and asking Gates to establish his identity seems obviously true. While there might be some question about whether the neighbor’s decision to call the police was affected by Gates’ race, once the 911 call has been made, the police have to respond appropriately and establish that no crime is going on. I do have some issues with the remainder of the post though.

The police cannot be expected to leave a location simply because the person there is screaming at them and ordering them around, even if that person is apparently innocent and likely lives there. They should still thoroughly investigate.

This is reasonable, but appears inapplicable in this situation—Crowley wasn’t attempting to remain and investigate while Gates ordered him out. He was refusing to answer questions unless Gates left his house.

It cannot become commonplace for people to be allowed to scream at the police in public, threatening them with political phone calls, deriding their abilities, etc.

If our society had made a judgment that this statement was true, it would have criminalized screaming at the police and deriding their abilities. It has not; the statute under which Gates was arrested has no specific standard relating to conduct directed toward the police. Further, there are ways to discourage screaming at the police other than arresting people who do, that generally fall under the heading of ‘not pissing people off’. Taking the police report at face value, and so assuming that Gates really was screaming and threatening to report the cop, the report doesn’t say that the cop did or said anything to try to calm him, like “I’m sorry I had to bother you, Professor Gates, once we had the 911 call we had to come investigate. I understand this is very upsetting.” Dealing with the police is frightening and stressful, and they have no excuse for not understanding that and making allowances for people insofar as that’s compatible with safety and doing their jobs.

Nobody trying to do their job fairly deserves to hear the equivalent of “My daddy donated fifty million to this university, and you’ll be getting calls from everywhere in the administration about raising my grade enough for this class to count as a distributive requirement.”

Talking about Crowley’s deserts seems off point. Certainly, if Gates had said anything like the quoted statement, Gates would have been wrong to have said it, and Crowley would have been wrong to have been intimidated by it. But that doesn’t make it arrest-worthy, or even a factor that should weigh toward arrest.

Without drawing conclusions about the Gates case, there comes some point where a person is genuinely causing public alarm, and where he is acting with a rage that exceeds what we can expect from a reasonable person in a heated moment.

Sure. But taking the police report at face value, I find it absolutely implausible that Professor Gates, even if unreasonably angry, was genuinely causing public alarm.

A police strategy of “winning by appearing to lose” emboldens citizens to attempt to get the police to lose in more and more serious matters, including walking away from situations where a person is genuinely guilty of a crime.

This, I find horrifying and outrageous. You’re suggesting here that the police can’t ever back down, because it lets citizens know that the police might possibly back down in other circumstances, and they’ll be “emboldened”. I can’t see this attitude as leading to anything other than the sort of police abuse of discretion that seems clearly to have happened here. Professor Gates may now know that if he disagrees with a policeman’s action, the policeman is unlikely to back down and will use or abuse his powers to enforce his will whether or not it’s required by the law or by public safety. So he may be unlikely to butt heads with the police again. On the other hand, he’s now likely to fear and despise the police, rather than viewing them as allies and protectors. Wouldn’t police work be easier if law-abiding citizens didn’t have reason to think of police as something to be feared and hated?

He was refusing to answer questions unless Gates left his house.

Not only that, but (as Billikin points out) when Gates did leave the house, he continued to refuse to answer questions, and addressed Gates directly only to tell him to calm down. Or rather, ‘warn’ him to calm down, which I think we can reasonably class as making a threat. It’s hard to read Crowley’s tactics in this encounter as anything other than “police officer asserts control of situation, has this assertion repeatedly challenged and eventually escalates to coercion”.

[reference #58] Hey look, look. A bunch of liberals protecting their own.

I’m really sure we should take seriously any of the projecting, race-baiting rationalizations, knee-jerk accusations of police lying, false bravado about sovereignty and democracy and the right to act like a whack-job in the front yard…and even more the naive or mock outrage about police “dominating” the event (which is exactly what they are trained to do, because as Gates has so aptly proven, your average irrational emotional citizen is a dangerous unpredictable idiot when interacting with the police).

People fear authority when it is up close and personal, and our society has given police certain authority over us. Some of us have apparently gotten through life without having to recognize or acknowledge that fact. So yes, you should fear the police to some degree. We’ve given them the power to restrict your freedom, even short-term and temporarily with the use of custody and arrest powers, in order to preserve a greater public good. [Even we libertarians understand that. The difference is that we feel the same way about governmental authority at every level, not just when it wears a badge and blue uniform, but for example, including when it tells us we have to accept rationed care to reduce health care costs.]

I suspect Gates thinks of the police in the same way many of the Gates-apologist posts here do, choosing to refute any unfavorable facts as “we all know police are liars.” With that kind of attitude, I fully expect to see many of his defenders in similar positions some day; handcuffed and sitting in the back of a patrol car.

I’m amused so many posters are concerned about Gates’ professional reputation because of this event. Would that it were so. I don’t think he has anything to worry about. The liberal elite clique will sympathize and defend him, reflexively if not thoughtfully. The rest of us poor blue-collar slobs who could care less about his psuedo academic field of study will write him off as the ill-mannered, ill-tempered Harvard boob who doesn’t know squat about how to behave around the cops. That will stick with him forever, but I’m sure he could care less.

Hey look, look. A bunch of liberals protecting their own.

Of course, my perspective in reading the police report is that of someone who practices criminal defense law. One of the things I see a lot of, though, is that the police are constantly looking for excuses to enter homes, and when they get inside, to look around. To me, the most striking thing about this incident is that the officer entered Prof. Gates’ home without permission, and without a warrant. I don’t see how that was legitimate, under the circumstances, and I suspect that was a big part of why Prof. Gates became angry, and suspected racism.

The report seems to indicate he went no further than the foyer area.

In NY, an officer does not need a warrant or permssion to enter a home on a live burglary call, especially one with civilian witnesses who attest that a person just broke open a front door. The emergency exception to warrants is clear on this, and with good reason. He can generally search spaces that might fit a burglar. Once he believes the person is the owner of the house and no crime is afoot, he shouldn’t progress any further or look around anymore. In this way, the sooner Gates cooperated with the sergeant, the less cause or ability the sergeant would have to remain in the house.

Lucio Dado has it right: it’s a class thing. As Brandon says:”Powerful/arrogant people—or those who have a certain idea of personal freedom that does not acknowledge emergency exceptions—find it annoying that the police can suddenly do this to their environment, when so few others can.” Bigshots like Gates are enraged when they’re called to account by lower class nobodies like the cops. Obama was sending out the same message at the press conference where he said the Cambridge cops had behaved stupidly: I know Gates personally; don’t you dare mess with US!

The rest of us poor blue-collar slobs who could care less about his psuedo academic field of study

Hi, ruralcounsel! I want to help you out with a few matters:

• History and Literature are not generally considered pseudo academic fields of study.

• Maybe it would be nice to live in a society in which historians who specialize in the study of the culture of African-American populations are equally well-represented in history departments, etc. But if all you’re complaining about the existence of an Afro-American Studies department, then all you’re complaining about is whether history and literature research groups should be split into two departments or three or more or whatever. Personally, I could care less, but if you care more I recommend Michael Bérubé’s “Department and Punish” thread, findable on CT via google.

• Complaining about departmental structure is different from calling the study of the history and literature of theretofore neglected populations “pseudo academic” though—if you want to avoid coming across like a bigot who believes only the exploits of certain populations deserve historical inquiry and cultural analysis, be more precise with your complaints from now on!

@64: Given where he lives, I suspect he makes a little more than $70k a year. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are Harvard professors’ houses not too far from his.

@76 – what do you mean, where does he live – Cambridge? Cambridge is probably one of the most diverse cities in the US, by pretty much any criterion you can imagine. It has villas and slums and everything in the middle all next to each other.

The Globe IIRC stated that he lives in South Natick. When my husband and were looking at houses 16 years ago, we might have been able to afford a house there if we had used both salaries to qualify, or if we had stretched, and between then and now, even before the latest housing bubble, prices had at least doubled.

(And, Henri, if you want to tell me about the area based on the knowledge of the area between Wellesley and Worcester typical of those who’ve never been as far west as Newton, go right ahead, don’t think I don’t want to engage in that discussion.)

It is purely my opinion that by being a good citizen Mr. Gates could have avoided the escalation of this whole incident. If it truly had taken the officer mere moments to respond to the break in then Mr. Gates could have thanked the officer for his quick response and service. Are we missing the fact that Gates has shown total contempt for the fact that the officer was trying to protect and serve his interests?

Gates himself has made every indication in his public responses that he was being racist in his response to being questioned by a white officer. It seems it was Gates that was prejudiced in has mindset as to why a white officer would be questioning him about breaking into his own home. While I’m not sure he should have been arrested I do not feel he was in the right.

Training is very useful, but I think the most important thing to do is to recruit and select people who demonstrate maturity and good judgment from the very beginning. Age, education and work experience are useful factors in determining this, as well as the types of personality tests we rely on psychologists for.

I have always genuinely felt that given physical aptitude and an ability to handle stressful situations, a person cannot be too smart or too worldly to be a police officer. The judgments it requires all must be made right there, fairly quickly, under pressure. There is little or no time to meaningfully reflect. These judgments will invariably be a product of your preexisiting character, experiences, and life lessons, as well as your training. One of the things that’s very good about in-service training is not that it immediately alters a seasoned cop’s behavior, but that is makes the expectations on him clear. The training must therefore be followed up with assessments of complaince with it.

One of the reasons why I said I highly doubt I would have ordered the arrest of Professor Gates is because when I was second in command of New York’s Upper East Side (and policed the rest of Manhattan North more generally), I dealt with people similar to him all the time: educated, wealthy, and connected. I have responded to police incidents in Park Avenue penthouses that must have cost well over ten or twenty mil, owned by very obnoxious people like the lovely bankers who brought us the world we presently live in. One line that usually worked for me was “Sir, I now understand that you’re [this extremely wise, powerful, awe-inspiring man], but believe me I had no way of knowing that based on the way you treat people. I thought you were some guy off the street who conned his way into a home like this. Really, I don’t know how the people in your life can stand you.” Then, if the situation was resolved to the extent that there was no crime committed, I would tell my cops to just leave.

One of the things that overlooked is that the police have the opportunity to enforce important norms of social behavior, and not just laws. Who else in this man’s life is going to tell him he’s a boor, when he is actually being a boor, and leave it at that? When a kid throws a junk food bag on the ground, and he’d normally threaten or punch out the community member who told him to stop making a mess, the cop can order him to do it on their behalf, and just be off without fear of repraisal. Provided there was no use of obscenity or epithets in these cases, the person who has been upbraided has no recourse to these comments or orders, and more importantly, he knows they’re true. He may live in a world where everyone is fairly obsequious to him, or afraid of him, or just reinforces his outlook, but some street cops just called him on the fact that he’s a boor, and he has to sit there and eat it. Arresting him only taints this interaction.

There is formal social control, and informal control. It’s clear that informal control works better in many cases. What bears further discussion, and is relevant to the Gates incident, is the ability for the police to resort to informal measures to handle certain situations, and to correct behavior that is obviously inappropriate and counter to the civic interest, such as the man who berates well-meaning people with demeaning insults for whatever reason.

The caveat is that for this type of thing to work, cops must be smart and well-trained. I can only speak about what I have seen in the NYPD, but there are few well-educated liberal arts grads who have joined the force and not found it to be a very interesting and rewarding job, precisely because of how challenging it is and because it involves big issues in both big and little ways.

One of the things that overlooked is that the police have the opportunity to enforce important norms of social behavior, and not just laws.

Brandon: I am a generally polite, well mannered, soft-spoken woman who generally does not violate either laws or important norms of social behavior. Please take that as some background for the following: the quoted statement, in the context of the Gates arrest, produces a strong desire in me to violate some social norms in your direction. I am offended by the idea that armed men may whimsically enforce what they see as “norms” by threat of violence; the idea that I’m supposed to be especially polite when the police are around because they can threaten or injure me (such as by an arrest like Professor Gates’) is disgusting.

You seem like a generally thoughtful person—do you understand that saying things like that makes middle-class, law-abiding people hate and fear police? And does inspiring that sort of fear and disgust seem like a problem to you>

the ability for the police to resort to informal measures to handle certain situations, and to correct behavior that is obviously inappropriate and counter to the civic interest, such as the man who berates well-meaning people with demeaning insults for whatever reason.

I’m glad to have Brandon here and discussing this case. But am I the only one seriously creeped out by his last comment?

You’re a cop: it’s your job to enforce the law. It’s not your job—it’s not your responsibility or your right—to judge what behavior is “in the civic interest” and to “correct” anyone who you think is behaving otherwise. Judgments about the civic interest are made by the citizens, through the political process. That’s what democracy means. Cops qua cops don’t get a say.

@ 79: I will say it again: a live burglary call invokes the emergency exception to the warrant requirement, especially in the case where an impartial witness is stating that she saw two men force a door open seconds ago, and the man that the officer initially encounters will not identify himself. It’s not merely a matter of “convenience,” it’s a matter that there is no way for the officerrs to investigate a burglary, which the courts consider a very serious crime because of the potential for people to be in danger in their own homes, if the officer cannot enter the home to asses the situation and the safety of the occupants.

In-progress reports of home invasion robberies, burglaries and physical assaults all invoke the emergency exception in the home when a facially reliable witness provides detiled information about what she has seen. @79’s assessment is so far afield of actual practice and precedent that it’s hard for me to point to a particular problem with it, except to say it’s just wrong.

But I guess the problem is that what is expressed is just opinion. When you assert that “There are no exigent circumstances here justifying this kind of intrusion—no reason to believe that anyone was in physical danger,” you are voicing your own assessment based on watching news reports, and which I can only surmise is not based on police training, of having had the physical safety of other people who may be crime victims be your direct responsibility, or having had to make an actual assessment about a burglary in progress with real-world consequences for innocent people for your judgments. In the crudest estimate, I have responded to between 100-200 of these calls, and I am not satisfied with merely being greeted by a person at the front door who won’t identify himself but angrily claims to live there, berating me all the while. I want to know that 1) he is who he says he is, and 2) his ex-wife/girlfriend/child is not bleeding to death in some part of the house, perhaps at the hands of the second person who was witnessed forcing the door. If he calms down, shows ID and tells me about a stuck door, a cab driver and a miserable flight from China, I think that would do wonders for reassuring me that everyone was safe.

In fact, the officer did not open doors, check under beds, roam around the house, and check any space which could fit a person, which is what the law empowers him to do if he continues to believe this was a burglary. People are angry that at some point he entered the foyer/kitchen area (we don’t know if they adjoin) for a short time. This was not only initially warranted, but also reasonable. I don’t think Gates has even complained about this particular thing.

One of the things that overlooked is that the police have the opportunity to enforce important norms of social behavior, and not just laws.

That is no part of the legitimate role of the police.

To the moderator,

My comment is being held for moderation while other, subsequent comments are being published. Can you please tell me if I have done something untoward, or if there is something I should do to be able to take part in the conversation? Thank you for any guidance you are willing to give me.

HF - IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST COMMENT AT CT, YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY PUT INTO MODERATION. THIS IS INTENDED TO DISCOURAGE SPAM. ALSO, SOMETIMES OUR SPAM FILTER GOES A LITTLE CRAZY FOR REASONS BEST KNOWN TO ITSELF.

As a side note, I think this is a deeply insightful reflection:

“I have always genuinely felt that given physical aptitude and an ability to handle stressful situations, a person cannot be too smart or too worldly to be a police officer.”

I conjecture that, if it was the norm for all police officers across the country to genuinely feel this way about their job and to admire these qualities foremost in their peers (along with analytical and diplomatic skill, which brandon clearly also respects), then incidents of police misconduct would be very rare indeed, without any noticeable corresponding cost in community safety.

watson aname @81 and Henri Vieuxtemps @86—
The correct word would appear to be “defuse” rather than “diffuse.” See, e.g., usage note.

citizens have the right to tell other citizens they’re jerks and boors in the manner in which they treat people.

Certainly. But cops, qua cops, with the power of arrest and a state monopoly on force, are not entitled to inflame a situation by “telling other citizens they’re jerks and boors” because they know that if the situation gets out of control, they, unlike other citizens, may use violence to bring the situation to an end.

Cops are the only people who must continue to render their important services while being yelled at, because their service environment is the private home or the public domain.

I see you’ve never worked in education. Or food service. Although I appreciate both your profession and its uniqueness, boorishness is everywhere. Speaking of which:

Being a boor to cops because you can be, when nobody else would stand for that type of treatment, is especially boorish.

I could not agree with you more. But you cannot arrest someone for being a boor.

Or rather, you can be arrested for being a boor if the policeman is sufficiently irritated. The charges will be dropped, but you were still cuffed, walked, processed, fingerprinted, etc., and that’s the cop’s revenge for irritating him. This is harassment, not law, not ethics, and certainly not safety.

Being a boor to cops because you can be, when nobody else would stand for that type of treatment, is especially boorish.

Brandon? What do you think non-cops do when someone is boorish? Generally, we do, as a matter of fact, stand for it. Did you think that violence erupts whenever someone is rude, or that no one is rude except to cops?

******ALRIGHT, LET ME CLARIFY THIS. Please read this through because my claim is a little more modest and nuanced than some suspect.

The idea is not that a person can be forced to DO anything by the police because he has no recourse, but that he can be TOLD his behavior is counterproductive, mean-spirited and inappropriate by the police when most other people would hesitate to say this to him. When a person acts like a total ass to me, one of the reasons it doesn’t anger me and knock a chip off my shoulder is because I know I am a fellow citizen who can VERBALLY call him on his behavior without the fear of repraisal. I don’t have to worry that he will have me fired, or punch me out, or deny me tenure. I can say what I would have said as a regular citizen in the context of my police interaction.

I am definitely not talking about informally controlling norms of behavior (religious worship, civic participation, dating preferences, standards of hygiene) using police authority, which is clearly wrong, but rather that in conversation, there are always concerns of basic decency between two citizens that a cop qua citizen is entitled to call another citizen on. It is his right as a CITIZEN, not a cop. Precedent makes this clear: as long as a cop does not use epithets, threats, force, profanity or obscenities, he can make a statement to a person that criticizes his behavior and that person can’t seek recourse simply because the citizen who said this to him was an on-duty cop. I think these interactions are important and productive.

If SGT Crowley had just admonished Gates for being a boor, Gates would have some food for thought and this would not have been a huge issue. To me, that would have been an informal meaure on Crowley’s part, but also a good outcome.

Thanks to Brandon for his excellent contributions to this discussion.

To me, that would have been an informal meaure on Crowley’s part, but also a good outcome.

This is also assuming a measure of good faith on Crowley’s part that I can understand your wanting to grant him, but need not be the case.

Once he knows he’s in Gates’s house, and that Gates is Gates, he doesn’t get to admonish anyone. He just has to accede to Gates’s lawful request to provide his badge number and name, and then leave. (To compare Gates to some kid littering on the street is asinine, by the way.) It is pretty clear from the officer’s own report that he was arrested for asking for the officer’s name—which the officer has to provide legally to him.

Or, you know, if Crowley wants to admonish Gates on the grounds that he disapproves of Gates’ manners, that’s fine. What’s way, way, way out of line is arresting Gates for being angry (not dangerous, but verbally angry) about Crowley’s behavior.

To the moderator,

Thank you for your reply. I don’t think this was my first comment at CT, so it was probably the spam filter. Perhaps because I am using a Gmail, i.e., free address, rather than a “real” one? Seems likely. Again, thank you for your answer.

@113: “Once he knows he’s in Gates’s house, and that Gates is Gates, he doesn’t get to admonish anyone. He just has to accede to Gates’s lawful request to provide his badge number and name, and then leave.”

We just disagree, as a matter of philosophy. I think a person never cedes the right to state his opionion about another person’s speech and behavior towards him, no matter what roles they are occupying, or where they are located. To me this is a fundamental, nonviolable condition of human dignity. That the issuer of this opinion is an on-duty cop should not provide recourse to the receiver for that reason alone.

I know this plays heavily into Gates’ right to verbally assail the cop, a right he surely has, but I also think this speech should be delivered calmly, and respectfully, and not for the purposes of antagonism. This is not a legal requirement, but a civic one, and as you can see I like calling people on forgetting their civic virtues, because I really think they hold society together.

I am often surprised at how quickly people forget that cops are citizens in voicing their dismay that cops sometimes forget citizens are citizens.

he can be TOLD his behavior is counterproductive, mean-spirited and inappropriate by the police when most other people would hesitate to say this to him

I wonder how often this happens without the power differential between citizen and cop being in the picture, in the form of an explicit or implicit threat of coercion. Example: Crowley, who in his own words “warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly”, shortly before making that calming neighbourly gesture of getting his handcuffs out.

For what it’s worth, I think Gates overreacted. But I think if I were
a) tired after a long journey
b) glad to get indoors
and
c) confronted with a police officer who seemed to think I was a burglar in my own house, before I’d even had a chance to sit down
while also being
i) Black
ii) a lifetime scholar of racism
and
iii) a high-status academic used to being treated with respect and deference

then I might just have overreacted too.

Baltimore tried it from 1996 onward with mixed results. If you were an ROTC cadet at any college in the US, you could be fast-tracked into the Baltimore Police. The idea was that the military’s officer screenings would be a good proxy for the tests of competence and maturity they sought, plus the college education, and that these were service-minded kids. Unfortunately, there were other, deeper problems with the BPD that made it a so-so place to work.

I think it’s the same type of visceral reaction that some people have about military recruiting, but what can we do about this? At the end of the day, police departments need the best people possible, and everyone benefits from that. Police officers have the most contact with citizens of any type of government employee, so the stakes are high.

@ 79: I will say it again: a live burglary call invokes the emergency exception to the warrant requirement

You’re talking to me @ 80, not 79. and you’re wrong, to a degree I find distressing I n a high-ranking police officer. There is no per se rule that responding to a live burglary call gives the officer a right to enter. If you are training officers that way, you’re making a serious mistake. The officer has to have probable cause plus exigent circumstances, and whether he does turns on the facts of the particular case—in a lot of instances he will, but not all.

In the Gates case, the officer is on the front porch when he first encounters Prof. Gates. According to the report, the officer radios dispatch that he has someone who appears to be a resident, but who is being uncooperative, and that he is about to enter the home. The officer then enters, followed shortly therafter by another officer. That’s not probable cause plus exigent circumstances. Note also that the officer does not confine hismelf to the foyer, but enters other areas—we know he was in the kitchen, because he talks about the acoustics of the kitchen. This is ablsolutely an illegal entry on the part of the officers involved.

The power of BdP’s rational descriptions is breathtakingly disciplinarian. It is like holding hands with the jailer as he leads you to your cell. Bravo!

A brilliant philosophical portrayal of the obvious fact in American life that (as Michael Mechanic says at MoJo) if you get “righteous” with a street cop you are going to lose every time—and quickly find yourself handcuffed and in the back seat of a cruiser. I’ve had my own occasions to experience this.

These are the conventional practices in nearly every community in this country—micro-practices of a police state.

What’s way, way, way out of line is arresting Gates for being angry (not dangerous, but verbally angry) about Crowley’s behavior.

All you guys who think that some grave violation of human right had been committed there, that the police report is full of lies and so on, how do you manage to ignore empirical facts of the aftermath: – there is no lawsuit – Crowley has not been discharged, reprimanded (or whatever the hell they do to bad cops) – 07/21/ Cambridge PD press release reads:

The City of Cambridge, the Cambridge Police Department, and Professor Gates acknowledge that the incident of July 16, 2009 was regrettable and unfortunate. This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department. All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances.

“All parties agree that this is a just resolution,” which is exactly what I said. What else to you need?

emergency exception – 2 reference results
Hospital Error
Free online medical malpractice claim evaluation. It’s fast & free!
Sponsored ResultsMedical-Malpractice-Law.us

Exigent circumstance
An exigent circumstance, in the American law of criminal procedure, allows law enforcement to enter a structure without a warrant, or if they have a “knock and announce” warrant, without knocking and waiting for refusal under certain circumstances. It must be a situation where people are in imminent danger, evidence faces imminent destruction, or a suspect will escape.
Generally, an emergency, a pressing necessity, or a set of circumstances requiring immediate attention or swift action. In the criminal procedure context, exigent circumstances means:

An emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to life or serious damage to property, or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect, or destruction of evidence. There is no ready litmus test for determining whether such circumstances exist, and in each case the extraordinary situation must be measured by the facts known by officials.
People v. Ramey, 545 P.2d 1333,1341 (Cal. 1976).
United States v. McConney, 728 F.2d 1195, 1199 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 824 (1984): “Those circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry (or other relevant prompt action) was necessary to prevent physical harm to the officers or other persons, the destruction of relevant evidence, the escape of a suspect, or some other consequence improperly frustrating legitimate law enforcement efforts.”

This post really touches on the insidiousness of racism in modern times. When any one person crosses the street when they see you coming, they could be doing it for a perfectly appropriate reason, but when hundreds of them do it reliably, something else is clearly going on. And yet, any one person crossing the street might be doing so for completely innocuous reasons. So while you take care to point out how the actions taken by the police officer were completely reasonable in themselves, as part of a larger context of police responding more harshly and more suspiciously to black men, a context that any middle-aged black man has a great deal of experience with, those actions can appear racist.

Also, even if there is no racial bias in 911 calls for people breaking into their own homes, and even if every one of those calls requires a police response, the issue of tone is extremely important and largely unaddressed here. All it takes for a completely reasonable response to turn racist is for the cop to be slightly more belligerent or confrontational with black men than he is with white men. But tone of voice and body language are not susceptible to concrete accounting, so it’s impossible to know whether claims of racism were warranted or not.

But what I think is most significant here is actually not the race issue, but the pigheaded cop issue. There is a suspiciously large number of instances in the last ten years of Boston-area cops overreacting colossally to very mundane situations. Yes, you have to investigate suspicious activity, but you don’t need to go into those situations with the assumption that lite-brites or concrete sculptures can magically be bombs, or that the old man breaking into the house, criminal or not, is suddenly going to attack a police officer. But the police have adopted a view of conflict resolution that defaults to bringing overwhelming force and then dictating terms. There are other ways to control a situation than belligerence and guns. We’re at a point where the police’s seeming presumption of guilt has reached a truly epidemic level.

I think your statement that “The police cannot be expected to leave a location simply because the person there is screaming at them and ordering them around” can be turned around. The police should be capable of walking away from a situation when their investigation is completed, even if someone is screaming at them and ordering them around.

officers will do this in burglary calls to make sure that the person inside the home isn’t speaking under duress, as in a hostage situation. (Brandon, is this actually the case?) For that reason, it makes sense that Gates was invited out of his home

the juxtaposition of “to make sure the person inside the home isn’t speaking under duress” with the “it makes sense that Gates was invited out of his home” is a bit stark here.

Salient, clearly: this is a really-really bad case for making generalizations. Gates is a very powerful person and, apparently, quite an opportunist and demagogue exploiting problems of racism. This case doesn’t help you discuss police powers, it just muddies the water.

then I might just have overreacted too.

Exactly – if he even did, or did much. I don’t think it’s safe to assume he was screaming the whole time, for example. Being a little loud and demanding could easily turn into “yelling” in Crowley’s report, but isn’t really the same thing at all.

I think it’s entirely possible that Gates wasn’t acting in the most cooperative manner possible. He was no doubt very tired and cranky from a 20-hour flight, a trip through customs, a long cab ride, and then having to break into his own house. Perhaps that intersected with his own sense of status and hypersensitivity to race, and turned him at least temporarily into an entitled douchebag.

The thing is though, this can hardly be out of range of the ordinary reactions a cop should expect to have to deal with calmly. Especially in an upscale neighborhood in Cambridge. But reading Crowley’s report, I was really struck by a sort of forced sense of naive surprise about Gates’ reaction. Crowley pretends to just be completely taken aback that Gates was berating him rather than treating him with gratitude.

Now, I’ll admit that from a police officer’s perspective, gratitude seems like a very reasonable reaction. You’re there to protect the guys home, after all. But to think it’s the only possibility, or even likely, seems to show a certain lack of empathy for the perspective a citizen when confronted by a uniform. A perspective that includes the knowledge that some cops seem willing to drag innocent people off to jail for no good reason, for example.

Crowley seems to have made a couple of attempts to explain his presence, but he makes them sound rather officious. Prefacing one or more of them with “I’m sorry, I’m just here to…” might have gone a long way.

I also wonder why the first words out of his mouth weren’t something like, “Excuse me, are you the homeowner?” That would have put the interaction on more respectful terms, while also not being a bad starting point if it HAD been a burglary attempt.

Instead, Crowley’s first words to Gates were apparently something like “Step out onto the porch, please. I’m with the police.” That seems like a very bad start. I’m not inclined to think that Crowley is any kind of overt racist, but we all have a lot of implicit racist assumptions that color our actions. There’s room here to think that Crowley might have un-self-consciously tripped some triggers there.

Because the original report has apparently vanished from the Internets!

I don’t know if it’s original or not, but the wikipedia page on the incident links to a mirror at The Reality Based Community, here.

Brandon del Pozo: “A police strategy of “winning by appearing to lose” emboldens citizens to attempt to get the police to lose in more and more serious matters, including walking away from situations where a person is genuinely guilty of a crime.”

Lizard Breath: “This, I find horrifying and outrageous. You’re suggesting here that the police can’t ever back down, because it lets citizens know that the police might possibly back down in other circumstances, and they’ll be “emboldened”. I can’t see this attitude as leading to anything other than the sort of police abuse of discretion that seems clearly to have happened here.”

I support Captain del Pozo’s statement. For police to back down, to appear to lose, damages their reputation and their ability to do their job, as a rule. (In rare cases it may be appropriate.) At the same time, it is not the case that the police have only two choices, to assert control or to back down. As Salient points out, there are diplomatic, non-confrontational ways to handle most situations. For the police to use those enhances their reputation and effectiveness.

Let me put in a plug for martial arts training. Martial arts is not just about fighting, but also about not fighting. One of the stories I heard when I was studying a martial art was about a Taiwanese policeman who often defused potentially violent situations simply by his presence. That level of art is rare, but it is an ideal to which to aspire. One of the first lessons I learned was to deflect an attack, rather than to meet force with force in direct confrontation. One of my teachers was a New York policeman who was working, on a volunteer basis, with other policemen, showing them non-confrontational ways of dealing with situations, even of making arrests.

Since that time, on the few occasions where I have seen people challenge the police, the police reaction has been confrontational. I wonder whether that is the result of training, or lack of training.

Lack of training I would think. I suppose its not their fault.

rea and jack: I fail at Internets. (Thanks for the tips.)

This case doesn’t help you discuss police powers, it just muddies the water.

Eh, I think brandon and I and others have been able to engage in a more general discussion of police powers. Let’s try to agree on this compromise statement: any attempt at generalization must recognize the peculiar features of this case, including the unusually privileged position Gates occupies in society; those who generalize from this case, or who hold it to be indicative of some larger trend, must make clear how their generalization is appropriate and useful.

Brandon,

Thanks for engaging so many of the comments. I’ve been concerned about something that you might be able to explain. When Gates asked the officer to identify himself, under MA law the officer has to present his identity card. Just giving his name over his shoulder as he leaves isn’t sufficient. As others have noted, the request for a name and badge number seems to have escalated the encounter (perhaps some officers find this disrespectful?). But why didn’t Crowley just do as the law requires and present his identification to Gates? You don’t need good acoustics or outside air for that. Do police generally ignore such laws or find the request for badge numbers offensive? If so, why? After all, anonymity is what allows “police” in authoritarian societies to act so horribly.

Mass. General Law, Chapter 41: Section 98D. Identification cards

Each city or town shall issue to every full time police officer employed by it an identification card bearing his photograph and the municipal seal. Such card shall be carried on the officer’s person, and shall be exhibited upon lawful request for purposes of identification.

Oh, be serious, Henri. Not even the lawyer for the Cambridge cops’ union was willing to come out and say without a lot of waffling that Crowley made a good collar, and throughout this thread we are hearing from an experienced, high-ranking officer from the urban police department saying quite plainly that it was not a good collar. Your provocateur act really requires a bit more plausibility to be executed successfully.

I think Brandon’s on words show why Crowley should be suspended, at least.

The entire reason for society to give policemen a lot of attitude while arresting people is the trust we have that this lattitude won’t be used lightly and that the police officers will exhibit good judgment. They are also trained extensively to achieve this good judgment while acting on a risky environment, dealing with emergencies.

Except that the officer in Gates arrest exhibited very poor judgment.

By the same rules we give policemen a lot of latitude when resolving to arrest someone, we demand that only officers that have proven to be worthy of that latitude are given that right. Officer Crowley has just proved unworthy of his freedom to arrest people, as he used it pettily and lost his temper. He should be suspended.

“But why didn’t Crowley just do as the law requires and present his identification to Gates?”

According to his radio interview, the officer verbally identified himself twice, and when Gates actually asked to see his id, which according to the officer he always carries cards and willingly gives them out, the officer reached into his pocket to retrieve the id but Gates then turned his back and walked away and continued yelling…

President Barack Obama, today: “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” Mr. Obama added. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well. My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved.”

If you read my comments in toto, I think it will demonstrate that I agree with him.

The police report does not say that Gates asked for ID at the beginning. The police report says Gates asked the officer who he was, to which he responded verbally. I believe Gates may have stated later that he asked for ID initially, but that’s not what’s in the police report.

@ 148

Don’t make sense.

You first.

Thanks Capt. del Pozo.

Thanks everyone who didn’t call anyone a name.

I think they both screwed up in ways that I can imagine myself screwing up on a moderately bad day, much less a real bad day.

I’m glad this episode was more farce than tragedy. We should remember the tragedies, though, because in those cases people die.

One thing for Capt. del Pozo. Do police department promote officers out of positions in which they interact with the public just as they are aging out of their late adolescence and gaining valuable life experience? I know it’s not relevant to this case, but lots of street/beat/patrol officers seem to me young men, i.e. of the group most disposed to take slights and perceived slights as requiring a dominating response. What kind of factor is age in all this?

brandon- Alright, so you agree with Obama’s take.

So what do you think should be done about it?

My thinking tends to go along these lines: overreacting and calling someone a racist when they aren’t is a freedom we have as human beings and US citizens, even if its one we shouldn’t use. Arresting someone on the theory that their words are going to incite violence and criminality, when obviously that’s not the case and in fact the words in question are constitutionally protected speech, is not a freedom of either a citizen of the US or a legitimate use of power by a police officer. Additionally, the willingness to do this casts a negative light on this officer’s interactions with other less affluent or politically sophisticated people who might similarly overreact, and yet not have the resources to bring the President of the United States, or really anyone at all, to bear on the situation. As such, some penalty should arise out of this. And the fact that nothing will be done (I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I doubt it will happen) makes things all the worse and contributes to the public impression of the police as a gang of thugs who protect their own and only loosely follow the laws they are expected to enforce.

Exactly. Gates asked him who he was first, and the officer answered, then later asked for ID. The sentence you are referring to is exactly the moment that the officer talked about in the radio interview, when e reached for his id and then Gates walked away to retrieve his own ID before the officer could give him his.

I would like to thank Brandon for his thoughtful comments. I disagree with you on a number of points—mostly, the extent to which we each are willing to give police in general the benefit of the doubt—but for the most part I really appreciated everything you had to say, and it has given me quite a bit to think about. Thank you!

One point about your comment that “Most good cops like it when they are filmed. It invariably works in their favor.”… my understanding is that many police departments have fought tooth and nail against having cameras mounted on their patrol cars. Maybe I have been misinformed…?

The picture of law enforcement that you paint—of one where the majority of officers sincerely desire transparency, and where a cop discovered trying to bend the truth is dealt with harshly—is a reality where I would be far more comfortable with the kinds of discretionary powers that you (convincingly!) argue are necessary for cops to effectively perform their jobs. I’m just not sure I buy that reality, particularly the part about dealing harshly with cops who abuse their power.

For example, in this recent fubar, the troubling thing is not so much that there exists at least one cop who abused his power and tried to coerce a member of the public into concealing evidence of this abuse—after all, there are bad apples in any profession—but far more disturbing is that IA decided there was no problem. Maybe I am getting a distorted picture, but my perception is that there seems to be a real lack of will on the part of most cities to prosecute cops who have obviously abused their powers.

In the NYPD, the min. age for a cop was 22 when I was hired, but might be 21 now.

Sergeants must have at least 5 years’ experience, but the median age of a newly promoted sergeant is probably around 30. Lieutenants must have 8 years’ experience, and captains 10. This is as fast as you can do it; the actual medians take longer.

I have no idea what other departments require.

Thanks for your remarks an information Brandon.

I agree with much of what you’ve said about the importance of police work when it is working well, and find your comments about what motivated you to take it up interesting.

On the other hand, I do find it a little one sided. Notwithstanding the existence of terribly corrupt political/elite systems in other parts of the world (and to be fair, terribly corrupt police forces elsewhere), surely we can learn from comparisons with more comparable countries? From all I can see, compared to some “western democracies” , as they say, we seem to be doing quite poorly in the matter of policing. All the research I’ve seen points to it: Paramilitarism, as you note, is prevalent, incarceration rates are incredible in comparison, scandals seem high, arrest rates seem high, accidental deaths and injuries, racial profiling etc. far too common. Some of this is political, sure, but some of it seem to point to deep structural problems in the way we do policing in the US. After all, being better than much of the middle east doesn’t seem to be a very high bar.

Of course, this isn’t universal, but several countries I’ve lived in or spent enough time in to have some sort of feel for local attitudes on it, at least seem to be doing a better job. Perhaps they just have a much easier job of it; seems unlikely but I don’t know.

Brandon, despite the fact that I’ve been rather critical—and I continue to be very disturbed by your belief in “seizing control of the situation”—I do appreciate your comments. And on a personal note, I understand what you mean about the job being both challenging and interesting.

But part of what you talk about as an inevitable PR problem seems like a very serious recruiting challenge: the recruit population is ALWAYS going to be biased in favor of authoritarian rather than laissez-faire personalities, in favor of people more comfortable with using force rather than less, etc. But precisely because of all the things you mention that make police work special, we really need people who are unusually non-violent, who see letting a situation like this one escalate to an arrest, regardless of it making news, as a real failure and not just an unfortunate means of achieving the “necessary” control.

I’ve looked at those NYPD recruitment posters a lot on the subway (hard to avoid them!), but I don’t think I could thread the needle between my moral convictions (esp. w.r.t. narcotics laws) and a real career there. I know NYC has some sort of civilian complaints board, though I recall reading at a link that it relies a lot on volunteers (is this right?). This is a meandering comment, but my question is: what, if anything, do you think police departments can do to institutionalize the (equally democratically legitimate) values of those who, because of them, can’t easily shape police practice from within? Do civilian complaint agencies function well? Could they be strengthened, etc.?

(Ack sorry for length.)

I found the Captain’s view on the case very interesting and it provides some useful context for understanding the situation—but not to judge it.

There’s a good reason legal cases are heard in a courtroom over several days and after several months of preparation—rather than on 200 odd comments on a blog.

Such a bunch of jumping to conclusions on such little evidence I have never seen. Crooked Timber is one of those few high quality places on the internet. Those who run it should be ashamed to see such drivel posted on their doorstep.

Brandon, thank you for demonstrating patience and thoughtfulness with your responses to comments and, in some cases, provocations in this thread, and for articulating an astonishingly coherent philosophy of policing. I hope there are more like you, and hope as well that you speak for the aspirations of officers who aren’t as educated or articulate.

Last week, my doorbell rang and not expecting anyone, I looked out the window down to the sidewalk and street and saw several police cars. Can’t be for me, I thought, and I ignored the bell. The bell rang again and the police were also pounding on the door of my apartment building and calling/shouting. However since I couldn’t conceive of a reason that they would be seeking me, I continued to ignore them. I was in the middle of a good book. I also don’t like to interact with police. Police have behaved badly towards me in the past – unprovoked screaming and epithets, weird rants, unsuccessful attempts to undermine my unflappability (outlasting a rant by the practice of extreme non-reactive behavior is very satisfying). I live in a high crime area also notorious for astonishing police corruption. I don’t like to talk to police. Eventually one of my neighbors let them in and it turns out they were looking for the previous occupant of my apartment. I mention this to establish that I am not friendly towards police.

In my reading of what is available about the Gates incident, I do not see anything improper or illegal about the officer’s actions in the Gates investigation. His police report is plausible and nothing in it has been shown to be false. His work history is admirable. His demeanor and responses on the radio interview were thoughtful, professional and respectful. I can’t say the same for Professor Gates. For one thing, he mischaracterized his own behavior, claiming he never raised his voice. This leads me to believe that the statements and behavoir attributed to him by the police are true. I think his behavior was out of character, and there may be extenuating circumstances, but in the end he bears responsibility. I think the officer could have exercised discretion and not arrested him, but the his choice to make the arrest was neither illegal or wrong. It was socially and politically naive, but it wasn’t wrong.

I also don’t think the officer involved did anything wrong initially to incite the very poor reception he got from of all people a man who is capable of making such exceptional observations and judgments. I have had hundreds and hundreds of encounters with every type of innocent person from every walk of life in every context, and the vast majority ended amicably. They ended this way, however, not only because I acted with dignity and restraint, but because the citizen did as well.

Unfortunately the tacit premise of the initial post comes at the very end ~ namely that we can assume that Crowley acted with “dignity and restraint” from the jump. Perhaps we can simply accept his account of how he approached Gates. And perhaps we can accept his account of what transpired in the house. That seems charitable verging on credulous. Perhaps Crowley’s report is not ‘packed with lies’ as one astute commenter sarcastically puts it. But do you think that he had any incentive other than to sit down with his union rep or co-workers or whomever and discuss how to appear reasonable in his report?

I myself suspect that police reports – especially in contentious or potentially high profile cases – are written in more or less wholly sanitized fashion in a cover-your-ass style. You don’t think Crowley knew he would be under the magnifying glass? Maybe this is an instance in which the officer proceeded with “dignity and restraint”. Having had a handful of encounters with cops over the past decade or so – all for routine traffic stops – I can say that four out of five of the officers (some city police, some county sheriffs) failed on that score. In each of the four instance the officer approached me in an authoritarian and patronizing manner. On one occasion – a county sheriff pulled me over for having been on my cell phone while stopped at a red light – I ended up cuffed in the back of a patrol car after having been pushed around on the edge of a busy road. Why? Not because talking on a cell while driving is against the law. No, because the dipshit read the computer screen in his vehicle as stating that there was a warrant out for my arrest. As I sat in the back seat looking at the screen I read the description and location of the relevant James Johnson – a twenty seven year old black man residing in Yonkers new York. I am white, nearly twice that old and Rochester is six hours from Yonkers. When I read that to him from the back seat he left the car called for backup and the responding officer then proceeded to act like a jackass too, insisting that I was not allowed to sit in my car and call their supervisor. He threatened to arrest me if I didn’t drive off. The only way to get anything like a reasonable response in such situations is to press your complaint up the chain of command. The street officers are too busy being authoritarian.

Police officers deserve respect for how they act; not for the mere fact of wearing a uniform and a gun. In my experience – as a middle-aged, middle class white guy – they tend to think differently. At this juncture I basically refuse to speak to cops if they pull me over. I turn over my required ID and say as little as possible – essentially “yes” and “no”. (That is the extent of my conversation with he sheriff in the above story). I never play the little game where I answer the idiotic questions they pose like – “Do you know the speed limit back there?” “Do you know why I pulled you over?”. I send in the ticket, pay the fine, and get on with life.

In short, the skein of rationalization we get in the initial post simply allows cops to whitewash their bad behavior.

For one thing, he mischaracterized his own behavior, claiming he never raised his voice.

Has it been independently established that he did raise his voice, especially at the beginning, before being cuffed and hauled away? I’m not questioning you, but I hadn’t seen that confirmed anywhere yet.

What a shame! Was it just a naive hope that we were finally going to bridge the racial divide?
For what it’s worth, I think Obama was correct to say that the Cambridge police officer acted stupidly in arresting Mr. Gates. It is disappointing that the media do not illuminate the fact that the arrest was illegal – Mr. Gates was in his own home and had clearly established his identity. While he may have been loud and rude to the officer, that is no punishable offense. I am not sure at all, though, that the arrest was racially motivated. I understand that Mr. Gates may have been super sensitive to his being confronted by a white policeman in his own home and may have inferred racial bias. Whether such bias existed, I do not know. I would have reacted similarly if a police officer had confronted me that way in my home. And I think the officer would probably have treated anyone, black or white, in the same way if they had offended him as Gates did.
I hope that President Obama will really invite Sergeant Crowley and Professor Gates to the White House for a beer. And I hope that, while there, they will watch Chris Rock’s “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked By the Police”. It skewers both black stereotypes and the police reputation for racial profiling. And I recommend it to everyone. I was stopped by a “detective” for speeding. He berated me for 10 minutes, saying he had followed me for 15 miles and I had been driving 15 miles over the speed limit. Chris Rock kept me sane…instead of noting that he had managed to keep up, I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, officer. I did not realize that.” Then he informed me that if I were speeding one mile over the limit and struck an old man walking across the road, he would charge me with murder. I did not tell him I was a lawyer and did not think his theory would hold up…just said, “Yes, I realize actions can have unintended consequences.” I’m white, but I just kept channeling Chris Rock: “STFU!”. The officer was obviously having a bad day. They’re all human. And underpaid. And have guns. And some have a great big chip on the shoulder. But most are good public servants and I hope somehow that three-way beer meeting will happen. We need that.

Also, one last thing regarding Gate’s reported “You don’t know who you’re messing with” comment:

If you read that one way, it’s reprehensible. That’s the sense Brandon seems to have read it in, for example, likening it to the corrosive intimidation powerful people in ME states use to manipulate police who are just trying to do their jobs. Even if the threat behind it is empty, it’s the petty resort of the overprivileged douchebag.

But it’s also important to remember that we live in a country where police actually do “mess with” people. All the time. The thread’s full of anecdotal accounts. Police officers have been especially fond, both historically and into the present day, of “messing with” black people, and others who can’t fight back.

So you can read that as an over privileged professor trying to harass a cop, or you can read it as a citizen who felt he was being harassed, but also that, unlike other victims, he was in a position to fight back.

Or possibly a bit of both.

Brandon, let me first thank you for this very well thought out post and good comments.

I have a few of my own. One point you made was the irony of the fact that Officer Crowley was responding to a burglary call when Gates home itself had been the subject of an apparently failed burglary. However, you draw a rather different conclusion than I would have. You seem to feel that should make Gates more helpful to the arriving police officer. The irony could well work the other way. Gates was unable to get into his home because the front door had been damaged by the earlier burglars. I don’t know the facts of that case, but it seems possible that burglary was not stopped by the police. Rather, to Gates it may well have seemed that the police had not succeeded in stopping the actual burglary, they only managed to arrive to add to discomfort that the earlier event caused him. While this is in no way Crowley’s fault, it may well have contributed to his ill humor.

On the matter of the ID cards that are required by MA law. I have read elsewhere that they are required, for what that is worth. The point by ECW is a good one, I believe. In fact, if Crowley had not provided the card as required, that would make the exchange between the two men make some sense. You mentioned that when incidence reports are inaccurate the inaccuracies are usually of omission. Crowely does not, in the police report, ever claim to have provided his full name, rank and badge number. Rather Crowley only discusses the provision of his name. Was no request for badge number made, or did Crowley simply omit that from the report? If Gates provided his ID as required by the officer, but never received the corresponding ID required by Crowley, that would certainly support Gates’ complaint, if not his manner of expressing it. Furthermore, it would suggest that Crowley might have defused the situation by providing the card rather than arresting Gates. This is a scenario that is completely consistent with Crowley’s report, but which is considerably more favorable to Gates, that the interpretation you give. It should at least be considered.

A third point is the final scene where Crowley exists the house telling Gates that he can talk further with Crowley outside. If I give Crowely the greatest benefit of the doubt, it still seems like this was not handled well. Given Crowley’s report, Gates behavior in the kitchen is perfectly legal there, but if taken outside among the public would constitute a threat to public order. Under those circumstances, it can hardly be appropriate for Crowley to bring that behavior outside, yet that is exactly what Crowley does. While backing down in a public situation might leave the police in a weaker state for future conflicts, at this point Crowley and Gates are alone in Gates foyer or kitchen. Whatever means Crowley could find to get himself out of the house, leave Gates in the house and end the situation would seem to be the best course. Additionally, it appears that might have amounted to giving Gates a card.

From WSJ opinion Gates wants to teach Crowley about prejudices:

Gates, however, has managed to get tripped up by his own prejudices. Another Gates quote we noted yesterday was this: “If [Crowley] apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling. . . . That’s what I do for a living.”

As it turns out, that’s what Crowley does for a living. The Boston Herald explains:

Crowley . . . has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years.
His academy class, which he teaches with a black police officer, instructs about 60 police cadets per year who spend 12 hours in the classroom, said Lowell Police Academy Director Thomas Fleming.
“He’s a very professional police officer and he’s a good role model,” Fleming said. “Former police commissioner Ronny Watson, who is a person of color, hand-picked Sgt. Crowley. . . . I presume because he would be the most qualified and most professional. He’s a very good instructor. He gets very high reviews by the students.”

Often, however, because people know a cop must give certain information upon request, they make their request as a way of exerting control over an officer who us trying to exert control over them, or as a veiled threat that the officer will soon have to contend with an internal investigation.

And this is the logical conclusion of all the worrying over “connections” and “status”—anyone who dares to suggest that there is any higher good, truth, justice or law than the officer’s momentary whim—anyone reminding the officer, even implicitly, that they too are subject to law, becomes an enemy.

in the WEEI interview, the cop says he only showed the Harvard ID which does not have an address on it…

It cannot become commonplace for people to be allowed to scream at the police in public, threatening them with political phone calls, deriding their abilities, etc. Routine acts like rendering aid to lost children, taking accident reports and issuing traffic violations could be derailed at any time by any person who has a perceived grievance with the police. The police service environment is not the best venue for the airing of such grievances.

Hey, a policeman doesn’t get to arrest me for exercising my 1st amendment rights, especially in my own home. I actually think this was a case of testosterone overload, but if what has been reported bears out, the officer involved mishandled the incident.

Once the officer determined there was no crime he had a duty to leave as his continued presence served no legitimate law enforcement purposed. Not leaving, and enticing Gates into a public area to allow for a disorderly conduct arrest, are both unnecessary and dishonorable acts by the officer.

Tom Hurka @ 190: Your “small point” is a reductio, right? I’ll pretend it is not, just in case.

The scenario you describe is extremely implausible. Police generally ask for ID—not ID that shows a home address. They would expect the ID to have this information, since most do. But if Crowley did ask explicitly for proof of residence, it really should not be hard to understand why Gates would be upset.

One of the most infuriating things about being black in this country is dealing with preposterous assumptions about our stupidity and potential viciousness. [Despite NYPD Capt. del Pozo’s many temperate words, I missed his references to Diallo. Some of us deeply and viscerally have never forgotten.]

How many senior, slight, disabled burglars are there, black or otherwise? If such a person had broken into Gates’s home, would he be lounging inside, only to come limping toward the door while expressing annoyance at the intruding officer? Couldn’t the senior, slight, disabled resident believe that any credible ID should suffice to meet the officer’s request and concerns?

Based on reports from both sides, it’s clear that Gates was not playing merely the “’I’m a Harvard prof’ status card.” In the extremely implausible scenario Tom Hurka presents, race goes missing even here.

It’s fairly clear that Gates had something like the thought: “I’m a tired black man in my own house, and I’ve earned the privilege not to deal with white, Boston-area police officers ‘seizing control of the situation’ [as Capt. del Pozo approvingly puts it] by treating me, of all people, as a serious suspect…in the attempted break in…of My House.”

One can attribute all manner of elitism, boorishness, deviousness, race-card playing, etc. to Gates that one’s imagination can supply. But imagine, say, Charles Fried limping toward the door. Is it possible to claim sincerely that, had Fried produced his Harvard Law School ID, it would not have sufficed for the officer (if he were responding to a call about two white men trying to break in)? Who would jump to the conclusion that Fried was trying to pull status rank by going out of his way to show his Harvard ID?

Many people appear to have no idea about the routine indignities that almost every black male has experienced in this country—no matter whether he eventually becomes a wealthy Harvard professor or has spent his entire life in the hood. What I cannot fully grasp are the lengths people will go to ignore the pervasive impact of race in this society.

Most sad, though, is the collective effort to shout down or dismiss expressions of complaint from blacks in all stations of life. What kinds of assumptions does one have to make in order to believe that we are generally in the habit of concocting or exaggerating reports about our contemporary experience of race, that we’re often either lying or profoundly delusional?

Perhaps the course of denial is an attempt at therapy to deal with lingering racial guilt. As far as I can tell, this approach—despite considerable success over the past 40 years—has reached a limit: frustration, resentment, and outright anger are on naked display, even here at CT.

All of this said, I believe that Tom Hurka, an able philosopher, was making a reductio. If he was not, I’m afraid there isn’t much hope at large.

So what if Gates was “playing the Harvard prof”? He is a Harvard prof.

The university is also apparently his landlord at the house, and he was apparently on the phone with the maintenance department (about the door )at just about the time Crowley showed up.

It’s easy to see how he could have had Harvard on the brain, and went for that ID first, without jumping to any playing-the-Harvard-card conclusions.

in the WEEI interview, the cop says he only showed the Harvard ID which does not have an address on it…

An interview on WEEI doesn’t mean a damn thing. It would never hold up in court.

“Crowley . . . has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years.”

And your point is? Seriously, is this any different than 100 other sinners saying “Do as I say, not as I do?”

This is an important and intersting discussion about the impact of authority in the role of police functions on the rights and privacy of citizens. However, we should remember how unusual the outcome is considering the prominence of the citizen and the coverage it has received. Outcomes for lesser mortals are far likely to be less favorable.

Consider that just one month ago, I was driving with my domestic partner of nine years down a Chicago street in light rain at 6 pm, heading towards a street fair. An undercover narcotics car zoomed up behind me and pulled me over, put us both hands against their police vehicle in the rain for a full hour while they ransacked our car. Accused us of buying drugs, being addicts, asked her if she was a prostitute, and insisted the single spoon in the glove was for heroin (she is diabetic and needs to carry snacks with her).

One officer was less abusive, just standing guard, while the one doing the ransacking was enraged he found no contraband, or anything to charge us with. When asked why they stopped us, their answer was simply that it was a “drug area”—something not apparent to me. HOw one is to live one’s life in any american city without being in proximity to “drug areas” is beyond me, and hardly meets the probable cause standard. Needless to say, they released us, not only without apology, but a clear inference that we had gotten off light and had better watch ourselves in the future—a form of “don’t let me see you around here again.” Don’t bother to ask why I didn’t file an official complaint—I like driving legally and I like living a relatively unmolested life, all of which I could forget if I dared to complain to the CPD.

Had I behaved the way Mr. Gates did, well, I might not be writing this now. PS—I’m a white guy, and that didn’t gain me much traction.

I spent half an hour, waiting to testify in court, listening to an officer talk about the horrors he had seen: rape of an 80-year old woman, child abuse, knifings, etc. One conclusion I drew from that is that a cop’s view of the world is skewed by his work. I have never had any reason to change that conclusion.

There is a huge, and understandable, problem of “us & them” from cops and civilians.

I think that police & civic leadership have a responsibilty to break down that divide; that the first step is to never let individual officers forget that they see the worst as a function of their job; that the vast majority of civilians are not the “bad guys; that their job will be better if they remember that.

I was rear-ended in slow-moving traffic by someone who had already tried to cut me off so closely that he would have crashed into me. I completely lost it and started screaming at the other driver immediately. He seemed to be leaving the scene. I got angrier and cut the shoulder strap of his seatbelt.

I then walked away and calmed down. Two cops arrived. One spoke to him, one to me. I was completely calm (and completely embarrassed).

The other cop came over, said a few words to us and, without warning, arm, yanked my arm behind me & started to handcuff me.

Taken by surprise, I naturally resisted what was happening. This was turned into a resisting arrest charge.

More recently, I saw this same surprise tactic used on a teenager on the light rail without a ticket. He ended up needing multiple staples to close up a head wound from being slammed into a divider on the train.

I bring this up because the violent manuever forced an uncontrolled reaction that was turned into “resisting.”

I was “visited” at my home one night by officer friends of a store keeper who decided I was a threat to her child.

The visit was unofficial & meant to frighten me. All the while the cops tried to get me to open my door. They finally left after ~ 20 m.

continued

Nbdy cn ctlly b xpctd t trt ths psychpth wth rspct. H hs n cl wht th brdns f pwr r, bcs h rfss t b brdnd. H gts pd lt f mny rltv t mst mrcns (th vrg ctzns ndvdl rnrs ttl rnd 20k, th vrg plc ffcr’s slry s 50k). H gts pd tht mny t pt yr ss n th ln, jst lk sldr wh ls mks lss thn h ds. Yt vry tm ths gys hv t pt thmslvs n dngr, thy whn lk lttl btchs nd s t s n xcs t b scmbg, sht nncnt ppl n th bck, nd sdmz ppl wth plngrs. Fshrmn hv mr dngrs jbs thn thy d. Hll, hlf f ths f th cps tht d n dt, d bcs thy’r bsng thr pwr t drv rcklssly nd gt nt cr ccdnts whl nt vn prsng sspcts. D y hv n d hw mny ppl ths pcs f sht kll vry yr n th prcss? D y thnk thy vn fckng cr? N. T thm, thr wn lvs r th nly thngs tht mttr. Fck thr th ctzns thy r sppsd t prtct. Thy r n t fr th thrty t blly nd hrss nncnt ppl, thy cld gv sht lss bt prtctng s.

nd ys, scty cn wthstnd ppl yllng t cps. Scty cn nt wthstnd cp wh thnks h hs th rght t g nt mns hm nd rrst hm fr dstrbng th pc. dn’t gv flyng fck wht dshnst, scmbg tchnq y s t mk t ky n yr wn mnd, t’s nt ky. Whn y hv t trt th cps jst lk grp f crps r blds fr fr f bng sht, rpd, r btn; thn thr s smthng srsly fckng wrng. Ths cps dfnds tht, whch mns h’s scm. Thr sn’t ny thr wy t pt t, nd ‘m sr s sht nvr plgzng fr syng tht. hvn’t trtd ths gy wth 1/2 th cntmpt h fckng dsrvs.

Well, Brandon de Soto is no Solomon. Don’t need to be literary critic to recognize a text wholly lacking in balance, or to realize that even-handedness is not the author’s game. Unfortunately, those are precisely the innate qualities of successful philosophers. We have an unreasonable presumption of guilt—‘Gates could have done this, or done that’, paired with a series of excuses—‘Crowley had been told that black men were breaking into a house, so he could somehow justifiably assuuume that black men in the house must’ve broken in. Right?

Frankly, Mr. de Soto is flatly incorrect in stating that when Crowley “encountered a black male at the location . .. he [was] confronted with consistencies that bolster . . the credibility of the caller’s account.” Turns out, homeowners are black, even in Cambridge. Turns out, the neighbor directly across the street was ready with a long-lens camera, and caught a perfectly focused shot of a handcuffed Mr. Gates being hustled to the car. Turns out, most home burglars gain entry when doors and windows are unlocked, not by physical break-ins. Turns out, Mr. de Soto, officer and philosopher, knows all this.

Mr. de Soto presents a false chain of ‘logic’; much of his explanations aren’t likley or reasonable upon thoughtful examination. Mr. de Soto engages in self-contradictory and arbitrary tactics of persuasion:
“Suppose for a moment the woman knew a black man lived at the house, and made the call to protect his home from these other black men who were breaking into it.”

Almost instantly, Mr. de Soto changes the rules:
” .. It does us very little good to wonder what the woman would have done if the door-breaker was white…”

I guess hypotheticals are no longer allowed now that Mr. de Soto has ruled them philosophically illegal and useless. But is that accurate? Turns out, there’s a high likelihood the neighbor who phoned in the tip was also ready with a camera the instant Gates was hustled out. So her civic goodness is open to question, and from the outset a vindictive/racist motivation is an open question, specifically if someone’s after a shot of Gates, all of which puts the lie to Mr. de Soto’s premise(s).

So the hypotheticals about race are of course useful, and the report may not be what it appears—as experienced officers know all too well, and as Crowley learned almost immediatley upon arriving at Mr. Gates home.

Even more troubling is Mr. de Soto’s conclusory, “The man knows what’s going on.” Oh, so he’s guilty?? Is that it? Gates knows he entered his own home. Gates knows he committed no crime. Mr. de Soto’s language betrays an assumption of guilt—of having brought suspicion upon himself, of having been impolite or disorderly, of having talked back, of having been an American citizen, of having been black. Mr. Gates showed his ID, and he committed no crime. Yet de Soto defines him as knowing “what’s going on,” as though he should somehow be aware of the appearance of guilt—when there is no guilt. I can say as a middle-aged white male, there’s no question race colors Crowley’s actions—and de Soto’s cheap rationalizations.

But it’s worse than that: this sort of thing should not be happening to ANY American citizen. Yet the increased use of tazers—despite the superceding legal ban on cruel & unusual punishment, the explicit right to free expression, and the presumption of innocence—torture, pre-legal punishment and the presumption of guilt are now not only commonplace, but standard operating procedure. Despite the fact that these petty administrative rules & methods eviscerate the Constitutional framework that legitimize law enforcement in the first place, subjecting innocent citizens to tazing and abuse and torture simply for not submitting and just not speaking up, is now commonplace. There’s nothing honorable in that. Even when that citizen has committed a crime, there is nothing honorable or justifiable about that.

Back to de Soto—- Problem is, all the verbiage along with the appearance of rationality presented by Brandon—- er, Mr. de Soto—- does exactly zero to support the poster’s position. de Soto’s view is clearly slanted. This is a lengthy post, but no amount of ‘philosophy’ can justify the abusive notion that, as long as citizens would just shut up and follow orders like Good Germans, there wouldn’t be any problem here.

The problem here is the routine criminalization of the exercise of Creator-endowed liberties, by American citizens, as defined in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. The problem is a militarized police force which actually believes it is in a position to give orders and behave violently simply because American citizens voice their opinion, openly disagree with an officer, ask a question (!), provide information—- and yes, even become angry or yell or voice their displeasure at brutal or illegal police behavior—- none of which is a crime, no matter how hard Mr. de Soto strains and puffs and labors to persuade us otherwise.

This about power. And it’s about humliation. And police officers cannot win by erroneously asserting that they can give orders and anyone with the temerity to do anything other than submit, must somehow be either guilty of a crime, or worse, be at fault for somehow having brought it on themselves.

The wishful thinking and presumption of guilt ingrained in Mr. de Soto’s narrative belie the apparent application of logic, which is faulty and one-sided.

Had Mr. Crowley simply looked up the addresses’ resident, instantaneously available, on his way to Mr. Gates’ residence, then upon seeing Mr. Gates’ Harvard ID (address or no), the issue would then have been over with. At that point he should have thanked Mr. Gates and exited.

Instead Crowley got miffed, emotionally involved at Mr. Gates’ completely understandable anger, and proceeded to act in a totally unprofessional manner. You give your badge # & name, and you assess the situation: 1) Gates is in his own home; 2) it’s not a crime to exercise your right to free speech—- even offensive speech; 3) it’s not a crime to be angry or say what one thinks; 4) Gates bid not behave in a suspicious manner: he did not run or hide, he produced ID, and he verbally expressed dissatisfaction to defend his domicile. Homeowners do that.

You don’t use personal hurt feelings to justify an arrest. You don’t arrest people because they are angry, or because they assert themselves. Obviously people can be arrested in their own homes when they commit crimes—- but where was the crime? ‘Tumultuous behavior’? Cambridge police are now enforcing etiquette? What are they, Miss Manners? Let’s get the date on in that statute. Gotta be 1734.

For God’s sake—- the man was in his own home. The above really underscores that primary point. You identify the homeowner, and you leave. We have a 4th Amendment for exactly this reason; it makes for great reading.

There is a fundamental unseriousness about Mr. Crowley, who appeared on a sports radio talk show almost instantly. Really?? Suddenly the policeman’s refrain to ‘save it for the judge’, that ‘this will all be settled in a court of law’ —- suddenly that’s out the window? Rather than wait for he legal process, Crowley felt a stadium full of tens of thousands of baseball fans was the appropriate venue for trying his case and defending his reputation. His cadre of union reps and attorney’s had no more honor or honesty: they knew full well President Obama said “behaved stupidly” yet they dissembled in asserting “Cambridge police are not stupid.” No one said they were. They all protested too much: they blamed anyone but themselves, and knew exactly what they were doing.

Mr. de Soto’s bias is readily evident:
There’s no basis for continually putting the onus on Mr. Gates. Statements that Mr. Gates is intelligent and should have known better simply do not justify de Soto’s general position or Crowley’s actions. de Soto is hardly even-handed, but spells out an elaborate defense that doesn’t get to the issue and doesnt’ really touch on Mr. Crowley’s responsibilities. Speaking of which, America is all about probable cause and innocent til proven guilty. Yet de Soto’s entire premise is that Gates bears the onus of guilt; while somehow Crowley’s actions were normal or reasonable. This is an idiotic position.

Part of this is not about race: police officers have been militarized and hold themselves above the law. Any excuse, no matter how absurd, is given to throw off their own responsibility and blame others. In enforcing the law, police officers now feel entitled to kill the law, to eviscerate the law, to give orders regardless of the facts or situation, in a way that fundamentally contradicts the bulk of the remaining American legal principles that define us as a country.

Ultimately, Mr. de Soto’s only position is his assumption that Mr. Gates has commited a faux pas, a breach of etiquette, that Gates must somehow be “issuing verbal abuse [and that] This is not how people should relate to police officers.” All de Soto has is his assumption that Mr. Gates is guilty, when we have no evidence of that. All Mr. de Soto has is Mr. Crowley’s word that some law was broken—and that is a wholly untenable position. You check the homeowners’ ID, you look him up in the phone book if the Cambridge police are not equipped with a database, to verify he is the resident—- and you leave. Instead, Crowly used his professional position to satisfy his personal feelings or animosities. No question race was involved; more important was the abuse of an American citizen in general.

Think, Mr. de Soto: could Crowley not have seen the family photos on the wall? I admit, deductive reasoning is a skill detectives and philosophers must hone over many years inthe business, but still, this is elementary stuff. In all honesty, posting a litany of excuses—the police officers’ life could have been in danger—to justify Crowley’s openly bad civic behavior, is just plainly irresponsible. They are excuses, and the unseriousness here really is beyond the pale.

Now, I’ve chosen to be frank here. But this attitude that everyone is trying to kill police officers is causing an enormous amount of damage to the country. How many officers backed up Crowley? Six? But who went on a rampage in west Pennsylvania some weeks back? Oh, yeah, a white guy who thought the feds were taking his guns away. Who did that white guy kill? Oh, yeah, police officers. There is another option for officers unclear on their role here in America: resign.

To the mods at Crooked Timber: when is the balancing post from a philosopher-citizen-arrestee scheduled to appear? Perhaps that person could explain how police officers who actually listen to the information citizens have to offer, and to what they say—after all, Mr. Gates was a witness to the alleged ‘break-in’—can succesfully enforce the law, without violating the spirit and the rule of law.

I have a graduate degree from Harvard. I never took a course with Professor Gates, but with several of the university’s philosophers, economists and political scientists. They were by and large nice, engaging people, as I am certain Gates must be. I made my statement about community policing because I have come to believe that except people like business owners and leaders of civic orgainzations, who see a direct and recurring benefit to having a familiarity with local officers, in my experience people prefer to go about their business unimpeded by purely social visits from the police. They would rather just have them available to respond to render services when needed. It was an observation about people in general, and also busy professors in particular, but not a slight against Gates per se. I apologize if it came off this way, because this interpretation does a disservice to my intended point, which is that as a matter of my experience people usually to prefer to go about their business without police interaction unless it’s a necessity, and not for socialization purposes, and that this is a reasonable thing for citizens to desire.

x. trapnel: “the recruit population is ALWAYS going to be biased in favor of authoritarian rather than laissez-faire personalities, in favor of people more comfortable with using force rather than less, etc.”

That sounds plausible, but is not necessarily so. Last year a friend of mine participated as a volunteer civilian interviewer of city police applicants. She was on one of a number of interview panels. The other two panel members were police officers. One thing that impressed her was the fact that the policemen decidedly did not want people with authoritarian personalities or who preferred to use force or the threat of force. (Not that they wanted laissez-faire personalities or people who were uncomfortable with using force, either.)

While there is plenty of subjective action in this post and its attendant comments, what I am left with is the certainty that cops, like doctors, cover up for each other, beyond mere loyalty. They all know that its bad for the rest of them when stuff comes out and they all fear being excluded from their clubs. I think this guy who wrote this is probably a good person, working hard at rationalising and living with his profession. But that said he truly whitewashes this whole incident. I think the Professor was/is a complete asshole and I’ve never been fond of academics (having spent too much of my life trying to appease their egos). Yet the guy was in his own house and he got arrested for getting pissed off. This is america?

The only comment that really spoke to what happened was the one where the guy said that something was left out of both accounts. And that something was male ego, the pissing match. They both were trying to dominate, control the situation. When we start arresting everybody who gets in these situations we will certainly fill the prisons beyond all capacity.

It seems to me that Capt. del Pozo’s account sort of slides by a key juncture: the point at which Prof. Gates established conclusively that he was in his home. That’s the point at which Sgt. Crowley should have been satisfied that the call had been resolved and walked away. Instead, it appears that he chose to take umbrage at Prof. Gates’s verbal abuse—as to which there was no hint of physical threat, apparently—and permitted, enabled, facilitated the escalation of the situation to the point where he felt justified in placing Prof. Gates under arrest. Turns out, either the justification was in fact lacking or Prof. Gates had enough juice to get the charges dropped, or both.

I want to add my thanks to the many that Captain del Pozo has received. His comments have uniformly been informative, thoughtful, and clear-headed; thanks to him for taking such pains to inform this section of the public. Too, his posts evince an admirable combination of civic-mindedness and compassion. Thanks to them, I now have a better understanding of the problems police officers have to deal with.

I also want to thank Henry Farrell for moderating what has to have been one of the best academic-civic blog threads in years. The proportion of informative, thoughtful comments has been very high. If I remember correctly, it was the ideal of discussions like these that motivated academics to set up discussion blogs seven or so years ago. All commenters should give themselves a pat on the back.

Digby has a somewhat different take that is well worth reading.

Henry: any possibility you could ask Digby for permission to republish her essay on CT?

Cranky

Much of Digby’s post is a misreading of Brandon’s post. The following is a bit ludicrous, for example:

brandon: “It cannot become commonplace for people to be allowed to scream at the police in public, threatening them with political phone calls, deriding their abilities, etc. Routine acts like rendering aid to lost children, taking accident reports and issuing traffic violations could be derailed at any time by any person who has a perceived grievance with the police.”

digby: “This is a form of blackmail similar to the CIA threatening to let terrorists kill us if they are held accountable for lawbreaking. It says that the police will not be willing to rescue lost children if they have to put up with yelling citizens. That is an abdication of their duties and the idea that they should then be given carte blanche to shut up all citizens by means of arrest, because it creates a social environment where someone might cause a distraction in the future, is Orwellian double talk.”

And when I say “diffuse,” I actually mean “defuse,” as KearaO correctly notes. :-) The peril of hasty comments . . .

@snarkfree: Overstated, maybe. Ludicrous, no. Consider the context: Gates, at worst, is snarky to a police officer. The officer maneuvers the situation into one in which he can and does arrest Gates, for no more apparent reason than that Gates was disrespecting him. If anything is ludicrous here, it’s to discuss this by invoking an apocalyptic scenario in which officers cannot do all their usual rescuing of lost kittens, etc., because the civilians are harassing them with all that screaming.

It’s one thing to interfere with a police officer doing his job. It’s another to fail to treat the officer with the deference and subservience that he may be demanding as his due, since he’s the one with the muscle, gun, taser, baton, handcuffs, and power of arrest. Talking about the second as though it’s the first is ludicrous.

I keep being troubled by:

One of the things that overlooked is that the police have the opportunity to enforce important norms of social behavior, and not just laws.

While Brandon clarifies and discusses this further, and I appreciate the discretion that the police need to have to do their often difficult job, I can’t help feeling that this notion contributes to misconduct by bad cops, in a couple ways.

For one, who gets to decide the “norms of social behavior” that the police are enforcing? In the case Brandon mentions, where a kid throws trash on the ground, well generally littering is a crime anyway, isn’t it? Is two men walking around holding hands one of those violations that an officer should step in to correct? Many people are outraged by such conduct, after all, it bothers the hell out of them. How about those dirty hippies who are disrepecting our soldiers by demonstrating against a war? How about a kid with a mohawk skateboarding, where it’s legal but still annoying? I think that the safest way to determine that a “norm of social behavior” is appropriate to enforce is if duly elected officials have made such a determination: in short, if it’s against the law.

There’s another kind of misconduct that this “social norm” enforcement may encourage: the use of force. Although Brandon emphasizes that his version comes down to two citizens talking with each other, if someone thinks that part of his job is giving that hoity-toity smartass a lesson in proper respect, it’s not a big step to believe the most effective way to give that lesson is a ride or two on the taser. It’s been known to happen, to smart-alecky guys at traffic stops, pregnant women, people in wheelchairs, suicidal guys on ledges, guys lying on the ground with broken backs, confused people who don’t speak the local language, people already restrained, etc. In this light, maybe it’s letting that snotty twit off easy to just make him do a perp-walk in handcuffs from his own house, on a trumped-up charge of disorderly conduct.

snarkfree: Much of Digby’s post is a misreading of Brandon’s post.

No, it is a perfectly fair and accurate reading of the post. The example you included is an excellent point Digby made.

=

Henri Vieuxtemps: If you insist on doing something legal and highly unpleasant to the cop, why shouldn’t he respond in kind by doing something legal and very unpleasant to you, like, for example, arresting you for disorderly conduct with just enough excuse?

It’s a simple, commonly accepted reciprocity rule, how come this cop is required to be a saint all of a sudden? Is this how you guys conduct your affairs? Think about it.

No, that most certainly is not a commonly accepted rule. The commonly accepted rule is, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” The cop is required to be a saint, yes, and that is not sudden. Everyone is expected to be good-mannered and all that, and it is perfectly fair and justified to hold cops to a higher standard than everyone else. Cops are the ones with the legal authority, as well as the weapons of violence, and therefore the consequences of them being abusive are much worse than the consequences of the ass who’s shouting at them being abusive. Any cop who is not a saint has no right being a cop.

I would furthermore point out that arresting someone on false charges just because you don’t like them, while unpleasant, is definitely not legal.

s smn tht hd vry ngtv rctn t Brndn jn wth ths syng thy pprctd hs cmmnts. Thy wr vry ntrstng nd hrrfc. Thy crtnly hd prfnd (nd whlly ngtv) mprssn n m nd my vw f th plc. H ws vry frnk spps, prhps nntntnlly. dn’t thnk h mnt t lv sch n mprssn. n fct t ws ll th mr hrrfc fr th bsnc f slf-wrnss.

ny ngtv cmmnts by m nd wld mgn thrs s nt prsnl ttck bt rctn t th plc s prtryd by hm— th plc s whl f whch h s n gss bt nt spcfclly mnng t sngl hm t.

s nn-mrcn hv fnd ths ss vry ntrstng n sng hw lttl frdm xsts n mrcn scty wth rspct t th thrts. wld sy s ths nt plc stt thn? Mny cmmnttrs (n vry lbrl blg hr, ys?) tlkd bt “plc dscrtn”. Prhps th gr wth th plc ffcr tht plc hv th rght t vlntly thrtn, vlntly ttck, kdnp, hmlt nd trtr (tsr) nncnt ctzns fr ny r n rsn? Ths s “plc dscrtn”? Vry fw ppl smd t thnk th plcmn cmmttd crm. t wrst h ws dscrbd s bhvng prly bt n wrs thn ctzn shtng nms t cp.

Brndn brfly sd th S s nt plc stt bcs vn th rch dn’t gt t ntmdt th plc n th S. Frnkly tht jst mks thngs vn wrs. Th plc (r ny thr wld b crmnl) ght t b ntmdtd frm mkng crmnl ttck. t’s sd tht smtms thy nly thnk twc frm ttckng ctzn f tht ctzn hs pwr. Bt f thy fr n cvl thrty t ll tht s hrdly n mprvmnt.

n mny rspcts th ftrmth s mr scry thn th rgnl crm (by th cp). ght fllw ffcrs wnt lng wth th bdctn f prmnnt ctzn. Th chf f plc bckd p th crkd cp. Thr s n qstn f ths cp bng nxprncd r ntrnd s h ws n fct n ldr cp wh trnd thr cps n snstvty sppsdly. n thr wrds s fr s th plc systm gs ths ll wnt wll. plc ffcr vlntly ttcks ctzn nd ts ll gd.

Th myr dd plgs bt pprntly th myr hs n blty t rgn n th cps wh mmdtly wnt t nd rpdtd tht plgy by dmnstrtng n bhlf f th crmnl. Th crmnl cp hmslf rfsd t plgs. nd t cp t ll ff th prsdnt f th ntd stts dfrs t th crmnl!!

nd ths whn prsnl frnd f hs s ssltd by rcst cp (‘m ssmng tht th cp sd r dd smthng rcst whl nsd th hs t f rsht f wtnsss—why ls wld Hrvrd prfssr g ff lk tht r mk th rcsm ccstn?)

S plc r t f cntrl thgs s wht m gttng frm ll ths. Wtht Brndn’s thghtfl cntrbtn wld hv thght prhps ths ws jst n twn r jst “bd cps”. Bt hs ptnt, ntllctl nd thrttv jstfctn fr bltnt vlnt crmnl cts by cps s prssv tht ts th ntr prfssn tht s crrpt. ndd h wnt frthr nd xplnd hw h fls plc hv dty t trrrs rdnry ctzns nt bhvng rght vn n rspct t thngs whch r nt crms.

Bt ts th spn rctn f “lbrls” s-clld t ths vnts tht rlly frghtns m.

Chllng.

A second Fail at Internets! My apologies to Michael H Schneider—copied the wrong name from the upthread post.

Please mentally replace “Michael H Schneider” with “David Byron” in my post above.

I’d be interested in seeing Brandon’s opinion on the Lawless case from Northeast Philadelphia.

Also, what do you think of police puppycide, like the cop who shot a dachshund who ‘lunged’ at him?

Brandon’s interpretation of events is so strained that I am surprised by all the comments thanking him. It is another policeman arguing that submission and tolerance are required by the civilian population when authorities are doing their job. It is the attitude that leads to tasering innocent people, shooting innocent people and arresting innocent people. He says “I have had hundreds and hundreds of encounters with every type of innocent person from every walk of life in every context, and the vast majority ended amicably. They ended this way, however, not only because I acted with dignity and restraint, but because the citizen did as well.” Well, isn’t that special. If I am obsequious in my interactions with police I will be let go. So nice to know.

I grew up in an area in LA where interaction with the police was essentially unavoidable. It is fair to say that assuming the cop was both racist and a bully was reasonable. I am 50 yrs old now, and to this day I don’t know what would make me call a cop.

My last experience with police was about six months back. It was about 10 PM and I hear a banging on my door. I open it and there stand two cops asking me about my neighbor and if he was hispanic. I tell them it is after 10, I don’t even know my neighbor’s name and I would appreciate it if they were a bit quieter. No yelling, just stating. One of the cops positions himself so he can look inside. I open the door wide and ask if he wants to take a photo or admire one of my paintings. One of cops says I am “showing an attitude.” Now, imagine that. I am awoken by two peeping tom cops and I have an attitude. That is how police think. You are supposed to be deferential at all times, even in your own home.

Brandon is also wrong about videotaping of police actions. Video equipment is really cheap now. If police really thought it would make them look better, every interaction would be recorded. It would stand in the way of the bullying, threatening and lying so I don’t expect to see it for some time.

DN

I appreciate Brandon’s attempt here, but in the end it just exposes a number of troubling things, many of which have already been captured in the comments. Still, I’ll run down from my reading of the initial post and my very limited reading of Brandon’s responses and comments things that are rather disconcerting.

1) It is possible for a person to commit disorderly conduct by unabated screaming and verbal abuse in a public setting. The statement of the law regarding disorderly conduct is entirely inaccurate. Not only in the 9th Circuit where I practice but also in Massachusetts, a person cannot be arrested for yelling at a police officer absent some exacerbating conduct. Shouting at the top of your lungs that a police officer is racist or making a statement about police treatment of black people in America is not disorderly conduct UNLESS it becomes removed from First Amendment protection. Given a “rowdy” crowd of 7 people, I don’t think qualifies.

2) The police cannot be expected to leave a location simply because the person there is screaming at them and ordering them around, even if that person is apparently innocent and likely lives there. They should still thoroughly investigate. Unfortunately, this person was not “apparently” innocent but had already been confirmed as such by the arresting officer. The investigation was over absent some request from the property owner, Mr. Gates, to continue said investigation.

3) Sir, I now understand that you’re [this extremely wise, powerful, awe-inspiring man], but believe me I had no way of knowing that based on the way you treat people. I thought you were some guy off the street who conned his way into a home like this. Really, I don’t know how the people in your life can stand you Now with your last sentence you’ve basically admitted that you verbally provoke these already boorish people. That in my mind does not sound like wise police work, but it is explained by your next comment. Which is . . .

4) One of the things that overlooked is that the police have the opportunity to enforce important norms of social behavior, and not just laws. The opportunity yes, but not the public mandate. Law enforcement officers are just that: LAW enforcement. They are not society’s appointed norms enforcement nor should they be. Under such a system, too much discretion would be given to officers engaged in the enforcement of often fluid and undefinable norms. The great thing about the law is that it is already pre-defined for an officer; while they are given the discretion to apply that law or not, the very law acts as a ceiling for an appropriate response. Enforcing norms of social behavior completely blows that ceiling to smithereens.

4) Anyone who persistently screams at a doctor, nurse, lawyer or IRS agent will either be sedated, or strapped to his gurney, or wheeled away, or ejected from the location by security. This makes two mistakes. First, it gives short shrift to the location in which these situations would occur. Were I to yell at a doctor in my own home I would expect him to do one of three things: 1) take it; 2) yell back; or 3) leave my house. My guess is more often than not option 2 would be the initial response followed very quickly by option 3. Second, save the IRS agent, it also mistakes the private nature of the actor as opposed to a law enforcement officer who acts on behalf of the state. Brandon’s analysis dangerously blurs the line between state actor and private citizens to the point that it seems he is suggesting officers can hide behind the mantle of private citizen even while wearing the shield. When in uniform, officers are legally representatives of the state and are held to much higher standards than a doctor, lawyer or nurse. That much needs to be clearly said.

5) The idea that the heavily armed agents of state force and the jobs they do are somehow more vulnerable to yelling and more important than these others is profoundly antidemocratic. Wrong again. Initially I’m not sure what the purpose of referring to them as heavily armed was other than to give due weight to the gravitas of their duty. But beyond that the very weight of their duty DOES make them more vulnerable as representatives of the state to yelling, especially when that yelling comes in the form of political speech . It is the very essence of democracy that state actors must be prepared to be lawfully be targets of political speech, which is the HIGHEST form of speech this country protects.

I welcome Brandon’s contribution but I think it underscores the larger problem we have in America between a citizenry and its law enforcement, especially so in the often abused area of disorderly conduct. That said there is always solid value in honest and well-intentioned dialogue in moving towards a more well behaved citizenry and a better trained enforcement mechanism.

@ 238 and 239 – where is your evidence that the arrest was illegal? If that was the case, don’t you think a lawsuit would’ve been underway by now, instead of the cop and professor having a beer together?

Absent the lawsuit and, for that matter, any allegations of illegality (except from you two), don’t you think we should accept that the arrest was perfectly legal, and, therefore, the argument that something went wrong there because “being rude to cops is not illegal” is clearly fallacious in this situation?

Many of you here are university professors, figures of authority. Suppose you have a student who comes from a powerful family, who is uncooperative, obnoxious, refuses to follow your reasonable instructions and is trying to bully and publicly insult you at every opportunity. When grading this student, would you be inclined to cut him some slack as you might to a more pleasant student? Think about it.

Hey, everyone here sounds like a broken record; I am in a minority, why should I stfu?

I think Crowley had the greater responsibility to keep things from escalating and missed multiple opportunities to do so.

Crowley is not a psychiatrist, and he has no responsibility “to keep things from escalating” in the sense you’re implying here. He is a cop and he did stop things from escalating by arresting Gates.

If he didn’t – and, suppose, Gates got more and more disturbed, physically attacked Crowley or some other cop, and got shot – now, then you could say that Crowley missed an opportunity to keep things from escalating.

Wrong. By his own account, he failed to explain exactly why he was there up front. And while I don’t know if he ever said “I’m sorry to disturb you, but…”, the tone of his police report and his attitude after the incident both make that seem unlikely. As for your suggestion that Gates might have represented an actual threat to someone, there is nothing in any of the accounts of this incident that make that a reasonable concern or indicate Crowley thought (reasonably or unreasonably) that a physical attack was likely.

And Gates was in his own home. Once that was confirmed, a simple “I am sorry to have disturbed you, goodbye.” as opposed to “if you want to continue this, you need to come outside” would have been appropriate.

tanstaafl, a person whose own account of the incident is that he heard “would you step outside onto the porch” and immediately “all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck” is clearly disturbed. That’s all there is to it. Everything else follow.

Even if Crowley’s behaviour had been totally and unequivocably illegal and actionable, there has not been enough time to even seriously consider a lawsuit, much less file one.

I don’t know if this is true, but if it is – then let’s wait and see before you start pontificating about “false charges” all over the place. Well, not you personally, I’m talking about 238 and 239 and many, many other comments in this thread.

P.S. With regards to his personal experiences (not spefically with police), Henry Louis Gates Jr was born in West Virginia in 1950. He would have attended segregated schools until well into his teens—even after it was forced to desegregate, West Virginia didn’t remove the clause requiring segregated schools from its constitution until 1994. The reason he walks with a cane is that his right leg is 2 inches shorter than his left due to an untreated hip fracture. The white doctor’s (mis)diagnosis in that case was that the problem was psychosomatic — a black boy from Appalachia who wanted to be a doctor in the mid-1960s was an overachiever.

“Henri, anyone (like you) who is completely unable to understand why an African American (one who is thoroughly familiar with the history of race relations and police racism, and who may well have personal experiences that reinforce that) would be uncomfortable or even alarmed at being asked to leave his home (where his comfort, control and legal rights are all at their greatest) into a public space (where the balance of authority shifts dramatically to the police officer), is either an idiot or a racist.”

If Gates, in fact, knew all this, then why did he leave his home in the end?

I agree with the other people who said this was a pissing contest. Gates may well have had good reason to engage in the contest; the police officer may well have had good reason to insist that he not lose. But all in all, it was a pissing contest.

The police officer could have ended it; Gates could have ended it. Neither did.

“He [Gates] and you (and many others, unfortunately) are involved in a purely demagogic exercise…”

I don’t understand this at all. Gates may be involved in an exercise (e.g. exhibiting how black individuals or just individuals in general are treated by police), but I don’t see this as even partly demagogic.

but I don’t see this as even partly demagogic

Well, I find it demagogic to pretend that Gates, who is a rich and powerful individual (and has been for a long time), is somehow undeniably a victim here on account of his skin color. People like tanstaafl use it as the last resort when they have nothing left to say; others just open with it. It’s also very damaging to the race relations.

“Well, I find it demagogic to pretend that Gates, who is a rich and powerful individual (and has been for a long time), is somehow undeniably a victim here on account of his skin color. ”

You agree “undeniably” makes it a bit strong in your direction? If you put in “possibly”, then the quoted assertion looks true to me.

I’m also not sure why Gates being rich and powerful subtracts from his being a “victim here on account of his skin color” (if that is the case). In a situation where the officer has discretion, as in this, who knows what would have happened had Gates been white? I presume you agree that rich and powerful black men in America are sometimes victims on account of their skin color, and the only question is, whether this is one of those cases.

“It’s also very damaging to the race relations.”

I’d agree to this extent. This episode, up to Obama calling the officer’s behaviour “stupid,” has probably made some part of the white population feel aggrieved. Mind you, most of that same population already feels that blacks are whiney and uppity, so I’m not sure how bad the damage has been; slightly confirming an already existing belief is probably not too damaging. That is, I don’t think anyone has really staked out any new belief or “switched sides”, based on this incident. On the other hand, if Obama goes through with his beerfest in the White House, while it may in fact be the politically astute move, will be more damaging IMHO, by making it seem that if only black and white can only share a beer together, then everything is A-OK.

“It has not helped your analytical skills. Nor has it assisted in hiding the pejorative rhetoric running like a vein through your narrative. Since you’ve presented yourself as a rational and neutral arbiter of the interaction between Mr. Crowley and Mr. Gates, that subjective undercurrent is key in that it exposes a less than authoritative or forthright stance.”

This is very unhelpful to the discussion. But one thing that strikes me is that it is very similar to Gates account that he could “see a narrative forming” inside Crowley’s head. So both this commenter and Gates imagine that have the ability to see the unspoken truth behind some rather neutrally presented words…

Wasn’t there some philosopher, Kant or Hegel, who said something along the lines that evil resides in the very gaze which perceives evil all around?
.

“I see absolutely nothing in the facts of this story that would suggest any racism on Crowley’s part. I don’t see why even “possibly” needs to be assumed.”

Well, now you’ve changed “on account of his skin color” to “racism” and added “in the facts of this story”. Here are some assertions:

1/ “Gates is possibly a victim here on account of his skin color.”
2/ “Gates is possibly a victim here on account of racism.”
3/ “There are no facts in this story that support …” [1/ or 2/]

2/ is a stronger claim than 1/. Crowley might not have acted because of racism, which has extremely negative overtones, but Gates’ skin color might still have had a causal role in the incident.
3/ is stronger than 1/ and 2/ because of the addition “in this story,” which I take it limits it to facts between the time Crowley got to the house and the time Gates was handcuffed. That is, your addition of “in this story” excludes appealing to experience of similar cases in other places in times past. For instance, suppose there is a high incidence of racially based behaviour/racism by police officers towards blacks over the past five years. That would, I think, be a fact that supports or corroborates 1/ or 2/ but which is excluded by 3/.

I presume also that Gates’ description of events does not constitute for you a fact (I’ve tried googling it to find it, but I presume that his description would support 1/ if not 2/). That is, you are applying some sort of analysis behind the various opposing descriptions of the event and saying that is the fact of the matter. This is a pretty high bar to satisfy in a story which is largely he said/she said.

FWIW, I find it difficult to deny 1/.

“And it’s a FAil because the school doesn’t make the argument. A degree from Harvard cannot cover faulty reasoning, false narrative or pejorative language.”

It’s clear you have not read this closely. Brandon mentioned he was from Harvard to show that he did not have bias against people associated with Harvard, not as an appeal to authority…

a: “Mind you, most of that same population already feels that blacks are whiney and uppity, so I’m not sure how bad the damage has been”

henri: “I don’t know if this is true, and if it is true I don’t really care.”

Well you were the one to say ‘“It’s also very damaging to the race relations.” So you don’t care now?

henri: “If they think it’s easy enough to yell “RACISTS!” and get away with something and to cause serious troubles to innocent people, ruin their reputations, derail their careers – then you should expect racial tensions, voluntary segregation, all kinds of problems.”

Well, as I think you yourself who’s claimed, as evidence for your views, that Gates had a narrative of white-officer-harrasses-black-man from the very beginning. So, by your own telling of the events, Gates isn’t yelling “Racist” to get away with something; he’s calling “racist” because he thinks that is what is happening. Right? It’s not an afterthought that he has put on because he has been arrested. Right?

“”If they think it’s easy enough to yell “RACISTS!” and get away with something and to cause serious troubles to innocent people, ruin their reputations, derail their careers – then you should expect racial tensions, voluntary segregation, all kinds of problems.”

Suppose we are in a world where there are two races, who have lived together peacefully without problems. Suddenly, members of one race start doing as you say. Then I would expect racial tensions and all kinds of problems, sure. I’m not sure I would expect “voluntary segregation”, however, and I think that kind of claim perhaps is more revealing of your attitudes than you might want.

On the other hand, that’s not the world we actually have. We have a world where one of the races has been and continues to be victims of racism. Do you dispute that? Sure, there are probably cases where somebody claims “Racism” where there has been none. Things are never perfect. But then to blame “racial tensions” on the race which has been the victims of racism because sometimes they say “Racism” where there is none, is incredible.

“Still, consider this: courtrooms are the very embodiment of our freedoms, and try yelling at a judge, lawyer or bailiff in a courtroom. Try yelling at anyone, for any reason. You get one warning. Then the proceedings stop and you’re in trouble, or at least removed from the room.”

brandon, i haven’t read all the comments so i’m not sure you haven’t been called on this already. in you comment (quoted) you make the point that were you to yell at a judge, doctor or the like, you’d be ejected, and you draw a parallel. however, in the cases you cite, you would have been a visitor to someone’s space (often a working, public space, shared by others), and your presence there would have been contingent on maintaining that space in a fashion that allowed work to continue and public access to be unimpeded. that’s why you would have been ejected and it’s fine.

gates was in his own house, on a property he owned and no such arrangements hold. he yelled at a guy for being dumber than a bag of rocks, someone who’d reverted to being officious and nitpicking AFTER it had been established that the elderly gates was not the gang of cat burglars that had been called in. which must have taken him all of about 2 seconds.

someone should have been ejected, or (quite correctly) ejected themselves. instead, the guy took being yelled at as a personal affront to his sense of self and concocted a spurious rationale for arrest. which is a blatant abuse of the authority that the law delegates, and also a sign of a small dick. it’s not even a debate.

call center operators get yelled at every day. so do bank tellers, clerks, taxi drivers, store clerks and an infinity of others. to argue that discourtesy warrants arrest is inane, but it’s a type if inanity that seems really, really common amongst security services and the police. most likely it’s some combination of things: that the type of people who find these vocations to be attractive are the type of people who believe that wielding physical power is a cool thing to do; the machismo that our cultures invest in physical force; the common adulation that is extended towards people who are occassionally at risk and so on.

whatever the reasons, it’s a dumb idea and the notion that police officers should be treated with any more reverence than another service provider, simply because they are invested with the power to do physical force, is but one small step away from uniform-worship. worse, accepting those kind of notion makes the job all the more attractive to the kind of people who think they are valid. that is, the kind of people eager to use physical force to remedy a perceived affront.

d

There’s a failure here to distinguish between structural and personal racism. Racism is ubiquitous, racists are not. Racism is not natural, it has a history of development and the weight of history behind it. That’s why racism persists even though the number of people who advocate it declines. It is a context in which what would be our otherwise “neutral” actions occur. The encounter between Gates and Crowley, two non-racists, occurred in a context suffused with racism. I think Mr. Gates made the initial mistake of deciding right off the bat that he was dealing with a racist person and lost site of the context. The irony is he was dealing with a person who had for the previous five years taught other police about the racial context within which they perform their jobs.

Henri [254] states:
Crowley is not a psychiatrist, and he has no responsibility “to keep things from escalating” in the sense you’re implying here. He is a cop and he did stop things from escalating by arresting Gates.

I have to disagree. According to Crowley’s report Gates was yelling at Crowley in the kitchen where there was no threat whatsoever to public order. Then, at Crowley’s suggestion, he and Gates moved to the porch where, again according to Crowley, the situation posed a threat to public order. It was Crowley, using his authority as a police office, who changed the situation from one where there was no threat to public order to one where there was. Crowley escalated the situation. At least according to what Crowley tells us.

a

Crowley knew that the behavior constituted a threat to public order (otherwise how could he have arrested Gates). Gates might well have been under the impression that his behavior did not (Given Crowley’s statement many folks seem to think that Gates’ behavior was not such a threat). The only one knowingly changing the situation from no threat to public order to one in which there was a threat to public order was Crowley.

Fine, I’ll rephrase: there is nothing in the facts of this story to indicate that Gates’ skin color influenced Crowley’s action in a negative way. In anyone’s facts. According to Gates’ account:

…So I went over to the front porch still holding the phone, and I said “Officer, can I help you?” And he said, “Would you step outside onto the porch.” And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, “No, I will not.”

And it doesn’t matter whether he – along with a large majority of commenters in this thread – truly believes what he’s saying or he’s being disingenuous; the result is the same.

We have a world where one of the races has been and continues to be victims of racism. Do you dispute that? … Things are never perfect.

No, I don’t dispute it, although isn’t it also true that some very significant improvements have been made? They have been made – and they can only be made – because people feel more comfortable with each other regardless of their races, they stop noticing each other’s race, they interact as human beings. So, I don’t see this as a mere imperfection. It is a big problem.

I have to disagree. According to Crowley’s report Gates was yelling at Crowley in the kitchen where there was no threat whatsoever to public order. Then, at Crowley’s suggestion, he and Gates moved to the porch where, again according to Crowley, the situation posed a threat to public order. It was Crowley, using his authority as a police office, who changed the situation

So, what’s you suggestion: he should stay in the kitchen until Gates decides to stop yelling? According to the report:

I told Gates that I was leaving his residence and that if he had any other questions regarding the matter I would speak to him outside of the residence.

“and on with his night?” sorry, “day.”

See: either Gates indeed gets paranoid right from the beginning – or in the aftermath he’s trying to justify his behavior by a touch of paranoia. I don’t know which one is true, I can’t read his mind.

I might see the paranoia, but as they say, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. I mean, did you read what Crowley said in the paragraph you quoted? (And Gates’s and Crowley’s statement seem to match up perfectly as to the first thing out of Crowley’s mouth):

“Would you step outside onto the porch.”

No doubt said in that, humorless, officious, police command voice we all know and love. Now you can come up with a lot of reasons for the abruptness of this command, but you know what’s completely lacking (from the supposedly well-trained Crowley)? The slightest trace of racial sensitivity.

From Gates’ perspective, he’s pretty clearly being instantly treated as a suspect. And while Crowley turns out not to be quite the type of cop who tasers black suspects and sodomizes them with a baton, Gates doesn’t necessarily know that. Besides, he’s an old man, in his own home, who’s very tired from a long trip.

Moreover, this interaction does nothing to dismiss the charges of an unconscious racial element to the interaction.

As myself and others have pointed out, that would require knowing that Crowley would have done and said exactly the same thing had the reported “suspects” and homeowner been white. Are you really sure that, if an elderly white man on a cane came to the door, Crowley wouldn’t have instead said, “Excuse me sir, is this your home?…”

I’m not.

I mean, maybe Crowley was grumpy from having come off a nasty domestic violence call minutes before, or maybe he’s just a dick to everyone. But subconscious racist assumptions could easily have played a role too. It’s not proof, but it doesn’t do any service to a discussion about race relations and Gates’ reactions to just pretend subconscious racist assumptions can’t exist.

This is a highly enlightening discussion of the incident and I’d like to thank all of the contributors. I’m hoping someone can answer my question, which concerns efficient use of police resources. If Gates was indeed “tumultuous” etc, I believe the sergeant could have issued him a citation for disorderly conduct instead of arresting and booking him. If that’s a correct interpretation of the law, then wasn’t the police officer squandering resources by resorting to an arrest, booking, etc.? If that is the case, I have to agree with the president’s initial statement that the police acted stupidly and the arrest was more about machismo than protecting and serving. Thanks.

Speculating about “subconscious” racism is not productive or fair. It’s impossible to defend oneself against and easy to project onto other people….

It’s not about “fair”, because it’s not an accusation. We’re ALL subconscious racists. That’s the whole point.

This episode is about all the complicated subtexts that exists whenever a cop interacts with a citizen while on duty, subtexts that are especially complicated when the citizen is black. Bias of various kinds is objectively widespread in interactions between the police and minorities.

There’s no way to move forward and figure out how to deal with those sort of unconscious biases if we get to just dismiss any possibility of a racial subtext as long as the officer in a particular situation isn’t actually in the KKK or something.

And speaking of subtexts, I really don’t see how it’s even possible at all to have a “normal, conversational” tone while in uniform, on a call, where the person you’re speaking to might be in the middle of a crime, and speaking the command “would you step outside for me”. Do you?

For all I know Crowley believes that, but that doesn’t make it true. It probably speaks as much to a certain insensitivity about how his words and actions might be perceived by civilians as it does to anything else. An insensitivity seemingly shared by a lot of cops, and that could well be at the root of this whole episode.

(Read the police report, where Crowley affects a tone of utter bafflement toward Gates’ reaction. We have no way to divine Crowley’s actual state of mind, but either that bafflement is real, and Crowley is genuinely naive and insensitive to the racial subtext of these sorts of interactions, or he’s not being completely honest about it.)

Here’s a link to a non-white woman who had her own encounter with Sgt Crowley.

http://feministx.blogspot.com/2009/07/henry-louis-gates-jr.html#comments

“Would you step outside onto the porch” is a perfectly normal phrase for a cop. This is how the cops in the US talk.

You’re probably right. That’s kind of the problem the rest of us are discussing, isn’t it?

Here’s a link to a non-white woman who had her own encounter with Sgt Crowley.

The story basically rebuts the already well-rebutted charge that Crowley is an actual, self-avowed racist. That’s a defense of a straw man, because I don’t think anyone serious is accusing Crowley of being a “belligerent racist”. All indications are that he’s not, and even that he’s admirably concerned with profiling and racially charged interactions.

But it’s basically the “some of my best friends are black” defense. It doesn’t address the discussion about more subtle and unconscious racial issues here, or the fact that Crowley basically blundered and bulled his way into totally losing control of a tense interaction, racially fraught or not.

If it’s still not clear: even were Crowley himself black, that would not dispel concerns about subconscious racial bias. “He’s black, so he can’t be racist” isn’t a valid response in a world where it’s well known that even black officers often become acculturated to a world view where black men are automatically suspects, and all too often singled out for brutal and unfair treatment. (Although it’s possible that Gates’ own biases might have kept him mollified had he had the same interaction with a black officer, and this episode never would have blown up.)

And note that the author of the linked post is apparently a minority woman. Generally, however, it is black men who receive the worst police treatment.

(Also noted without comment, she states: “In my experience, Crowley, who comes from a family of people involved in law enforcement, consistently takes disrespectful behavior towards police very seriously regardless of the race of the person levying the disrespect. ”)

From Maureen Dowd’s column today:

As we reflect on the arc of civil rights dramas from Jim Crow to Jim Crowley, my friend John Timoney, the police chief of Miami, observes: “There’s a fine line between disorderly conduct and freedom of speech. It can get tough out there, but I tell my officers, ‘Don’t make matters worse by throwing handcuffs on someone. Bite your tongue and just leave.’ ”

The people still trying to argue that Crowley was right to arrest Gate can go argue with Chief Timoney.

In a very dangerous way, it takes the very useful concept of structural racism and personalizes it, turning it from tool of analysis and healing into a tool of destruction and division.

Well, I dunno. Certainly subconscious and unconscious probably aren’t the best terms (and you’re right, I was using them sloppily). If structural racism is the preferred term, fine.

And if calling this structural rather than “unconscious” racism helps people to not take offence, great. But people do still need to get comfortable with the idea that there really are unintentional biases and racist impulses lurking in the heads of even the most well-intentioned people. That can’t be a conversation stopper if the problem is ever actually going to be addressed.

Because, “people aren’t responsible for their unconscious mind” goes rather too far. By definition it’s not directly subject to agency, but that’s exactly why we have to be so careful to try to be more self aware, try to dig out what’s in there, and be more careful and self-conscious about potentially fraught interactions with others. Most of us can probably muddle through in this area, but I do think a cop has a professional responsibility to be extra careful. I find the baffled tone of Crowley’s report really unconvincing.

Of course, I DON’T want to convict Crowley of any thought crimes. If Crowley is held personally responsible for anything here, it should be the false arrest. (And even if we wanted to prosecute thought crimes, I’d put “being kind of an authoritarian dick” much higher up on Crowley’s list of offences…) But the episode should still be consciousness raising. It’s important to push back against those who want to pretend, out of either ignorance or political utility, that, just because Crowley isn’t a racist per se, there can’t be any racism here at all.

I would attribute the baffled tone to the confusion experienced by a dedicated anti-racist finding himself in a situation in which he has become cast as an agent of racism.

But that’s silly. Anyone with more than an ounce of self-awareness isn’t going to expect that every stranger they meet is going to see through to the core of their soul and know them for the friendly anti-racist they are. All a stranger has are your words and actions.

And Crowley’s words and actions were, at best, indifferent. Actually, they seemed to me to be leaning more towards being rather counter-productively abrupt and authoritarian.

And Crowley’s been in the uniform, what, more than 15 years? Is this really the first black man he’s ever interacted with who’s ever overreacted or called him a racist?

This is an extremely illuminating post and indicates a sincere attempt by Del Pozo to understand the psychology of both men.

However, the post also reveals what I consider to be the key problem in this case, which is the American police’s habitual refusal to understand or acknowledge constitutional rights.

Sgt Crowley had no good reason for asking Gates to initially leave his residence, and he had no good reason for pursuing Gates into his residence. When I say “no good reason,” I don’t mean that he didn’t have any reason—I mean that he didn’t have one sufficient to trump Prof. Gates 4th Amendment constitutional right to be free from government intrusion in his own home.

Del Pozo says:

“The officer instructs the person to exit the house and talk on the porch. This is standard police safety practice. An unfamiliar building with unknown occupants that is the potential site of a burglary is not a safe place for an officer to enter, especially alone. If he is drawn into the home and attacked there, he can be locked in and will take longer to rescue. Kitchens have a variety of weapons, and rooms have limited sight lines and places for suspects to hide. Bringing a suspect to the porch is a prudent move for an officer.”

Unfortunately, as in so many cases, “standard police policy” obviously violates our 4th amendment right to be free from police harassment in our homes. As I explain in a post on the constitutional legality of the arrest on my blog at http://redgenesbluegenes.com the threshold to a person’s house is a sacred barrier that the government may not cross—or ask the homeowner to cross—absent “exigent circumstances”.

What nobody seems to understand is that a report of a burglary in progress is STILL NOT a sufficiently “exigent circumstance” to override the presumption that anyone answering the door is a legal resident. The Supreme Court made it clear in Payton v. New York that even when probable cause that a crime has been committed exists, that is still not sufficent to warrant a breach of the front door.

Of course, I understand the police’s interest in protecting the safety of police officers. However, that interest does not justify over-riding our constitution. It might well be that the officer would have had to put up with the infinitesimally-small risk that Gates was going to go to the kitchen for a knife. Tough luck, copper, that’s your job: stay out on the porch and respect the citizen’s constitutional rights. American police seem now to believe that any remote risk of danger to an officer is sufficient to justify stupid and unconstitutional “standard police procedures.”

Our police force should be a little bit less chicken when their cowardice (otherwise known as “prudence”) becomes the primary justification for routine violations of our constitutional rights.

When it comes to police stops, searches and home intrusions, standard police procedure in America is routinely wrong and unconstitutional. To understand why, read my article.

Sorry, all; we’re all so apt to judge, even Obama has – stupidly – weighed in. None of us were there, so frankly, no one is doing much more than (educated) speculation. I really don’t understand why this is news, and why everyone gets so worked up. It’s simply because of race. There are a range of possibilities, but I think it’s very clear (to me, anyway) that the most likely (and fairly highly probabilistic) is exactly what Brandon asserts: no one acted illegally, it was within the officer’s discretion to arrest Gates whose behavior was disproportionate, and the officer is not a racist, but simply made a poor decision. Why are reasonable people so eager to jump to other conclusions? If the professor were white, but acted in the same manner, whether the officer were white or black, my personal feeling is that he’s just as likely to be arrested, which also would have been a poor decision, but just not at all newsworthy. What is clear to me is that both parties acted quite badly; Gates was given many opportunities not to be arrested, but he egged it on and practically willed it to happen. And the officer could have just taken the verbal abuse and walked away. If he truly were a racist, I would submit (also speculating) that not only would Gates have been arrested immediately, his treatment would have been a little rougher.

There are poor arrests, such as this one, every day in America, but the fact that the officer is white and Gates is black almost always, and unfortunately, affects the discourse: of course, he MUST be a racist. Not only becasue Gates said it, but becasue it’s the ONLY thing that explains the officer’s behavior. Well, that’s not only ignorant, it also will stick with and harm the officer for years, if not for the rest of his career, but it also diminishes racism itself, which is clearly an odious, hasteful, and destructive state. By labeling every cross-racial conflict to be ‘racist’, it waters the definition down to such a degree to become practically meaningless.

Jesus, this isn’t complicated.

Glenn @314, per Brandon Del Pozo, misreads the facts and the law. Police DO NOT have discretion to arrest citizens without probable cause that a crime has been committed. They have discretion NOT to arrest, if it has.

Henri Vieuxtemps and Del Pozo blather on about Gates’ “boorish” behavior, etc., and likewise misstate the issue. The dismissal of the false arrest charges, Massachusetts statute and case law precedent all clearly point to a prima facie case of false arrest. Probable cause, according to the Oxford dictionary is “information sufficient to warrant a prudent person’s belief that the wanted individual had committed a crime.”

If Sgt. Crowley “believed” Mr. Gates had committed a crime, he was mistaken, and his defense appears to be ignorance of the law, an embarrassing situation for such a 15-year police veteran to be sure. Prudence doesn’t seem to apply.

No, the posters are straining to befend their true bias, which is for unbridaled authoritarian police power, a power that would have uniformed thugs roaming the streets arresting, beating and tasering citizens they deem insufficiently deferential to their authority. A nation ruled by men, not laws.

I’m sure they think that’s just fine, and believe it will only happen to others, cause they’re always on the side of renegade police, or renegade police always on their side. Just come out and say it.

Cripes, it’s a mistake to take one isolated incident, or comments on one isolated incident, to conclude that I, and others, who happen to think that Crowley’s actions were not an abuse of police power and that that he most certainly is not a racist are “…for unbridled authoritarian police power.” That is factually wrong and frankly assinine to assert. This is ONE case we are talking about, and my major points: no one acted illegally, it was withing the scope of his discretion, though still a poor decision, for Crowley to arrest Gates (you may well disagree with this), and that Crowley is not a racist. This last point, to me, is the real tragedy. It’s so easy and painless for people to hurl these types of accusations which are so ugly and inflammatory that jsut asserting it can do irreperable damage; no actual evidence is necessary to support the accusation. Cripe’s comments come close to this as well. For the record, I’m a liberal/libertarian, supported, voted for and gave money to Obama. But I’ll stand by my comments: his addressing this issue was stupid. He wasn’t there and neither were any of us. But Cripes is absolutely right this isn’t complicated: it’s the unfortunate and unnecessary arrest of a man who happens to be black by a police officer who happes to be white. What complicates matters are the disparaging and libellous epithets so casually thrown around to muddy the waters, Cripes’ comments included.

Henry V’s citing of Massachusetts disorderly law @#318 is the best support for my argument he has posted yet. It conclusively proves only an idiot would think Gates was guilty of violating it.

Glenn blathers on about “inflammatory” comments without addressing the substance of my statement: police HAVE NO DSCRETION to arrest people without PROBABLE CAUSE a crime has been committed, but he thinks it’s okay anyway. If that’s not supporting an authoritarian state, I don’t know what is.

Lo and behold, the 911 caller NEVER said the men were black, but the police report does! Crowley “invites” Gates onto the porch as a pretext to charge him with disorderly conduct, a too common police ruse.

BTW, I have NEVER mentioned race in my comments, since the abuse of police authority is alarming enough, but don’t doubt it happens, and cooked up police reports tend to SUPPORT the claim.

I can see neither of you have ever been at the wrong end of a police encounter, but don’t worry, keep trashing the constitution and you will eventually.

Hey all, here’s an alarming piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s police discretion writ large on the national stage, the consequences of which thinking lead to all manner of abuse.

Rule by fear or rule by law?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL

Emma, Cripes – the caller was at the scene and told the responding officer (crowley) further details (including their race) at the time he arrived. No imagination needed!

Cripes – Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct, which seems to be about right. Crwley had the discretion to do that. Gates’ behavior seems to fall into the letter of the law. As for blatering about your inflammatory comments, yeah, so what? They’re unnecessary in adult, intelligent discourse. Most reasonable people can disagree on a point without resorting to ad hominem attacks. Upon reading nearly all the past posts, I see your views are biased by your own unfortunate run-ins with cops. Tant pis. You’re right, most of my run-ins with cops have been udner better circumstances. That being said, I think the Constitution will bear the burden of the awful abuse of police power, though just barely. We can discuss it at the MapRoom if you like.

Steve – Del Pozo, and I, and even presumably, you, must admit that it’s a judgement call. It clearly isn’t clear cut, which is why we’re all here debating key issues, most of us anyway. Steve, you’re must too smart to say or assert that Del Pozo, or anyone, could definitively say that it was illegal or just plain wrong. My opinion is, for what it’s worth, was that Crowley seemed to be within his bounds to make the arrest for disorderly conduct, as bone-headed as it was. You read any of their comments, and they’re certainly crouched, as if to say, ‘rookie mistake for a good, seasoned cop,’ or whatever. IMHO, and it is, H, you or anyone, appealing to greater justice, making claims that this ONE CASE can and does have greater significance about wide and ingrained abuse by police, or that it threaten the Constitution, and my goodness, one who gets the vapors, and sees disgust and shamefulness from people who see only the facts for what they are: this is one case about a (good) man being arrested who happens to be black by a (good) police officer who happens to be white. Steve, making this into more than that is farcical. Real police abuse happens every day in this country; but this?! No, sorry. This molehill is being climbed those wanting to shout ‘abuse’ from the highest mountain. Steve, you seem to have alot of company at the summit.

Steve – Del Pozo, and I, and even presumably, you, must admit that it’s a judgement call.

Admittedly, the exact same thing could have been said if the officer had shot Gates 42 times. Every conscious act is a “judgment call” isn’t it?

Point being, this is an opportunity to talk about what we feel IS appropriate police authority and discretion. And judging from the number of comment writers across the small subset of the blogosphere I visit, this

I don’t quite know why. I mean, yes, compared to the mountain of a 14-year-old girl getting killed with a tazer for “being snotty” to cops, the arrest of Gates is quite a molehill. Granted.

But it’s really unpleasantly offensive to have someone tell me that I shouldn’t be upset by some “molehill”—because look-over-there where it’s worse! With these “worse” cases I frankly feel powerless to speak. In a very real sense, such cases are sufficiently horrific to confuse and thereby immobilize me.

I guess the arrest of Gates is at the right threshold: offensive enough to me to warrant comment, but contentious/not-clear-cut enough to enable discussion and provide the opportunity for us to publicly consider what we want from our police force. And it is indeed “our” police force in ways that the U.S. Senate or the Parliament is not “our” representation: police forces (at least in the US) are sufficiently localized to enable real, concrete, satisfying change in the short term, if the communities affected by injustice mobilizes and demands it for a sustained period of time.

We are yet to see any of them defending any no-name junkie arrested for doing exactly the same

You haven’t read my letters to the editor in the local paper, then, or attended city council meetings ‘round here! But I forgive you ;-) …the fact that there’s no way to know who I am or where I live aside, it’d probably be quite a hike for you to pick up the local paper here, all the way from Belgium (if I remember correctly).

But yes, some of us (I imagine many of us) get involved locally with situations that don’t get broadcast worldwide, where it really is possible to have an effect on local policy. (But asking that we always try to draw national attention to these cases is, well, obviously problematic.) The local papers and community council meetings are a good starting point, for those who want to obtain local information and get directly involved in demanding appropriate behavior and reasonable accountability from their local police force.

By the way, Brandon, I intend to start advocating the principle that “a person cannot be too smart or too worldly to be a police officer” in my community work. I greatly appreciate that statement: it neatly summarizes two easy-to-overlook characteristics that police officers ought to value in themselves and in their peers, and I never would’ve thought to use the word “worldly” if I hadn’t seen it here.

Too easy to identify with, too close to home.

Of course I can’t speak for anyone else with any certainty, but if anything I was getting the impression that lots of folks would advocate for the wholesale abolition of police forces, full stop, because police automatically abuse state authority. I dunno.

Admittedly, I have been recognizing a form ageism in myself: I caught myself thinking, approximately, “what kind of threat to public order can an old grandfatherly guy possibly pose?” In that sense, I might conceivably distinguish Gates from the (presumably young and athletic) “junkie” you hypothesize.

Hmm. I snuck athletic in there, didn’t I. Come to think of it, what I’m really seeing is the fact that Gates is clearly not physically intimidating (by which I mean, looking at him does not give me the impression that he is physically very powerful). That would be the distinction that helps me to identify that Gates is less capable of threatening the public order, and therefore is less likely to be threatening the public order. (This holds for whatever definition of “threaten the public order” you prefer.)

A ha! Strengthism. I am feeling strengthist.

“But IMHO you still need to acknowledge more clearly the power (and therefore, responsibility) imbalance here.”

By that, do you mean that when the suspect can’t get the chief of the Cambridge Police on the phone at the scene his friend, the President of the Unites States of America, later uses a press conference on health care to say to the entire nation that the cop acted “stupidly” and inappropriately, while Gates uses personal connections to marshall the resouces of the second best law school in the nation to build a defense case for him? All of this makes me feel sympathetic for Crowley, an officer who was investigating a burglary call when we now learn he wasn’t even on patrol, but responded because he was nearby and thought he could get there the fastest.

They both had power in different ways, and they both used it in ways that I think were inappropriate. Gates’ soft power clearly elcipses that of almost every American, and certainly Crowley’s, but Crowley has the power of his position. I still think they both used their powers inappropriately.

I am very pleased at Obama’s outreach to both Gates and Crowley; from what I have learned about both these men, I think they are the type of people who could genuinely reconciliate the incident with each other.

By way of evidence, we have also recently learned that the dispatcher tried to call Crowley three times on the radio, and he was unable to respond. This bolsters his case that, as he stated in his report, he couldn’t hear over Gates’ yelling. It is also the reason why other cops responded. When you can’t raise a unit, you respond to ensure they’re okay. I can say as a fact that there are times when screaming citizens make it impossible to hear your radio, or to answer questions from Central. This goes back to my original, more general point that there has to be an expectation that the police can conduct their legitimate business without it being thrown into disarray by a citizen’s conduct, and the police can’t be expected to conclude investigations only because the citizen’s conduct makes it too impractical for them to go on.

Lastly, someone above said cops are not a part of the community when they are on-duty. This is alarming to me, and precisely the problem. When cops conclude they are not a part of the community they serve, or they are made to feel that way by the conduct of the citizens they serve, or you make some sort of legal argument that they’re not, you invariably end up with a much worse police force than you would have otherwise had. Cops must feel that they have a personal stake in the outcome of their interactions with citizens, and not just a set of performance standards. You aren’t inclined to do a good job policing a community you have no stake in and don’t feel a part of. You aren’t inclined to do anything superogatory, or to see yourself as in it for the long haul.

There are certain procedures, not laws, that prohibit certain types of political conduct by police officers. But they do not cede any rights as citizens, on or off duty, due to their position, and ideally they should be a part of the community they serve, even if it is in a broad sense, treated as fellow community members, and expected to act as fellow community members.

There is a 5th Avenue co-op in New York City that won’t let the police use the bathrooms in the basement that their service folks use. Not the marble baths for guests off the lobby, but the ones next to the heating plant that the doormen and mechanics use. Their issue is that to get to these bathrooms you usually have to walk through the lobby, and residents should not have to endure the occasional sight of a police officer as they enter and leave their building. It’s just not part of the lux co-op experience to mingle with the city’s help in the lobby.

If one of these co-op residents came to my front door, identified himself as a hedge fund manager, and asked to use the facilities, I would let him do so, despite the fact that I feel very uneasy about having these types of people around me. I would also let him use my own personal facilities, not consign him to pee in my backyard. This is just a question of graciousness between citizens.

So tell me, why should a police officer rush to the drug overdose that might kill this guy’s son (happened), or risk his life to investigate the cat burglar stealing his artwork (happened), or take any police action that requires a personal risk, for the members of this co-op? There is the simple requirement of duty, of course, but duty can be rendered very minimally. These people in this co-op have said “you’re not a part of our community,” and I don’t see how this isn’t a problem for everyone. If you’re not prepared to allow cops into your community (and expect them to act accordingly), then you’re better off directly hiring a private police force you can minutely control yourselves.

These people in this co-op have said “you’re not a part of our community,” and I don’t see how this isn’t a problem for everyone.

I’m not going to go back through the comments right now to double check, but you don’t appear to be addressing arguments I actually saw here.

I think you’re confusing “being part of the community” (which is absolutely a positive thing) with what people were actually objecting to: somehow pretending you’re just a regular guy when you’re in uniform, armed, at a scene in an official capacity, apparently capable of arresting someone “at your discretion”, etc.

We’re especially objecting to the notion that cops should be in the business of using browbeating to enforce unlegislated “norms of behavior”. (Like say, same sex couples kissing in public?)

Being part of the community is great. And this whole incident would have turned out a lot differently had Gates and Crowley been part of the same community—even just visiting the same coffee shop in the morning, say. But police also occupy a unique place in the community and failing to recognize the responsibility of that position is just going to be ultimately corrosive to police/citizen interactions.

There is a 5th Avenue co-op in New York City that won’t let the police use the bathrooms in the basement that their service folks use.

It’s a cheap shot to say that Crowley could’ve shot Gates, based solely on the fact that cops do in fact carry guns.

I’m sorry, but it’s not a cheap shot to point out that one guy is armed and the other isn’t. That’s a major power asymmetry, no matter how well trained and disciplined the officer is. Trying to simply sweep it aside is an illegitimate tactic in this particular argument.

I do not intend for it to weigh equally against the powers of a police officer at the scene of an encounter, because it is of a different nature, but it is unique and profound.

This is pure class animus, such as has been evidence in a large number of your comments, and your constant repetition of this refrain to draw attention away from the extraordinary powers of a police officer is becoming EXTREMELY disturbing. It’s the sort of emotion that an officer should not be bringing on the job with him. And you and I both know that Gates didn’t have the power to inflict anything worse than 15 minutes of media notoriety on Crowley.

You don’t need power, hard or soft, to do either of those things. People without ‘soft power’ tend not to because they fear repercussions, but they shouldn’t have to: being unafraid to complain about perceived police misconduct should be a norm.

Exactly, lizardbreath. Brandon is simply refusing to deal with the fact that Gate’s “power” such as it is, served merely to mitigate the “normal” (sadly) lack of recourse from which “ordinary” citizens suffer.

Cops really don’t like civilians looking over their shoulders. As we see, scratch a philosopher-cop and you still find that familiar attitude.

1) Did Crowley have any reason whatsoever to conclude that Gates wasn’t armed? Please explain how he should have concluded this? If nothing else, Gates had access to some serious knives. Cops have been shot to death by 90-year old men; one is now brain dead in a hospital in NYC because of a single stab wound to the eye in the hallway of the home of a disturbed person. Your measure of physical power seems to be based simply on an ability to do something, and if this is the case, then the abilities of the citizen usually remain unknown to the cop. When you get called to potential crimes all day, you must arrive as scenes assuming there is the possibility of phyiscal threat from the people you meet. There may be an undertone in your comments that even good, responsible cops are looking to shoot innocent people when nothing in the interaction would call for it.

Shall we say that Crowley could have kicked/hit/punched/shot/maced Gates, but Gates could have kicked/hit/punched/stabbed/crowned with cane Crowley? You cannot deny this partial univerise of possibilities without talking about the mental states of the participants, but once you do that, you must not only talk about Gates’ but also Crowley’s, and in doing so we have no reason to believe whatsoever that shooting Gates was a possible outcome in the mind of Crowley. The facts of the matter are that he used no force whatsoever with him the entire time, apart from placing the cuffs, moreover cuffing him in the front, so as to accomodate his disability, and in violation of what I know to be NYPD procedure and probably Cambridge’s. Front cuffing against procedure shows a sound use of discretion.

2) Complaining about police conduct for a violaton (not a misdemeanor or felony) usually does not involve invoking the direct involvement of the president of the United States of America, in a nationwide statement, especially when the facts of the matter are still clearly in dispute. We are lucky that Gates is a good man, open to reconciliation, because herein lies the power to destroy the life and career of a civil servant who may well have been acting in good faith. I can’t stress it enough, as much as we don’t want to live in a nation where the police don’t make sound use of discretion, we also do not want to live in a nation where the exercise of power in this way by the people fortunate enough to have it is routine. You may feel it is justified in the case of Gates, because you fully agree with his grievances, but it is a model of behavior that will always lead to abuse. There are venues for investigating police misconduct, and they need to quite robust, but they also should be largely formal.

3) Class animus? Come on… Your problem lies in the cop who you believe circumvented law and process, but you think it’s class animus when I complain about a well-connected, affluent American whose first thought its to circumvent process in seeking redress? Let’s say it is class animus. So be it, I am a citizen who is uncomfortable with the informal powers wielded by the highest classes of my nation. I want to live in a country where everyone has a robust set of processes to address their preceptions of injustice, not one where certain people, by virtue of class or whatever, have access to extraordinary measures that other citizens don’t. Things are coming to light that show many of Crowley’s actions may have some good explanations behind them. Anyway, it has typically been overpriveleged whites that have used precisely these types of class disctinctions to perpetuate their positions (a phone call to admssions to keep a black or Jew out of the private school; a call to the precinct by the head of [huge corporate] to allow his son’s raucous high school grad party to go on despite repeated complaints from neighbors. It works here because you agree with Gates, but it does not work as a model of behavior. I am very uncomfortable allowing this type of exercise of power because we have advanced to a stage where now many notable African Americans have it as well. It’s nothing to be proud of.

Glenn 07.27.09 at 11:50 am—-Emma, Cripes – the caller was at the scene and told the responding officer (crowley) further details (including their race) at the time he arrived. No imagination needed!—-

“This woman is 100 percent clear on what she said,” said attorney Wendy J. Murphy, who is representing 911 caller Lucia Whalen. “She never said she saw two black men. She said, ‘It never crossed my mind that there were two black men.’ ”

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20090727gates_case_shocker_woman_who_called_cambridge_police_says_she_never_referred_to_intruders_as_black/srvc=home&position=0

Cambridge police chief doesn’t know yet when the race of the two men was established.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/27/gates_caller_didnt_cite_race_police_say/

“Haas, who learned about Whalen’s statement from a Globe reporter yesterday, said last night that he could not immediately pin down the point in time when the race of the men became known to the officers.”

“Brandon, once Crowley had arrested Gates and was forcibly restraining him, Gates was on notice that any attempt to physically resist the arrest would result to an escalation of the force used by the police to the point necessary to compel compliance, up to and including the use of deadly force if the police couldn’t make him comply otherwise. That’s not a cheap shot, that’s what it means to be under arrest.”

No, the supreme court says, in Tennessee v. Garner, that you cannot use deadly physical force against a person for evading the arrest of a nonviolent felony or lesser crime (such as a discon violation), unless in that evasion the suspect makes an independent threat of deadly physical force against the officers. It is not merely the evasion or resistance of arrest that warrants this. So, yes, Gates could have gone on to resist Crowley, and fought him in an way that threatened Crowley’s life, but thankfull this didn’t happen. Short of it, there is a limit to what Crowley could have done to apprehend a resisting Gates. And Gates did not resist, and so I think the idea that Crowley “could have sh0t Gates” is going overboard in making the case about an asymmetry of power. Not that there wasn’t one, but rather that this wasn’t a meaningful part of it.

In the same way that the citizen has no recourse against the fellow citizen who calls him a boor, he has no recouse against he cop who simply calls him a boor (again, see above, without using epithets, obscenities, threats, etc.). It might provide food for thought, and hopefully it will create a break in the action that can allow the cop to de-escalate the situation, finish the investigation and leave.

Don’t you see a certain incompatibility (not inevitable or necessary, but at least plausible) between a policeman’s exercising his citizen’s right to call another citizen a boor, and the policeman’s professional responsibility to maintain order by, as you say, de-escalating tense situations? Isn’t there a professional obligation to calm a situation in which no one is yet breaking the law, even if behaving in a calming fashion would interfere with the policeman’s right to give people a lesson in proper manners?

It seems very plausible that that’s what happened in the Gates arrest—that Crowley decided Gates was behaving unreasonably, and deliberately acted in an inflammatory rather than a calming manner because he knew that Gates would have to either back off or be arrested.

Salient: I guess the arrest of Gates is at the right threshold: offensive enough to me to warrant comment, but contentious/not-clear-cut enough to enable discussion and provide the opportunity for us to publicly consider what we want from our police force.

The reason this resonates so much with me is that I have experience of a situation analogous to this one. In contrast, incidents of truly horrendous police misconduct remain for me items in a newspaper, somewhat removed from my experience, so my response to them is a bit more theoretical.

In my case, the arrest was of a colleague of mine (we’re academics at a major state university in Texas) of the brown-skinned persuasion. He and several other drivers were pulled over for traffic violations, and (according to an eyewitness) when the officer walked by to start the citation issuing at the end of the line, he told my colleague to “wait right here, boy, while I issue citations to these other people”. My colleague, a very polite person at his most agitated, asked what the officer meant by calling him “boy”. That resulted in him being pushed up against his car, cuffed, and arrested for “resisting arrest”, not quite disorderly conduct, rather a bit of circular logic. He ended up spending the night in jail for driving while brown, and would likely have been kept there for 72 hours according to the officer at the station I talked to if I hadn’t retained for him a defense lawyer with a formidable reputation. One call from that guy and the charges were dropped and he was out of there within minutes.

So how common are such incidents, and how much have they colored the relationship of the populace to the police? This didn’t make the news. If you add such experiences to the constant headlines about much worse incidents and the more minor abuses that presumably occur to others as they have to me, you end up with a serious disincentive to trust, or even to interact with, police. I now see them as a threat, albeit somewhat less of a threat than an actual burglar. If I’m driving near one, I maneuver unobtrusively away lest I be pulled over on a whim. I report incidents like burglaries only reluctantly, and only if I need to for insurance reasons, since I’m certain nothing positive will come of it (nothing ever has when I have reported such things) and something unpleasant might. And in a minor criminal case in which the only evidence against the defendant was the testimony of a police officer, I hung the jury because I could never consider uncorroborated police testimony as proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt.

Even with my obvious antiauthoritarian bias, I appreciate del Pozo’s balanced take on this. I understand why Gates might be prone to jump to a “racism” conclusion in these circumstances, I am unsurprised that Crowley overstepped his authority (whether it was a legal move on his part or not) and arrested Gates, it’s what I have come to expect, and I agree with those who think this was really mostly about both men reacting to being “disrespected” in the situation.

I doubt that it particularly tags Crowley as racist, I don’t find that controversy to be particularly interesting anyway. I’m a lot more concerned about the general role of police in our society. Incidents like this polarize people like me against the police, leading to poorer relations between the community and police, making such incidents more likely to happen, and the vicious cycle rolls on. To the extent that the dialog around this event leads to effective action to improve the situation, I’m glad it happened. I hope to see some action and not just more statements like mine that we need to do something about it.

Complaining about police conduct for a violaton (not a misdemeanor or felony) usually does not involve invoking the direct involvement of the president of the United States of America, in a nationwide statement, especially when the facts of the matter are still clearly in dispute

Blaming Gates for this is bizarre. Do you have any reason to believe that Gates requested that Obama become involved? Obama was asked about the incident in a news conference, and Gates is a friend of his, so he responded. Spinning this as a abuse of power by Gates makes no sense.

Isn’t there a professional obligation to calm a situation in which no one is yet breaking the law, even if behaving in a calming fashion would interfere with the policeman’s right to give people a lesson in proper manners?

Absolutely. However, straightforward assertions like “Sir, I feel your raised voice at me is unwarranted and very impolite” are often useful diplomatic tools. A statement like that can call a person’s attention to their own behavior, which they may immediately recognize for themselves as inappropriate.

OTOH, as you say, if Crowley had thought of a different diplomatic technique and used that instead, because circumstantially it seemed more likely to de-escalate the situation, of course that’s what he should’ve done. The point is less to “give a lesson in proper manners” and more to “remind the person that their vitriol is completely one-sided, and perhaps they ought to try to be more cooperative with the people around them.”

Oops. I’d like to apologize for #329, which unfortunately brought into the universe of discourse that Crowley theoretically could have shot Gates, which has led to some unfortunate side conversation about what we mean by “could have shot” or some such phrase, etc.

In my defense, in #329 I was trying to point out how ridiculous it is to call something a “judgment call” and then suggest it’s OK for exactly that reason. Every conscious act is a “judgment call.” I wasn’t trying to bring deadly force into play, and insofar as I encouraged others to take that seriously who wouldn’t have otherwise, sorry for distracting you folks.

brandon: the President of the Unites States of America, later uses a press conference on health care to say to the entire nation that the cop acted “stupidly” and inappropriately,

To be more precise, a member of the press asked him about it, and he responded with some straightforward comments.

brandon: There are certain procedures, not laws, that prohibit certain types of political conduct by police officers. But they do not cede any rights as citizens, on or off duty, due to their position,

brandon:Things like that [enforcing “social norms” against public same-sex kissing] are beyong the pale and no business of cops qua cops or qua citizens.

I’m glad you have what sounds like a reasonable idea of what “social norms” to enforce, and what “social norms” not to enforce, but is that true of every police officer who feels the right, as a citizen, to do some social norm enforcement? Also, there’s a big difference between a regular schmo saying “hey, you guys, cut it out, that’s disgusting”, and someone with muscle, baton, taser, gun, handcuffs, and power of arrest saying it, even if more politely.

In other news, a police chief recently taught a rebellious fourteen-year-old girl the social norm of respect for her elders, by tasering her in the forehead.

diplomatic technique… Jesus Christ. Right, a cop should’ve used diplomatic technique to prevent celebrity Harvard professor from becoming disorderly and spending 4 hours in a holding cell. Sing a song, a lullaby? A pacifier, maybe?

PS—looks to me like the caller unequicocally did not say the two men at the house were black. In fact, on CNN just now her audiotape has her saying she can’t see one at all, and only says “maybe hispanic” after being prompted by the 911 operator. Does this sound like a witness that would tell the officer arriving at the scene (Crowley) that it was two black guys?

On page one of Crowleys police report he says: “(Whalen) went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch on Ware street.”

Unless she saw them again, after the 911 call. Absent that, looks like typical police cooking the reports again. And you guys straining to justify this crap are looking weaker all the time.

So on the tapes you can hear Gates saying loudly and forcefully, but not achieving the status of a yell, “I want your name” (not “your ID”) while the cop simultaneously describes the homeowner as uncooperative. Later in a brief transmission you can hear him yelling something indecipherable, while the cop transmits Gates’ name. This is the point in the encounter that Crowley described as not being able to hear his own voice due to the loudness. The dispatcher asks him to repeat himself, but they lost radio contact after that. The transmissions are so brief that either “side” will be able to say they support their version of events, and will draw conclusions according to their predispositions.

There were two women witnesses there. One was an older woman, who Walen describes in her 911 call. That’s probably who he spoke to. She was never identified by the caller, and perhaps police jsut assumed that she was Walen.

There were two women witnesses there. One was an older woman, who Walen describes in her 911 call. That’s probably who he spoke to. She was never identified by the caller, and perhaps police jsut assumed that she was Walen.

So then CPD is in the habit of interviewing witnesses without getting their names- and then just making up a name in their reports? This wouldn’t really make them look better.

374: So much for Crowley’s credibility.

To be fair, there’s nothing to say that it’s Crowley’s error, rather than that of whoever spoke to Whelan.

To be fair, there’s nothing to say that it’s Crowley’s error, rather than that of whoever spoke to Whelan.

Crowley’s own report said (falsely as it turns out) that he talked to “a woman later identified as Lucia Whalen”.

So as I said, he didn’t even ask the witness he was talking to her name, but asked one of the other cops later (who gave the wrong answer). Not an example of first-rate police work , and rather credibility-undermining. In a “real” case that sort of thing could do significant damage to the cop as a witness in court.

Oh, whoops—I just looked back at the report, and Crowley says he’s the one who spoke to Whelan. Yeah, there goes his credibility.

About credibility: throughout this discussion, I’ve been trying to remain agnostic as to who was rude to whom first—that was a he-said, he-said between Crowley and Gates. The only clearly established fact is that Crowley arrested Gates without obviously sufficient cause. Given that fact, it’s been hard not regard Crowley as globally less credible than Gates, and that now seems to be borne out by the new evidence.

Another credibility issue: One thing the tapes didn’t show: any obvious background sound that indicated Gates was shouting during the incident. Another voice can be heard in the background of at least three transmissions, but what the person is saying isn’t intelligible.

385: Yep. Now, you might not be able to hear shouting in the background well, but Crowley certainly doesn’t sound like he’s having to shout over someone: he seems to be speaking in an ordinary tone of voice.

Cops never stop being citizens, and citizens have the right to tell other citizens they’re jerks and boors in the manner in which they treat people. If this bit refers to 1st Amendment rights, it is very far from being unqualifiedly true, as seen in recent relevant cases discussed on CT here. Just to be genuinely constructive, I think this example is a useful illustration of the problems of allowing an understandable concern for academic freedom (in state colleges) to argue for blanket first amendment protection for everything a govt employee may say at work.

It is possible to do a lawful thing that is stupid, and that is why officers have discretion in many cases. While it can be misused, discretion is there to prevent them from stupidly enforcing the letter of the law.

Discretion not to arrest or charge is not the main issue here – the officer did not avail himself of it and has no duty to do so. However both discretion to tolerate perceived offences and the need for sweeping judgement in identifying them that is built into vague public order offences are undesirable.

Discretion not to proceed, because it’s such a prejudice-magnifier and a vehicle for vindictiveness as well as outright corrupt victimisation – the need for judgement partly for the same reason, but also because effectvely leads to a situation (which the lawgivers seem happy with) in which anything out of the ordinary is potentially punishable, depending on the essentially contestable judgement of cops. I’m reminded somewhat of how the high level of violent crime and rape in prisons is acquiesced in if not encouraged because the authorities are quite happy with outsourcing the cruel side of punishment. And so it’s true that the issue is not only the fault of cops, but also of the law and those who make it. There is though, no shortage of blame to go round.

Police officers are expected to bear much greater burdens than the average citizen in this regard [having people being rude to them] due to the nature of their job are they? Have you ever worked in a busy kitchen? In a call centre? As a traffic warden, umpire of a McEnroe match, etc etc? [Edit #281 has the same point but I MUST make it too otherwise I have wasted precious typing time].

It’s a bit like the heavier burden on a spoilt child of not having its every whim pandered to, compared to a child who has learnt some humility, self-control and ability to recognise the claims of others. It may well be real, but is it undeserved, and do we want to compensate for it?

There’s also that strange kind of thought process that is more offended by an insult from a less powerful person – don’t they know who you are? How dare they not only trot out some remark that a tough guy like you should be able to shrug off, but take advantage of your better nature to evade the arrest you could so easily mete out? Well, what choice do you have but to ignore whatever remnant of that better nature survives, and arrest the scumbags. (Reminded here of the reaction of Israeli hawks to pathetic defiance by Gazans – how dare they provoke us? We’ll show them.)

In general the approach which focusses on Gates’s behaviour rather than the officer seems quite beside the point. Yelling at someone who is hanging around in your house is not a serious matter – manacling someone, manhandling them and locking them up is. The rape analogy (and its hints of envious schadenfreude – I have restricted my freedom to, or have no inclination to, dress like that etc. – so she was asking for it) as well-made above by alkali is certainly apt. I’d add that such views rest on a failure to acknowledge that there are different kinds of culpability – prudential, moral, criminal (also, IMO sui generis, epistemic) – and there is plenty of all of them to go round. Allocating blame to parties is not a fixed-sum exercise.

Oh yeah, and a tiny point – much was made of the small crowd that assembled (as evidence of ‘tumult’). The increasing number of police and police cars gathered outside might have had something to do with that.

Capt del Pozo writes: “The officer instructs the person to exit the house and talk on the porch. This is standard police safety practice. An unfamiliar building with unknown occupants that is the potential site of a burglary is not a safe place for an officer to enter, especially alone. If he is drawn into the home and attacked there, he can be locked in and will take longer to rescue. Kitchens have a variety of weapons, and rooms have limited sight lines and places for suspects to hide. Bringing a suspect to the porch is a prudent move for an officer.”—If this was Crowley’s thinking, why did Crowley then follow Gates inside and into the kitchen?

“Also, does anyone know why there are no reports by onlookers (not policemen) outside the house, on what they saw?”

Lack of appetite for threats, abuse and fleeting global fame?

The error we are talking about is that Crowley, in his report, misidentified a woman as Whelan. How is that an error in Crowley’s favor? He talked to someone who said “two black men”, he put “two black men” in his report.

Do you have any source for the claim that any witness said “Two black men”? Until someone comes forward and says, “That was me, I spoke to the police, and I told them that the ‘burglars’ were black,” I don’t think we can assume there was some such witness.

I’m presuming here that Gates had not provided the ID with an address by the time Crowley went inside, because if so, at that point, I think he needs a warrant.

We have only Gates’s word against Crowley’s for that, and at this point Crowley’s word isn’t exactly looking like a gold standard.

LizardBreath: no I don’t. That’s just the narrative as I understand it. But I’d confess I’m not too troubled if no one said “black” but he put that in the report afterwards, because (1) that’s a normal human mistake – confusing reality and what someone said, when writing after the event; and (2) I don’t see what it changes. OK, lots of anti-Gates/pro-Crowley have mentioned the fact that Crowley was justified in his actions because he had the report of a break-in by two black men and there before him was a black man. But IMHO nothing really changes if the report is just of two men because there before him was a man.

Heh. Everyone’s gone completely nuts, apparently, with this thing:

Murphy also disputed accounts of her client [Whalen] as a white woman in the traditional sense. “The fact is, she’s olive-skinned and of Portuguese descent. You wouldn’t look at her and say, necessarily, ‘Oh, there’s a white woman.’ You might think she was Hispanic,” Murphy said.

LizardBreath just said exactly what I also meant. If false, the statement about race is pretty clearly an artful one and not just random. (From his use of the word “tumultuous” from the archaic Mass. statue it’s clear that Sgt. Crowley knows all about artful construction of reports.)

By the way, just of curiosity, is there any fact that could come to light that would change any one’s position in this, and if so, what would it be?

That opportunity (for Crowley) has already come and gone. The tapes of his calls could easily have backed up his story. Well, they’ve been released and they really don’t back it up at all. Oops.

Thanks LizardBreath- I should have made that point in my previous reply. It’s not that Crowley’s actions ever looked justified, it’s just that the new evidence makes them look even worse.

“I’d need evidence that Gates actually did something worse than shouting before I thought Crowley had acted acceptably.” Yes, but my initial position is that it’s possible that neither Crowley nor Gates’ acted acceptably, Crowley for arresting Gates for not much, and Gates for shouting at a policeman in the performance of his duty. Gates’ shouting doesn’t imply that Crowley acts acceptably; it only implies that Gates’ acted unacceptably.

OK, Henry, I hope you mean the ‘nlk sm cps nt ttl mrn’ bit, which I freely confess was unwarranted and for which I went back to have another look at with the thought of retracting of my own accord (honest!), as I have happily done for lesser snideries in the past, but now needn’t in this case.

I think the rest was probably fair comment (? just – or would have been without the above as context), if somewhat overheated. I don’t try to start fights or want to piss anyone off, but do find this stuff pretty enragingly arrogant and sinister. But of course I recognise that invective will not aid my cause in any case.

I still think deleting my other post (re: Blair) and replacing it with an inaccurate (certainly on an author’s intention model) description was a bit of a wrong ‘un though – but you must use your discretion as you see fit!

If Gates screamed or shouted in a normal (!?) manner, I don’t think he should have been arrested; still, if he screamed or shouted, I think he can be held partly responsible for the outcome.

No. That’s police misconduct full stop, and saying that the police would have treated him better if he hadn’t been impolite to them doesn’t change anything. My last bike wouldn’t have been stolen if I’d had a better lock, but that doesn’t make me responsible for the theft.

Or what djw said.

“I’ll certainly agree with this, if we can further specify that Gates is (partially) prudentially responsible, whereas Crowley is prudientially, morally, and legally responsible for the outcome.” Well, I’d add in that Gates is also morally responsible. And, not being a legal expert, I’d leave out the “legally” for Crowley, but I could well be in error.

“My last bike wouldn’t have been stolen if I’d had a better lock, but that doesn’t make me responsible for the theft.” Son #2 called son #1 a bad name, so son #1 hit son #2. I’d say both are responsible. You absolve son #2?

Rudeness to the police can, in some circumstances, be criticized on moral as well as prudential grounds. I’m not convinced Gates’ rudeness falls in that category, but even assuming it does, there are no grounds under which, in a free society, rudeness ought to be criminalized and make one subject to arrest. So, if Ms. Manners is scoring the whole encounter, she might find non-prudential grounds to criticize Gates’ behavior. But to the extent that the arrest is the outcome, whatever those wrongs are ought to be irrelevent. In a free society, that is.

Son #2 called son #1 a bad name, so son #1 hit son #2. I’d say both are responsible. You absolve son #2?

If I’m a parent, and I’ve made both name-calling and hitting against the rules, then of course not. I could further explain the extent to which the rules and powers governing families are disanalogous to the rules and powers governing citizens, but I think John Locke had that pretty well sorted out three-odd centuries ago.

“We have a place. That place is to obey the police.”

I think that this comment really gets to the heart of the disgreement among the commenters herein, to a much greater extent than disgreememtns about facts (and let’s face it – none of us were there, so a certain amount of humility in both directions might be appropriate). Those who feel this way will support the officer, and will find Dr. Gate’s conduct inappropriate. Those of us who don’t fully embrace such formulation (and I certainly don’t – it may be wise to obey a police office, and in some limited circumstances legally required, but it is certainly not our “place” to do so as a general rule. I find that notice, in fact, not just incorrect but repugnant).

“This is my general epistemic stance, not just my law enforcement one.”

But why then treat the officer’s report with more credibility than Dr. Gate’s version?

Like Michael Corleone, I try to get out but keep getting pulled back in.

As long as there was some woman who stated to Crowley that there were two black males at the door, I don’t see it as a serious indictment that he misidentified the woman as Whelan. I would be very disturbed if we were to learn that somebody came forward and told him from the get-go that the house belonged to the Harvard professor that just entered it, or something like that, and he omitted that from a report. I said earlier that it’s important to figure out what “yelling” meant as he related it, becuase there is a big difference between intermittent yelling and the constant yells of a man who is genuinely impeding an investigation. I am not here to defend Crowley’s actions at all costs, but rather to fully flesh out the universe of policing they took place in. Some of that will involve discussions of political philosophy from that perspective, obviously.

I will also fully agree that informal control is best not administered by the police, but rather by private citizens and institutions, and note as an aside that I am only sanctioning it when the behavior is relevant to the policework at hand, and not for general purposes, such as the observation of two men kissing or refusing to bathe. I mean in the context of police situations a cop can rebuke someone, or in the case of minor observed violations, such as littering. I have also elected to tell people I think they’r being too verbally abusive to their children, even when the behavior seemed to be legal and I didn’t anticipate taking further action. Libertarians mcght not like that, but as a father and son I couldn’t let it pass. The best informal control in policing situations actually happens when citizens intercede on behalf of the police. Ten years ago, I was being race-baited by some teenagers who habitually stole fruit from a man’s cart on Flatbush and Church in Brooklyn, then said I was harassing them solely for being young and black when I confronted them, intending to give them a warning. If you know the corner, a large crowd formed, emboldening the kids into taunts. Then, out of the crowd stepped an elderly black woman who told the kids to shut up and behave and stop the nonsense, that I was a fair cop who she believed rather than them. They did as they were told, and the crowd dispersed. I then recongized her as the woman I’d helped months ago, a mile away, when she was beaten and robbed for ten dollars or so by two guys who got away. In a few words she’d done something I doubt I could have, and it was precisely because she was a private citizen. This to me is an ideal outcome, and an informal one. I also feel that if the cops and the crowd weren’t there, and it was just the woman admonishing the kids, she would hae been ignored, taunted herself, or worse. It is a collaborative effort.

Finally, a word on tasers: we are all due for some serious reform on taser use. they are a technology that has not yet been reconciled with the law, and their use and the policies governing it varies very widely from place to place. In NYC, only supervisors can deploy them, and have to fill out a rash of forms when they do, so their use can e evaluated. One lieutenant ordered the use of a taser on a man who subsequently fell from a store roll gate and died, and the LT ended up killing himself, ostensibly out of guilt and shame. A better policy would have prevented that. Agencies resort to taser use too quickly on the grounds that it is a non-lethal device, just above or near a hand strike. This doesn’t seem appropriate.

“Under the well known precedent of Stick v. Stone, I say that Son #2 is not responsible for Son #1 hitting him, yes.”

Well, I wouldn’t say Son#2 is responsible, either, because that makes it sound like he is the only one responsible. But I would say Son #2 bears some responsibility for Son #1’s hitting him. (Or I would say that Son #1 and Son #2 both are responsible.) So it’s possible we just have a different notion of responsibility, which is not restricted to the Crowley/Gates incident, but to other types of incidents where there is interaction between different agents.

“I could further explain the extent to which the rules and powers governing families are disanalogous to the rules and powers governing citizens.” Surely some analogies hold, while others don’t. A blanket rejection doesn’t strike me as very plausible, Locke or no Locke.

“Which mirrors the standard parental response…” Well, I send both to their room.

Sorry, have to go. Thanks for the discussion.

oops, left out the rest of the final sentence – essentially, police officers are every bit as likely to make these sort of “fill in the gap” inaccuracies than “civilians.” Maybe moreso, because they tend to be more concious of the existance and importance of said gaps.

430: Here’s Gates’ story.

“The police need to foster an environment in which they can deliver public safety without being subject to obscenities, accusations and yelling from any party, even innocent parties. ”

The best way to do this, I think, is to stop acting like an occupying army. For every bad guy you intimidate, there are a couple hundred “citizens” who no longer see you as the good guy. Why? because you don’t act like a good guy.

I recently spoke to a police sergeant on a main street in the neighbourhood in which I lived for about a quarter of a century. I got the complete Alpha Male intimidating stare, the snarling inquiry as to what my business was there and if there was any reason for me not to move on.

I could not help but think about the time I went down a back alley to help a constable who was losing a fight with a local punk. (Ended up with a civilian citation, too.) But that was more than a quarter century ago. I’m not sure I would do it again. I like to go into a scuffle on the side of people I trust. And I just don’t trust you any more.

a:

I guess I do need to spell it out. It’s disanalogous because whereas parents have full warrant to ban rude speech on the part of their children, in a free society the state does not. Both are well within their rights to ban violence.

Late to the game here coming in as a tail-end charlie, but as a retiree I’ve the time to have read ALL the comments (pant) and would like to just say at the outset what a thoughtful conversation this has been. Like the old India tale of the blind men each grasping a different appendage of the elephant and describing the elephant’s over-all shape from that alone, we have had just that sort of multi-faceted description here with the “true” nature of the course of events under discussion fairly well-bracketed by all, even if necessarily ultimately inconclusive.

At the risk of going over plowed ground, let me make a few observations about police-civil relationships from a 65 yr-old life-long conservative Republican white-man who is both a military and academic retiree who grew up and was educated K-12 on an integrated college campus in “The Land of Lincoln,” but whose undergraduate college experience was gained attending an all-white southern university in the Jim Crow era (62-66) at the height of the tumultuous years of the Civil Rights movement—whose college career began with segregated drinking fountains and by the time it ended four short years later witnessed all those official trappings swept away first-hand. Further, as a denizen of New Orleans (although I am currently on the west coast as I write this) I have witnessed (and been the subject of) first hand the brutality and corruption of which police departments are capable. With these provisos, let me proceed:

First, the police side of the story (such as it is.) The proviso that police officers should maintain a “nuanced,” polite, understanding demeanor when handling suspects is all well and good as a matter of law, “moral rectitude,” official Police Dept policy and practical PR in terms of police-civil relationships, but in the real world this rarely happens. This disconnect between the actions of the cop on the beat and his official training (and the law as written) is due in no small part to the hardening effect of being immersed basically one’s entire working life in dealings with the worst human society has to offer. This fact alone leads to a cynical, jaded force which sees all too many police treat/view white middle-aged housewives and black college professors alike the same as they would the most violent offenders, real scum—a very real occupational hazard, regrettable and inexcusable ( ethically) though it may be. Also do not underestimate the extent to which the police suffer from a sort of “battle-fatigue” that comes from the knowledge that a simple traffic stop may lead to their own deaths unless supreme care is taken in a day in which people roam the land high on a potent mixture of drugs and alcohol 24/7. Only a couple of years ago a black female police officer (whom I knew personally) in New Orleans knocking on the door of a black male to serve a warrant for a mental inquest was shot dead instantly as the deranged man opened the door. Police are a wary lot these days.

It has already been noted here that policing is the sort of profession that attracts the authoritarian type character. Always present exceptions aside, the sort of personality type who aspires to be a fighter-pilot is unlikely to be attracted to accounting as a profession, and visa versa. And the nature of the job only reinforces those tendencies given the nature of the legal powers given the police in the same way that the daily working life of a stock-broker reinforces existing manic-depressive personality disorders even as those sorts of personalities are attracted to that profession to begin with. Couple these psychic tendencies with both the legal authority given the police and the very real practical need noted here by many (by way of explaining the policeman’s actions in this case) for the Police to immediate establish their authority in any given situation, and one arrives at what critics of Police not without cause label what can only best be described as a prematurely belligerent, chip-on-the-shoulder “cop attitude” which doesn’t brook what they perceive as even the slightest challenge to their authority, no matter how politely couched in respectful, even dulcet, tones. And if one does nevertheless? As one cop I know once proudly boasted: “I dropped a paper-work bomb on him.” IE, once arrested, the onus in proving one’s innocence is on the arrestee—which usually involves thousands of dollars in lawyers fees and time away from work (usually a monetary loss itself) even if the charges are ultimately dropped. Indeed, this happened once to me in N.O. costing me $1,800.00 attnys fees (very cheap at the price for what was involved) and a year of court dates and uncertainty—and with the prospect of large fines and imprisonment or lengthy community service—or both looming large—all to cover a false charge by the arresting officers, one of whom, the black female of the pair, threatened to smash me in the mouth (I was hand-cuffed at the time) for protesting “overly” vociferously. For the officers involved there is, unlike the hi-profile Gates case, usually no penalty to the officer for dropping a very expensive and time-consuming “paper-work bomb” on the insufficiently compliant. Yes, like Professor Gates, I have been there before.

And I understand the adrenal-gland induced, sensitivity leading reflexively to supreme irritation—let alone rage—of blacks to being “racially profiled. I have been profiled three times in my life over a span of some thirty-five years. The first occurred in 1964 shortly after the Schwermer—Cheney killings in Miss. I was exiting Jackson Miss returning to classes after Thanksgiving vacation around 2am taking a back-country short-cut to Baton Rouge (the expressway being not yet completed) and was tailgated immediately by blinding lights a few feet from my bumper. Fearing the sort of vigilantee action that killed the afore-mentioned pair, as I thought my Illinois plates might be thought of as identifying me as an “out-side agitator,” and thus fair game—rather than the college student returning to campus I actually was I sped up. The lights followed apace until I was finally able to gain some separation at 100+mph.
Upon slowing down to enter the small town of Hinds, the red-light came on behind me.
Turns out the individual thinking I was an “out-side agitator” was a Mississippi State trooper who had failed to see my LSU sticker on the slanted rear window of my Barracuda. I was ticketed for both speeding and improper lane changing. At 2:30 am alone in Miss. with the State Trooper I was not about to protest his actions. (Years later I would discover in Louisville Ky that tailgating uncomfortably closely at night or “rushing” at one’s car from behind at high speed to induce fear of a collusion and thus speed up to the point of breaking the speed limit to avoid the coming crash and thus subsequent arrest and fining for speeding is SOP among many police depts)

A decade later, just out of the Air Force, and as a volunteer combat veteran of Vietnam. I was laughably “profiled” as an anti-war hippie by a city cop in Lafayette, La. for supposedly running a red light that was clearly yellow when entered the intersection. How do I know? You see, my car in the garage, I had borrowed the car of the girl-friend of a fraternity brother of mine from my undergraduate days living in town. On it’s rear window was an anti-war symbol sticker (you know, the kind superimposed on a US flag in the background of the circle) As the cop stood there writing the ticket, he kept glancing at the sticker time and again with a disgusted look on his face—no warning ticket for this anti-war “hippee!”

The third time happened years later in 1998 on I-57 in Illinois. This time I had come full circle as it involved an Illinois state trooper stopping my car with Louisiana plates.
Long story short I was in a Ford Tarus rent-a-car driving exactly the speed limit on cruise control. As the trooper later explained, the rent-a-car with Louisiana plates driving EXACTLY the speed limit on cruise control (so as not to risk cop attention for traffic stop for speeding) fits the exact profile of N.O to Chicago drug-runners, and the State police stop such cars as a matter of principle on any technical excuse. In my case the rental Co license-plate frame partially obscured the name of the State. By the time it was all over my car had been searched thoroughly for drugs and “large amounts of cash” and three state police cars were on the scene. The police, though friendly and professional enough, covered themselves by letting me off with a warning ticket for “improper equipment” (the license-plate bracket.)

(My wife has also evidently been profiled. As a Louisiana Creole, she has an exotic appearance. Once, when returning alone to LAX from a trip to Sydney, Aus to see an ailing close relative, she was taken aside at customs and subjected to the drug-sniffing dog bit with her luggage, intense scrutiny of her passport, and total body strip search based on—as far as one could tell—no more than her looks alone.)

Well, so much for the police. What about Gates? Granting his natural and well to be understood (given historical societal realities) visceral reaction to his circumstance, he STILL, to my mind should be criticized NOT so much for failing to keep his temper (although he should have ideally done so) but for milking the whole thing as yet another “put upon, ever-suffering” black man situation ripe for a “teachable moment.” An as of yet widely known fact as I understand it, is that he is currently in discussion with PBS about a series on race relations. How convenient. (Although one can’t really blame him for making lemonade out of lemons if the hype will simultaneously enhance his rep. and put money in his pocket—it’s the good old American way) No, I fault him for having the gall to suggest that he is somehow a victim loser in the American rat-race. Rather it seems to me that he is one of the King Rats. A widely respected scholar paid a far, far better salary than the average white American with pension and health benefits most in the private sector only dream about and enjoying a standard of living far above the average white American in what can only be described as the most comfortable of working circumstances and only just returned from a subsidized globe-trotting trip to China, Gates seems hardly a candidate for the archetypical long-suffering, put-upon victim of structural racism he seeks to depict himself as representing. Instead he seems to me to validate the proposition that, whatever the vestigial remains of underlying racism there are in present-day society, they hardly hinder those persons of color willing to work hard , avoid a life of crime and drugs and take all the advantages of all the educational opportunities this nation makes available. Gates is dangerously near the “jump the shark” moment in his efforts to milk this for all it’s worth in an attempt to transform what was a basically cop-civilian kerfuffle into a racial one.

PS: And to demonstrate the current PC oversensitive climate on race relations one need only see the way in which the media considers the fact that the 911 tapes of the neighbors initial call to the Police reveal that she did not describe the race of the possible intruders as being a sign of being a “non-racist.” To fail to include their racial make-up in the description to the 911 operator is PC stupidly akin to describing to police the identity of a fleeing bank-robber without mentioning the key fact that he was, among other things, in fact, bald. An omission no more ridiculous than omitting a description of his height, weight, color of hair and eyes and manner of attire—or of color of skin…..

Gates is dangerously near the “jump the shark” moment in his efforts to milk this for all it’s worth in an attempt to transform what was a basically cop-civilian kerfuffle into a racial one.

A less deliberately uncharitable reading would be that he wants to use this opportunity to call attention to abuses that happen routinely- and disproportionately to non-white people- and, since the victims are not well-known people with connections, with impunity. Much of your comment was commendably open-minded but you kind of jumped the shark yourself at this point.

snarkfree, you can tell the arrest was a bogus arrest and that Crowley knew he was falsely arresting Gates from his “description” of Gates’s behavior. He doesn’t actually describe the behavior; he characterizes it. He says Gates was behaving in a “tumultuous” manner; he doesn’t say what Gates was doing that was tumultuous. He says that Gates “continued to yell”, drawing the attention of “onlookers and police officers, who appeared surprised and alarmed by Gates’s outburst.” We aren’t told what Gates is doing that’s causing these people to appear surprised and alarmed.

An honest police officer would tell us what Gates was actually doing, and we would be able to tell whether it fell within the parameters of the law. Crowley, as a dishonest police officer, knows the legal terms describing the charge he wants to make, and describes Gates’s conduct in the terms taken from the law.

Ok. Let’s concede Gates is not a great example of an oppressed underclass subject to daily racial profiling from society at large and police in general. Let’s go further and concede he could be a pompous, self-aggrandizing celebrity with an overweening sense of entitlement, who could have “managed” the police encounter without getting arrested. Sure, I’ll go for that.

The problem here is that the rest of us are not at risk of perfessor Gates appearing at our door or stopping us in our car, and subjecting us to search, interrogation, arrest or worse. The police have that power and it’s the police conduct we should be concerned with.

IMHO, yelling is not an offense under massachusetts law, Crowley’s claim of “two black men” and “tumultuous” behavior is not supported by the tapes. In short, he was arrested to establish police dominance, not for violation of any law.

Whalen’s lawyer now says that Whalen did speak to Crowley, but only something in the vein of “I’m the person that called.” Her lawyer also said that police said that that part of the report (black men, backpacks) was a composite of information gathered from multiple witnesses.

Link?

http://www.necn.com/Boston/New-England/2009/07/27/Broadside-Wendy-Murphy/1248737633.html

brandon: Like Michael Corleone, I try to get out but keep getting pulled back in.
I tend to think that by GF3, Pacino’s powers were on the wane – though he hadn’t quite reached his subsequent self-parody phase. He was incomparably better in the earlier stuff like Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico.

snarkfree,

Can we at least agree then that Crowley’s report can not be taken as strictly reliable? However much the police department now claims that the backpacks, for example, are part of a composite from other witnesses, it would appear that it is not true. If the report is not a factual description of what happened but rather a composite of reports from various unknown sources, we really have to consider that possibility that it is inaccurate. Indeed, it seems that to the extent we can verify Crowley’s report, the report is inaccurate or misleading. I don’t know if Gates was, or was not rude to Crowley, but at this point there seems to be very little justification for the arrest, and that the arrest may very well have been flatly illegal.

Steve LaBonne;

You’re correct, Gate’s motives could easily be as you describe. Were I a betting man (and I am) I’d put money on it being an admixture of both. BYW, next time I’ll drop the jump the shark bit and substitute “screwed the pooch.” OK? :)

PS to Steve Labonne.

Although a geezer of age 65 I jealously guard my “hipster” status and would be disconsolate to lose it. So, pray tell, what is the latest cutting edge substitute for the term P a-rose-by-any-other-name C? Please advise so I won’t get kicked out of the club. Great catch-all acronyms are hard to come by.

As it’s stated in the report, the words came from one person. The only description of it as composite came from that lawyer, second-hand; since the lawyer had earlier misstated that the witness had never spoken to the officer, there’s room for doubt about the revised version.

Sweet Jesus this is pathological. The police report says that Crowley heard about the backpacks from Whalen when he arrived at the scene. Whalen’s lawyer says that Whalen never talked to Crowley; and then, actually, scratch that, she said “I’m the person who called” and he said “Stay over here.” Whoops, there goes her credibility—can we believe anything that she says?

And of course in the 911 call she explicitly mentions luggage, not backpacks, and to top this all off there were no backpacks.

But of course the police are fully credible and if we engage in sufficient mental gymnastics then every inaccuracy in the police report can be rationalized away (but we can’t treat the police report as a self-serving document designed to justify Gates’s arrest—I just don’t see how the incentives would work for that). After all, memories are imperfect and the situation was complicated.

And another reason to give the police the benefit of the doubt is that Gates denied raising his voice, and then later admitted that he did. You know, you just can’t trust people whose stories aren’t 100% consistent at all times.

Geez.

If a policeman rang my doorbell and demanded to know what I was doing in my own house and asked for my identification, I would be pretty upset and incredulous and would ask for their identification, as well. It’s a very improbable situation. I would suspect it was some kind of scam or imposture.

“The punishment for purjury in NYC is very severe, and I agree with that. It is the fastest nonviolent way to end your police career.”

I let this pass intially, but …

A form of that statement was in my experience a particulaly bogus argument that DAs would make to juries in arguing that the testimony of a police office was credible – “why would the officer risk his career by committing perjury?” It is – entirely – bullshit. While a perjury conviction would likely end the career of a police officer, short of that there is (essentially) zero risk that a police office will be fired for lying on the witness stand. It simply doesn’t happen. Nor are police officer prosecuted for perjury, for reasons which should be obvious when one considers that the charging authority is the district attorney. (I would add parenthetically that perjury convictioons are very dificult to obtain – though this is a moot point, as police officers aren’t charged with perjury in the first place.)

No, this does not misstate the time line. According to the police report and to the civilian witness, the very first thing the officer did was to ask Dr. Gates to step out on to the porch for a moment, and Dr. Gates refused.

“I really don’t understand why “establishing control over the situation”—using legal/physical threats (or just naked force) to coerce passive obedience from those in the vicinity—is a central part of this.”

The writer did not mention coercion of passive obedience. What he said was that an officer arriving on the scene of a situation that has too many unknown variables is in grave danger. The examples of the unknown variables are:
-The identity of those who broke into the house
-The identity of the man who answered the door when the officer arrived
-The number of people potentially in the house, potentially coercing the homeowner into responding that “all is well”
-The sight lines/topography of the interior of the house
-The availability of weapons in the house
-The homeowner’s mental state, use of substances, etc.

The list is actually longer than that; this is just a sample. The idea of “gaining control” of the situation does not extend to the straw man created by the commenter. The point the writer is making is that it is standard practice for the police officer to ask Dr. Gates to step out onto the porch, because once Dr. Gates does so, many of those unknowns cease to pose a threat to Dr. Gates or to the officer.

Um, Tony you are either mistaken or muddying the waters or both. Gates did not “break into his own home.” He and his driver tried to push open the door but it was stuck. So he went around to the side and used a key to go in a side entrance. Then he went to the front door and opened it from the inside so the bags could be brought inside.

Gates was inside and on the phone with Harvard Maintenance when Crowley knocked on the door and demanded his identification.

Give it up, Tony, you can’t defend the indefensible.

tony,

Under MA law, each police officer is required to carry on his person an identification card with his picture and the municipal seal. One can remove this from a pocket and hand it to another person, even if that other person is talking. (Whether Gates was, in fact, talking over Crowley’s efforts to answer is debatable given the evidence of the audio tapes, but even so)

This other point, I really have to comment on. You mention one of the dangers that Crowley has to consider when approaching the house is “-The number of people potentially in the house, potentially coercing the homeowner into responding that “all is well” “. Let me get this straight, Crowley is supposedly concerned that there is someone threatening the homeowner, what with a gun. So Crowley’s first action is to ask the homeowner to step outside? What are these people “coercing the homeowner” going to do if he steps outside? Is this Officer Crowley or Officer Clouseau?

As a final note, there has been much discussion about whether Crowley should have asked Gates out onto the porch or risked going inside to an unknown situation. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve managed on several occasions, with police officers and with others, to communicate with me on the inside of the house and the other person on the porch. Especially if there is no reason for a lengthy conversation this works fine. I don’t see why Crowley could not have started by ascertaining from the person who answered the door information to help guide his next moves.

That is not what is in the police report.

Also in the police report is the statement that Lucia Whalen told Crowley that she saw 2 black men with backpacks enter the house. Yet it turns out that Whalen told Crowley nothing of the sort.

Weird.

Barbar, yeah, plus it doesn’t matter what’s in the police report about Gates asking for Crowley’s information. Crowley was obligated to hand over his identification document. His assertion that Gates’s behavior kept him from giving the information, when he admits he wasn’t giving it in the proper form, helps indicate that he’s lying. If he had really responded to Gates’s request, why didn’t he hand over the document? If he refused to give the information, making up a story about Gates yelling so loud he couldn’t do it helps cover up his refusal.

The tapes prove he was lying about Gates’s yelling, he says Gates was yelling so loud he couldn’t communicate, but he communicated fine. As you’ve noted, the evidence we now have proves he was lying about the black men with backpacks.

But you don’t even need any contrary evidence to see that he was lying about the reason for the arrest. He doesn’t describe Gates’s behavior, he just says it was tumultuous without saying what Gates was doing that was tumultuous. He says Gates’s behavior caused observers to look surprised and alarmed, but doesn’t say what Gates was going. If he were telling the truth, he would say what Gates did.

The man knows what’s going on. He did, in fact, just force his own front door open.

This is blatantly false. Gates tried to push the front door and, when it would not budge, assumed it was latched. He then went around to the back door, unlocked it, and let himself in. No one forced their way into Gates’ home, including Gates. From Gates’ perspective, the appearance of the police was random.

Even with the new facts, this will just have to be a matter of disagreement here:

I do not share Hume’s skeptical view of causality, therefore:

I believe when you try to unsuccessfully force open your front door, with the help of another man, and then at some point a burglar alarm goes off, and you disappear around the back of your house to let yourself in and shut off the alarm, the appearance of a police officer a short time later should not been seen as a random occurence, or one without a ready explanation a reasonable person should be fully aware of.

I believe when you try to unsuccessfully force open your front door, with the help of another man, and then at some point a burglar alarm goes off, and you disappear around the back of your house to let yourself in and shut off the alarm, the appearance of a police officer a short time later should not been seen as a random occurence, or one without a ready explanation a reasonable person should be fully aware of.

How does this change anything about the situation? Even assuming Gates could have guessed what Crowley was doing there, that doesn’t make Crowley’s abuse of authority any more excusable. You’ve seen Gates’ account of the interaction; you’ve heard the tape in which Crowley appears to have been capable of talking to the dispatcher in a normal tone of voice—doesn’t it seem possible to you that Gates, in fact, didn’t behave particularly badly?

Also, I think you’ve got the facts wrong. Possibly I’m confused, but I don’t believe there’s anyone who’s said that the alarm went off – Gates entered through the back door and turned it off before it went off. Have I missed an account saying that the alarm went off at any point?

I may have the facts wrong about the alarm, LzBr. To me, turning an alarm off meant turning it off, not turning it off before it sounded.

My comment is not meant to address Crowley’s eventual decision to arrest Gates, or things people think he did prior to that which were wrong, but rather the intial tone, in the first seconds of the encounter, which set us down this road of testing a cop’s restraint and judgment when in the vastest range of similar cases this whole thing would have passed without incident. Now of course a citizen has the right to test a cop’s restraint and judgment, but I think we are better off in a community where initial respect by both parties not only prevents this outcome, but otherwise makes it very clear who is at fault for escalating a situation despite the respectful tone of the other party.

All I am saying is that Gates had a reason to know why an officer was at his door; the reason was plausible and in the service of public safety and the protection of Gates’ own home. A resaonable person acting as Gates did would not conclude the police had arrived randomly, or only because Gates was a black man who was living in a home in America, as he is alleged to have stated from the outset. To be fair, however, many people assert that being black means you have no choice but to entertain this sad possibility; let me grant that for my argument here. Even if he thought this might be why the cop was there, the other reason of investigating what he and another man had just done is, in my mind, compelling enough for him to withold judgment on the matter for a moment, speak civilly to the officer, comply with his intial requests for information, and see how it progressed from there.

Even if he thought this might be why the cop was there, the other reason of investigating what he and another man had just done is, in my mind, compelling enough for him to withold judgment on the matter for a moment, speak civilly to the officer, comply with his intial requests for information,

You know, whether or not he withheld judgment and spoke civilly, he undeniably complied with Crowley’s request that he identify himself. However Gates was behaving, he managed to tell Crowley his name, and provide him with his identification (there’s some dispute over whether he provided both his drivers license and his Harvard ID card, or just the Harvard ID, but everyone agrees he provided something.)

So there’s no question that Gates was substantively cooperative, according to Crowley’s account of the situation. The only question is whether he was rude to Crowley. And of course there’s a parallel question as to whether Crowley was rude first.

According to Gates’ account, Crowley’s demeanor was rude and threatening, and he refused to answer Gates’ legitimate questions.

And according to Crowley’s own report, he violated Mass. law by never giving Gates, in response to Gate’s request for his name and shield #, the printed card bearing this information that the law REQUIRES him to carry and to give out in resonse to any such request. Instead he claims to have been prevented from responding verbally to this request because Gates was talking over him. Not good enough, Sergeant.

Brandon, you said, regarding Gates engagement with Crowley: “This is not how people should relate to police officers as officials who are ostensibly trying to ensure public safety, but at least as importantly it is not how people should relate to other people in their community whose behavior they haven’t had the chance to independently assess.” Why? Most of our interactions with people, strangers at least, revolve around making snap judgments based on the limited information we have at our disposal at any given moment. Certainly, that’s what shaped the interaction between Gates and Crowley. They’d never seen each other before and I’m sure they both hope to never see each other again. From the evidence so far, it seems Gates’ snap evaluation of the situation may have been more accurate than Crowley’s. Crowely’s poor judgment led to an unjust and socially damaging outcome.

A last observation: You could easily substitute Crowley for Gates in your above statement and conclude that his (Crowley’s) behavior was not how police officers should relate to the public as the employers whose public safety they are hired to ensure. As a public servant, whom we expect to honor the principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty, he should’ve let Gates call him anything but a child of God as he humbly backed out the door and headed back to his car to do some real law enforcement.

Sure. It is likewise reasonable for police to remember that law abiding citizens are reasonably afraid of them; as in this interaction, acting in a way that a policeman finds distasteful can get you locked up for an indeterminate amount of time, even if you haven’t broken any laws. What I’m not seeing from you is any recognition of the fact that good policing should incorporate awareness of that reasonable fear, and a certain amount of toleration for behavior motivated by it.

I found the below story a bit baffling, with, as it stands, strong overtones of R v Haddock, reproduced @464 (‘It is not for me to say what offence the appellant has committed, but I am satisfied that he has committed some offence’), and I’ve interspersed a few questions, answers to which might help to dispel the initial impression that this was an aimless yet intransigent confrontation conforming to my own observations about low-status exits @372:

Ten years ago, I was being race-baited by some teenagers is this a police term of art? Doesn’t ‘baiting’ mean provocation? who habitually stole fruit from a man’s cart on Flatbush and Church in Brooklyn, what was the evidence for this? Was there evidence they actually done so, or attempted to, on this occasion? then said I was harassing them solely for being young and black when I confronted them, intending to give them a warning. so an offence had been committed at this point then? If you know the corner, a large crowd formed, emboldening the kids into taunts. where previously, while the crowd was amassing, there had been no taunts? And while this was happening, the officer was attempting to achieve what? Then, out of the crowd stepped an elderly black woman who told the kids to shut up and behave and stop the nonsense, that I was a fair cop who she believed rather than them. They did as they were told, and the crowd dispersed. I then recognized her as the woman I’d helped months ago, a mile away, when she was beaten and robbed for ten dollars or so by two guys who got away. In a few words she’d done something I doubt I could have but no warning (for what, I don’t know) was administered, so couldn’t you have arrived at the same outcome by not starting the ‘confrontation’ in the first place? , and it was precisely because she was a private citizen. This to me is an ideal outcome, what outcome? and an informal one. So you take a Blair/Cheney line that informal = good when it comes to official action? I also feel that if the cops and the crowd weren’t there, and it was just the woman admonishing the kids, if the cops (plural?) hadn’t been there, neither would the crowd, nor the taunts, nor possibly by that time the kids, surely – so what admonition would this be? she would have been ignored, taunted herself, or worse. ‘worse’ sounds very ominous – what did you have in mind – and what is the basis for the ‘feeling’? It is a collaborative effort. But to what end?

“What I’m not seeing from you is any recognition of the fact that good policing should incorporate awareness of that reasonable fear, and a certain amount of toleration for behavior motivated by it.”

So let me be clear, then: I recognize this. There is something unfortunate in concluding that a person is a lawful citizen and realizing he fears you; once a cop feels safe he should try to set the citizen at ease. The irony is that the police are there to help citizens not feel fear in their homes and in public, but the type of work they do to bring about this end is the type of work that naturally inspires some fear just for being what it is. This is on top of other fears about the potential for injustice, corruption, etc.

However, I don’t see Gates’ alleged statements in particular as motivated by fear, but rather anger and perhaps contempt. In my personal experience, the people who have feared the police are not the ones who’ve said what he’s alleged to have said—things likely to incite and push back—but rather have stammered, or pleaded, or fell into silence. They are afraid of saying anthying for fear of saying something wrong, or they just become passive and just want the situation to end.

Then there is another problem that complicates this: criminals (I am not talking about weed smokers and people who drink beer in public, but I am talking about burglars and robbers) ought to have a fear of the police. Not a fear that they can brutalize them, or plant evidence on them, etc., but a fear that these are tenacious people who won’t be stopped, even by the possibilities of violence and injury that makes the average citizen cede to the criminal. Criminals need to feel that they have lost control over the criminal enterprise they are conducting, that the police now have this control, and that the only sound thing for them to do is submit to arrest. [This is not melodrama, please remember cops are killed, maimed, etc., doing this.] The resulting problem is that it is very hard to parse all of this fear and conciliation and deliver it to the right people at the right time, every time.

“there exist some expectations in the other direction that seem to have gone unacknowledged that day by Gates”

That assumes, I think, that you acccept Crowley’s version (and I understand that you do). If you accept Gates’ version, I don’t think that’s really true.

On a larger sense, is it really a problem that most people don’t understand that, whether for reasons of common decency or to avoid unpleasant consequences, police officers should be treated with the same respect that you should treat other people? Sure some people act like jerks in interactions with police officers – as they do in interactions with other prople. If police officers are treated more often with disrespect than the “average” person, that’s much more afunction of the type of fraught interactions that are inherent to their job.

In fact, on the whole, if anything, most people seem to think that they have a heightened duty to treat police officers with respect.

Tim:

You are an expert at picking apart general, illustrative accounts of events, in this case one that was not intended to be an accusatory instrument. Do you read books? How can you get through them without wondering why they’re not 10,000 pages long?

I was with a partner, on foot patrol. Two cops.

We had reasonable suspicion, one step below probably cause, to believe the kids had committed the crime of petit larceny of fruit. The fruit vendor complained of this to us, and as a man whose main interest lies in selling fruit, I had no reason to believe he was lying. The law entitles the officer to investigate further. He was Arab, by the way. Just to flesh things out.

Race baiting, a term of art, means the baiter tries to steer away from the matter at hand by arguing, in this case to passerby, that the matter at hand is not relevant but instead the real relevant matter is the racist motivations of the other party. It is a subjective term, because it is of course possible that race is the matter at hand. Here, in my own mind, it was stolen fruit. If the other party seriously entertains the allegation, he has been baited away from the relevant matter and towards the irrelevant one in the interests of the other party.

At that time of day, the corner is normally quite crowded with people going about their business, but people stopped to hear more about the racist cops who were harassing the kids. It makes for good theater and comports with several narratives already out there. I would stop if it were me. Naturally, some people were simply watching, others siding with the kids, etc.

By your account, you seem to assert it’s the fruit vendor’s fault. He feels he was stolen from, not only today but also in the past, two foot cops walk by, he asserts this, the cops stop the kids a few feet away, the kids scream “you’re racists who are doing this because we’re black kids,” and a crowd forms to watch how this unfolds. This fruit vendor needs to learn a lesson!

The community didn’t know the police, but trusted this fellow community member when she made a statement about the character of one of the cops. She bases this on a good interaction with the cop in the past. It defuses the situation.

I cannot search a kid for fruit proir to arrests, only weapons, but if the vendor and I are happy with admonishing the kids, they can be sent on their way without the search or an arrest, and I will not know for sure, on that day, if they stole fruit. From what I have learned about fruit vendors, I tend to think they are basically honest people who rarely lie about people steaking their fruit.

“Worse” means, as some possibilities, telling her to STFU, or to steal from her as well, or to beat the woman senseless. It already happend to her over ten bucks at the hands of kids the same age as these kids. The cops can take action without such fears, and the woman can reassure the community that she has experienced one of the officers taking these actions to be caring and just. Some of the older women in this commuity were afraid to mail letters because the kids sitting on the mailboxes wouldn’t get off and issue threats when asked to. This may well be the fault of the post office, for making a mailbox a person can sit on. Foolishly, I would order kids to get off the mailboxes.

This was a great interaction because the police did something the community would have had a harder time doing alone in ensuring the fruit vendor could pursue his lawful trade, and the woman helped defuse the tension the kids were trying to build to draw attention away from their criminality using bogus accusations of racism, and she did so because she had a positive interaction with the officer in the past.

This is all called good policework.

I think most people just saw this at face value in the story.

So it

“Focusing on the interaction between Crowley and Gates as if the important problem was Gates’ (possible) rudeness, rather than Crowley’s (established) abuse of authority is disturbing from someone like you who is in the professional position of either reinforcing or combating that norm.”

Again, you are clearly overstating my arguments and drawing conclusions from them that aren’t merited by what I’ve said. I urge you to read carefully. I said there are two things of importance. One is Crowely’s behavior. As the person acting on behalf of the law, this is the more important actor to focus on. In the name of fostering more just communities, we must also consider the importance of Gates’ alleged actions with a person who came to his door to protect his home.

In the name of fostering more just communities, we must also consider the importance of Gates’ alleged actions with a person who came to his door to protect his home.

What was important about them? While complying with the police officer’s reasonable requests, Gates made some statements that the officer was upset by, and made a request that the officer does not seem to have complied with (for the officer’s name and badge number) despite being legally obliged to do so. In other contexts, we don’t treat people saying mean things to one another as an important problem of community justice.

That is where we disagree, and I wonder if its possible to reconcile it. I think that if the first words out of your mouth accuse an officer you have never met before of racism, you are acting perfectly legally, but you are directly participating in making your community a less just place to live in and degrading an enviroment that encourages mutual respect between citizens. I expect more of citizens in general, and I expect more of Gates than I expect of the average citizen. Ironically, this comes from the way in which I elevate scholars, assuming they are circumspect people of sound judgment and role models for others. I could be completely wrong in this regard, but if you read my initial comments, they started by saying I felt let down by Gates. This sentiment persists. This probably stems from a loosely Eastern philosophy of mine about people’s scholarship, character and physcial comportment all being inextricably linked in the pursuit of wisdom and truth. The Greeks seemed to feel this way as well.

I want police bosses to say “don’t act like Crowley did.” I want parents to say to their kids, “don’t act like Gates did.” They were wrong on different levels, and in different ways, and to different degrees, but their “teachability” in both cases lies in being wrong. So I persist in saying this here, because each day this thread finds new and exciting ways to find Crowley wrong, but, yoga-like, seems to bend to any degree to deny that how Gates acted, in its own way, is not a model for the type of justice he has dedicated his academic career to, or for more mundane interactions between people.

I think that if the first words out of your mouth accuse an officer you have never met before of racism, you are acting perfectly legally, but you are directly participating in making your community a less just place to live in and degrading an enviroment that encourages mutual respect between citizens.

But this begs the question, by assuming that Gates’ statement was irrational and unmotivated by Crowley’s prior behavior—Gates didn’t walk up to Crowley on the street and start harassing him out of the blue. This is possible, but not an undisputed fact. If Crowley initiated the hostile and disrespectful tone of the encounter (something which I find plausible, although not incontrovertibly established, given Crowley’s undisputed later bad behavior), I’m not going to blame Gates for continuing it.

On the one hand we have a private individual who may or may not have been unjustifiably rude. On the other hand we have a public servant who indisputably abused his authority. The latter seems like a genuine problem, the former seems like something that no one who didn’t know the guy personally whould have any reason to be interested in.

“On the one hand we have a private individual who may or may not have been unjustifiably rude. On the other hand we have a public servant who indisputably abused his authority. The latter seems like a genuine problem, the former seems like something that no one who didn’t know the guy personally whould have any reason to be interested in.”

I agree with how you have parsed the key concerns, but as a police executive, I have a professonal interest in how the police are treated by citizens, because I know from experience it will in turn directly effect the investment that officers make in the community they serve. I also presume—though it is a presumption—that citizens care about this process as well and prefer officers with more of a committment to their community than less.

What court has established that Crowley abused his authority? He hasn’t been charged, reprimanded or disciplined, yet. What bad behavior are you referring to? The act of arresting Gates? The legality of that has not been adjudicated either, and won’t be.

What I find interesting is that the one part of the timeline in which Gates and Crowley’s versions radically diverge, the events outside the house, are verifiable by police and civilian witnesses. So, in theory, some degree of certainty in regard to that could be arrived at via an inquiry. In Gates’ version he recognized some of the Harvard police officers outside (was not “lured”) and went out to speak to them and was immediately arrested. In Crowley’s and Figueroa’s version, Gates continued his harangue, shouted at the onlookers, and was warned twice before being arrested. Civilians would have no reason to lie, and Gates’ friends on the Harvard police would be less motivated to lie than the Cambridge police. Having either version of these events confirmed would be a big factor in assessing the reliability of the events that were not witnessed.

It’s important to remember that Crowley’s police report is a lie. The first words out of Gate’s mouth did not accuse anyone of racism; the first thing he said (in response to Crowley’s asking him to step outside) was “No, I will not.” Gates had an initial mental reaction (which, as subsequent events showed, was probably correct) but he did not initially give any indication of that reaction.

Gates gives his ID to Crowley in response to Crowley’s request to prove he’s a Harvard professor, Crowley asks Gates another question which Gates refuses to answer.

Here’s how the rest of the encounter went down (from Gates’s interview with “The Root”:

****
It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, ‘What is your name, and what is your badge number?’ and he refused to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, ‘You’re not responding because I’m a black man, and you’re a white officer.’ That’s what I said. He didn’t say anything. He turned his back to me and turned back to the porch. And I followed him. I kept saying, “I want your name, and I want your badge number.”

It looked like an ocean of police had gathered on my front porch. There were probably half a dozen police officers at this point. The mistake I made was I stepped onto the front porch and asked one of his colleagues for his name and badge number. And when I did, the same officer said, ‘Thank you for accommodating our request. You are under arrest.’ And he handcuffed me right there. It was outrageous. My hands were behind my back I said, ‘I’m handicapped. I walk with a cane. I can’t walk to the squad car like this.’ There was a huddle among the officers; there was a black man among them. They removed the cuffs from the back and put them around the front.

A crowd had gathered, and as they were handcuffing me and walking me out to the car, I said, ‘Is this how you treat a black man in America?’

****

So, the only remarks Gates made relating to race referred to Crowley’s violations of the law (first, the illegal refusal to provide his identification, and then, the illegal arrest).

Gates should use his influence against Crowley; for Gates to use every tool at his disposal to punish Crowley for his behavior is the only way to get behavior like this stopped. Crowley and those like him abuse citizens and file false police reports because they are allowed to get away with it. Crowley used the power given him in trust for the public for his own purposes. If he were fired and imprisoned for that behavior, police work would be a lot more professionally done. It takes somebody prominent like Gates to draw attention to the police abuse that occurred in this case.

I think it’s fair to disclose one personal thing at this point that explains my tenacity to some degree. Nothing a person can say to me on the street bothers me more than accusing me of being a racist. I know that almost anything else they can say is BS to an observer, such as that I am a murderer, or a pig, or a person who does things with this mother. Most of these things can be laughed off or taken part and parcel with the dislike of authority that is a natural feeling in many people. But a charge of racism is easy to level, and easy to entertain, and there is enough of a general history of racism in policing that it always seems at least plausible. This makes it especially corrosive and damaging when it is levelled as a tactic, or without due cause. Anyone can be a racist, no matter what else they do or don’t do. And it is such a profoundly wrong thing that I find the words to be especially wounding, especially if you take at face value at least some cops’ committment to serve a diverse community fairly and equally.

This is not meant to be self-pitying, though some will not be able to help themselves in suggsting that, simply because I have shared something that effects me as a person. It is meant to suggest I understand how this may have deeply fouled the entire encounter for Crowley from the very beginning. Being the consummate professional means letting it slide and doing your job anyway, but I can recall instances where people who had no idea who I was were quick to proclaim I was a racist, and it very much lowered my estimation of their character and led me to have to suppress a lot of anger towards them.

Professors have had their careers derailed by a simple accusation of racism, maybe stemming from a misunderstanding, so it’s clear that the accusation alone has extraordinary power. I can say this, conceding the actual facts are in dispute: if Gates called me a racist from the get-go, and said my actions were malevolent and stemmed from his being a black man in our nation, I still doubt he’d be arrested, but I’d place him in a class of community members with deeply flawed civic values. As I said, there are facts in dsipute in the case at hand, but this is one of the ideas behind my statements.

Nothing a person can say to me on the street bothers me more than accusing me of being a racist.

I would suggest that you would be a better person both as a policeman and as a citizen if you got over this.I don’t know a thing about you personally, but I’m assuming you’re American and (from this and the earlier fruit story) that you look white. Which means you were brought up in a society where racism is endemic, and you’d be superhuman if you hadn’t picked some of that up; I’m a white American, and despite disapproving strongly of racism, have certainly caught myself saying and thinking racist things on occasion. Maybe you never have, but if so, you’re very unusual.

If someone calls you on apparent racism, the world doesn’t’ come to an end. You check yourself, to see if they’re right, and if they are you apologize and try to fix it. If you decide they’re wrong, you see if their error is reasonable, and if it is try to straighten out the misunderstanding without resentment. And if it’s unreasonable (as in the kids stealing fruit), you do what’s necessary to defend yourself if it’s the kind of accusation that’s likely to have consequences, and otherwise walk away and dismiss the accuser as a jerk.

“Listening to the tapes of the police dispatches, and seeing if Gates was truly drowning out Crowley’s ability to speak and hear.”

Well it’s not possible to drown out someone’s ability to speak, only their ability to hear themselves. So it’s perfectly understandable that someone speaking into a microphone pointed towards themselves and away from the person who is shouting at them can be heard over the din. I would also note, most people’s ears point forward, making them susceptible to shouts directed at them. Dynamic audio compression in the police radio would also reduce the background noise.

Also note that Crowley lost contact with the police dispatchers for five full minutes, alarming them and causing them to dispatch more police.

Gates: “Now it’s clear that he had a narrative in his head: A black man was inside someone’s house, probably a white person’s house, and this black man had broken and entered, and this black man was me.”

The powers of a Harvard professor should never be underestimated, as they include mind reading. If he were to make them, can we take Crowley’s statements about Gates’s mental narrative at face value as well? Or does the power of the police officer not extend to mind reading in this way? Well anyway, he cedes that he knew why the cop was there, and that is was reasonable for him to be there, and he goes one step futher to assert that the cop, even though they have hardly spoken, in his mental narrative, must be a racist. “How could a black person in Cambridge have a house like this?” the cop must be wondering. “This must be a white guy’s house,” the cop is thinking. Yikes. There are a million ways to progress from here to protect your hide, and levelling allegations of racism is not the most prudent one.

If were are to cede Gates’ feeling of danger at a break-and-enter encounter, then we also must acknowledge Crowley’s sense of danger in this case as well, and admit it is in his interest to gain control over the situation. Gates cannot both be the harmless, non-imposing person and the second piece in a hazardous break-and-enter scenario. Gates rejects the former possibility himself. He apparently saw himself as threatening in the cop’s mind, so how can he fault the cop for not wating to expose himself to the danger of this threat?

“‘Would you step outside onto the porch.’ And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent association.”

I mean, you don’t need to be a psychiatrist to see what’s going on here, do you?

No, you don’t. This quote supports the scenario I mentioned, but I’m giving Crowley the benefit of the doubt.

Brandon says:
Ideally, it should be within their character to begin with.

Absolutely agreed. But also, while I agree that this:

It is always suboptimal to get cops to behave a certain way by convincing them that doing so is a modus vivendi, and discipline awaits transgressors.

Is obviously true, I’m also convinced that not disciplining transgressors in ways outwardly perceived to be in scale with the offence (including criminal charges, loss of career as warranted) poisons efforts to improve recruiting from the former. After all, you are recruiting from a population whose views are negatively colored by such incidents.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the bit about disciplining police officers in scale with offence wasn’t meant particularly as commentary on the specific Gates/Crowley issue.

“Note that Crowley actually sent Gates to jail on a questionable charge, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen to him.”

In NYC, discon is no different a violation, in terms of gravity, than a violation such as public urination or drinking a beer on a street corner. I only say this to suggest that this is not as grave a matter as sending someone to jail on a charge that carries more than a fine or (in NYC) a rarely-imposed up to 15 days in jail. It is a violation, not a crime, and a conviction does not yield a criminal record. This is not to address the moral issue, but to more clearly delineate the stakes here.

As a matter of law, you can just issue a person a ticket for discon on the scene, and send them on their way. In NYC, as a matter of policy, this isn’t permitted because if the person is being disorderly to the extent that actually makes out the offense, then it also warrants removing them from the scene. To say they are so disorderly it requires enforcement but then just leaving them there at the scene of the incident that incited the disorder seems disingenuous. Discon summonses must also be approved by supervisors, cops can’t write them unilaterally (though a sergeant can), and in almost all cases are issued from a precinct or, during special events, field command post. there are always exceptions as a pratical matter. This is all actually meant to ensure that discon summonses are not issued capriciously, as summary retribution for slights against officers.

This is all actually meant to ensure that discon summonses are not issued capriciously, as summary retribution for slights against officers.

Since that apparently doesn’t always work, what’s the back up plan to deal with capricious use?

Professor Gates, I am terribly sorry to have disturbed you.

And why should he apologize for responding to a 911 call and doing his job – coming over to protect Gates’ property?

Crowley is indeed a public servant, but he is not Gates’ butler, is he? Why shouldn’t instead Gates say: ‘Dear officer, I’m terribly sorry that you came to protect my property against potentially violent criminals and I acted like an [insert an appropriate word here]’?

I actually put a lot of stock in the “karate master” model of encounters where, because you are well-trained and operating from a position of strength, you can be quite calm and patient, but fully alert and ready to use force if needed.

This sounds like an excellent model to aim for.

It’s weird how Captain del Pozo keeps talking about danger, and impeding of investigations, and the need for control over the situation when the truly objectionable part of this situation – the arrest – happened after Crowley knew that Gates was a Harvard professor who had committed no crime. Nothing to investigate. No danger. No need for control.

the damages against the plaintiff, barring other factors, are fairly easy for the city to demonstrate as quite small.

This is a general problem with civil suits as a remedy for police misconduct. An unreasonable search or seizure almost certainly did you no tangible economic damage at all if you’re not guilty of something, so a civil suit is going nowhere. But it can still be important misconduct that should carry some sort of penalty.

Regardless of the tone of voice or the manner in which it is delivered, a request to step outside is in itself threatening and alarming. One doesn’t need to know the law to have an instinctive sense of the safety of one’s home and one’s vulnerability upon stepping outside of it. The idea that Crowley was asking Gates to step outside for his own safety or for Crowley’s safety is laughable. Crowley wanted Gates in his domain where he could arrest Gates if he felt he needed to.

I have a question for Capt. del Pozo about Crowley’s initial approach to the house and his handling of the witness. Based on all the tapes, the statements of the witness who spoke very movingly in public today, and the undisputed parts of Crowley’s arrest report, Crowley went to Gates’ front door knowing virtually nothing of what had been reported about the possible break-in except that “two SP’s barged their way into the house” and “they have suitcases” and “both were still in the house” and “one may be Hispanic.” The witness, Whalen, called out to Crowley and identified herself as he climbed the steps of the house. It is now evident that he did not stop to talk to her and get her observations. If he had he would have had a clearer picture of what she had actually seen and her reservations about it. He would have been able to speak to Gates, Gates would have been able to explain what Whalen saw, and one could think that this very mundane matter would have ended happily right there. I don’t understand – especially since Crowley leads us to believe that he did take the time to speak to Whalen – why he didn’t do that. It strikes me as grossly unprofessional.

The consequences for Lucia Whalen were horrific. Acting as a concerned citizen, she made a thoughtful, circumspect call to the police on behalf of someone else, qualifying that she would not have made the call herself. She was then conscientious enough to remain at the scene, where Crowley basically ignored her and then claimed he didn’t, ascribing to her statements she did not make. She acted in the belief that the police could be trusted to handle the situation responsibly and fairly. They didn’t and for that she has been vilified across the country.

making a civilian complaint of “disputed summons/abuse of authority.”

How transparent is this process to the civilians? Is there a threshold of such complaints that triggers a review and disciplinary action? At what point would such realistically threaten an officers career? Understood that you can only speak for your own jurisdiction(s).

Sorry if it’s too many questions, but I’m interested in an inside view.

Nick, at this point, I am intending to have a more general conversation about police-citizen encounters using this incident as a context.

It’s hard not to apply the context of this encounter when you don’t specifically distinguish it. To be explicit about something that’s been bothering me, you’ve been describing the need to “control” a situation as a legitimate professional need for a policeman. And I get that in a possibly dangerous situation. Nonetheless, in the context of this situation, there seems clearly to have been a point at which Crowley was aware that Gates lived there, and there was no burglary, but the situation escalated to the point of arrest because Crowley felt that he was not in “control” of Gates’ behavior. When you talk about “control” without making it clear that the assertion of “control” is an illegitimate use of police power where it doesn’t serve a safety or law enforcement function, it’s disturbing.

In keeping with Eastern martial arts stereotypes, it is also the hardest stance to master.

If I’m reading you correctly, Brandon, I find this part of the discussion disturbing. You seem to view this as a valuable but difficult to obtain ideal, presumably rare in practice. Contrariwise, I’d tend to view it as an important target for any force to have as typical behavior for all officers in interaction with the public, one that was necessary to achieve before you plausibly have an effective force working well within a community.

The disconnect is disconcerting, but perhaps I’ve misread you.

Regardless of the tone of voice or the manner in which it is delivered, a request to step outside is in itself threatening and alarming.

Correct. A cop investigating a break-in should perform a Kabuki dance indicating to the person who’s opened the door his willingness to perform his duties while remaining humble, apologetic and submissive in case the alarm he responded to was a false alarm. The new word in policing! It’ll be sooo cute!

Crowley should work to establish Gates’s identity; once he establishes that Gates is the resident, he should give his ID card to Gates and get on his way.

Is this really the case? Shouldn’t he still investigate a break-in regardless of who the guy opening the door is?

Things like 549 make it very difficult to take someone at all seriously, Henri. I can’t see how you expect inept and sarcastic to be an effective mix.

“he’s explained that the person who “broke in” was him, trying to deal with a broken door”

too bad that never occurred.

Brandon @501 (re: #495)You are an expert at picking apart general, illustrative accounts of events, in this case one that was not intended to be an accusatory instrument. Do you read books? How can you get through them without wondering why they’re not 10,000 pages long?

Not general – specific. And offered, I assume, not as an artist’s impression but as a real example. The questions weren’t exactly minor details were they – and it’s reasonable to ask for more information, given that the immediate appearance was of a confrontation entered into with no clear idea of how it should end other than by a submissive response from the confronted parties. Because if that’s what it was, then it’s not only, contrary to your assessment, an example of bad police work, but illustrates what I suspect to be a seriously skewed perspective in the approach to policing you propound, and possibly also an example of the often self-serving ‘gap-filling’ discussed above.

The law entitles the officer to investigate further. I would assume so, given a specific complaint from a member of the public. I’m just trying to work out what course the investigation would have taken if the kids in question had limited themselves to denying the allegation, or taking the fifth, and/or if no crowd had formed.

I wonder why (as your account implies) the ‘race-baiting’, ‘taunts’ and the crowd that gathered, as you suppose, ‘to hear more about the racist cops who were harassing the kids’ made any difference to achieving that outcome. And I wonder why you regard having the investigation cut short to be a good outcome, if not because it was a face-saving way of ending an ill-advised or ill-planned confrontation.

By your account, you seem to assert it’s the fruit vendor’s fault. I think this must be one of those unidirectional ‘gap-filling’ errors. It is certainly possible to make a suggestion in the form of a question – but I can’t see how you would read that one into any of mine.

Since you mention it though, the notion that the vendor might have been mistaken (e.g. jumping to conclusions on this occasion based on past experience of those kids, or mistaken identity, or prejudice) is certainly not as ridiculous as you make it out to be. Those who decided that, as you state, such evidence as the vendor’s complaint shouldn’t by itself constitute probable cause would presumably agree. After all (I can safely infer without asking more tedious questions) no stolen fruit were in evidence and (while I can’t be sure that this aptly describes the situation) it’s not entirely usual for thieves to linger at the scene of the crime long enough for their victim to attract the attention of a passing police patrol, rather than, say, melting away into the crowd.

I’d add that police assuming they know more than they actually do is the main reason for ‘noble cause’ corruption – whether unconscious, petty, or full blown, top-to-bottom fit-up (US: frame-up?).

Yes it is. And if at that point the owner, instead of expressing his gratitude to the cops for coming to protect his property, is out on the porch disturbing the peace – he gets arrested.

This is a terrible, terrible world.

Well I don’t know about that, Henri. But the above is a terrible, terrible (no really, it’s quite lousy) misrepresentation of any reasonable expectation of what actually happened. Why are you so bent on distorting things here? Has this story got under your skin in some way that leaves you unable to be rational about it? Some of these comments you’re making really are bizarre. Have you re-read them?

Brandon: Yes, to be clear, the exertion of control for its own sake, or as a lesson, and not to move along the investigation or ensure everyone’s safety, is bound to be problematic and in the widest range of cases, wrong-headed. I can construct thought experiments that might justify it, but they would be too far afield of expected practice to take seriously.

No, no – let’s hear them. The whole point of experiments is to abstract from normal practice. And the more abstract we get, the less combative the conversation is likely to be (and yes, I include my own contributions).
After all I think we can at least agree, if on nothing else, that the tag-team tribunal of fact has pretty well picked over every aspect of the unexaminable (i.e. hearsay) accounts in the specific case, and more general issues it raises are of more interest.

Relevant to the “control” stuff, I’d make a healthy wager that Crowley began his interaction with Gates by speaking to him in the “command tone”. It’s probably a great way to exert soft control over criminal suspects but if you’re an innocent person minding their own business, it’s incredibly grating. If Crowley had instead lead with “Excuse me, sir, are you the homeowner here?” said in a normal tone of voice, we probably would not be having this conversation.

Watson, how is this a misrepresentation?

Because it omits almost all of the salient facts. For all we know, if Crowley had behaved differently Gates would have thanked him honestly for his efforts. For all we know he wouldn’t have, sure, but this acknowledges the ambiguities in the situation, unlike your fantasy variant. You are making a caricature of the situation so divorced from what is known to have happened, let along what is speculated (at great length!) as to have no meaning. And you know this.

We don’t know exactly what happened that day, but what didn’t happen is that nice comic book cop shows up just doing his job well and is abused for it. There is no reading of the facts and statements of those involved that supports this version. So why do you bring it up? It’s at best disingenuous. As is that “Kabuki dance” nonsense you brought up earlier, when you knew very well all anyone had referred to was expecting common courtesy. “Excuse me sir, …” does not translate in any world to a “Kabuki dance”.

No, Henri. You’ve got this one around your neck, and I’m not sure how or why.

Under even the most charitable reading of Crowley’s own report, Gates was not in any meaningful way disturbing the police. He was, at best (and of course this is debatable) technically viable for a disturbing the peace charge if Crowley orchestrated it by convincing Gates to step outside. At best this was an abuse of discretionary power by Crowley, period. Which isn’t to say Gates did everything in the best possible way either, which I never claimed (did anyone)? Even reading Gates’ actions in the least charitable way, Crowley still screwed up.

Your variant has no basis in fact, and little sense to it. You’re constructing a ridiculous caricature that nobody seriously supporting Crowley’s place in this would back … why?

I don’t know why you’re going on about excuses (Gates doesn’t need one) and murderers. Mere dramatism?

snarkfree: Some people believe that immediately before his arrest, Gates was guilty of disorderly conduct, some don’t. But no one, so far as I know, thinks that Gates had violated any rules or laws at the beginning of their encounter which is when he supposedly said something along the lines of “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

“Crowley orchestrated it by convincing Gates to step outside. At best this was an abuse of discretionary power by Crowley, period. ”

By Gates’ own account, he went outside because he spotted his friends in the Harvard police force and wanted to talk to them. That could hardly be an orchestration on Crowley’s part. But of course, there those who believe it coincidently fit in with his evil plans.

Uh…because you responded to my comment with:

“It’s probably best to avoid manichean interpretations of events: if the cop overreacted, Gates did nothing wrong;”

My comment was objecting to Captain del Pozo’s comments about Gates’ supposed statement that Crowley didn’t know who he was messing with.

“By Gates’ own account, he went outside because he spotted his friends in the Harvard police force and wanted to talk to them.”

Source?

“You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

This means to me: “Whatever processes of law exist to provide me with recourse in the event I feel I have been wronged by you, in addition to exercising them, or possibly instead of exercising them, I am also going to use my influence with the people who have power over you to achieve a personal remedy for me over and above what the law provides every citizen. I will seek extralegal punishments.”

I don’t see it as something more benign, such as, for example, “you are messing with a man who has access to legal wizards who will do a great job of seeking the appropriate legal recourse in this case.”

Perhaps Henri is merely “oldtimey” in his views about law and order. Though MA law and precedent clearly indicate that Gates “yelling” does not rise to the violation of “disorderly conduct,” according the Henri, Crowley was in his rights (nay, should be commended) for arresting an innocent civilian who dared voice his dissatisfaction with said policeman’s actions.

REALLY?

“Please tell me, what are the legal remedies available for a black man who has been racially profiled by a police officer?”

Please read my initial comments. I don’t think this was racial profiling, which is different from “mere” judgments informed by racism.

Anyway, we just differ on this matter. I think we are not served by a nation where people use influence and power to seek personal remedy to what they perceive as injustices. You might like it here because you support Gates, but probably not because you support the model. If a white guy had his raucous party shut down by the cops because the neighbors begged for some peace at 4AM, and he said “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” and the mayor excoriated the cops the next day, I would presume you’d take issue with this “messing with” remedy. It is not a tenable one for individuals to pursue whatever they percieve their own interests to be. You can’t sanctify legal process when Crowley ignores it and then at the same time applaud Gates for threatening to step around it when it is in his perceived interests.

I guess my issue is that the “messing with” remedy allows the person seeking it to do so because he has decided he wants a remedy, and not because a legal process available to all citizens has recognized this. This works in an observer’s opinion when the observer happens to agree with that person, but seems dangerous and easy to abuse when the facts of the matter are unsettled or if opinions differ. There especially doesn’t seem room for it in conflicts that stem from reasonable pluralism, for example (but not the case here), but I can only assume that it is ripe for abuse in cases such as these, as well. It cannot be a legitimate warning to issue to a person/cop, because it is predicated on circumventing process due to a the issuer’s power in society. Do we want this to be acceptable as a general practice, even when we might completely disagree with the issuers motivation for seeking a remedy?

You dislike the outcome, meaning that you think it’s OK for abuse of black people by cops to stay in the shadows? Because please don’t try to deny that happens a lot, or I’ll lose all respect for your veracity. You’re in NYPD, I don’t think I really need to cite certain notorious examples.

I can’t think of a meaningful advance in human or civil rights in our nation that was secured because somebody messed with the wrong person, but I can think of innumerable injustices that stemmed from the quiet or not so quiet use of “you don’t know who you’re messing with.” Meanwhile, voting rights, gay rights, civil rights were all secured by personal sacrifice and the legal process, or the outrage that stemmed from a recognition that the process had failed. None of them stemmed from a powerful person saying “you don’t know who you’re messing with.” So now that a black guy gets to issue a traditionally white guy threat, the threat is now acceptable use useful?

If this is what you want, you can have it, but it is a completely subjective practice so it has to be an equal opportunity for all powerful and conntected people who perceive personal injustices, and you have to bear the strains of your committment: you must live with its consequences. I doubt a person could bear this strain in practice. It also, IMHO, fails a straight Rawlsian veil of ignorance test about how to distribute power and inequalities in society. It is not an organizing priciple in which the inequality of power will systematically benefit the worst off. It will almost always assist the best off in protecting and consolidating and enhancing their power, and continuing to satisfy their preferences.

“Your exaggeration of Crowley’s vulnerability has now gone beyond special pleading to pure silliness.”

I disagree, but in any event it is not about Crowley’s actual vulnerability. That is not relevant. It is about what Gates thought he could accomplish by saying something like this, and then trying to call the police chief direct. That you think Gates was wrong about his ability to wield inappropriate influence does little to change the fact that it was simply wrong for him to threaten to wield inappropriate influence. I can’t help but think one of the reasons Obama retracted his intital statement was because upon reflection he realized the type of influence he’d wielded on behalf of a personal friend was not appropriate in a democracy.

If you want to say something along the lines of, “Gates thought that he was a victim of racial prejudice and was saying that the police officer would not be allowed to get away with it, as police officers almost always do in these types of cases. That in itself is not objectionable but the use of influence to gain personal remedies fails a straight Rawlsian veil of ignorance test about how to distribute power and inequalities in society [or whatever else you like] so he should have refrained.” then please go for it.

But do you genuinely not see a difference between that and directly comparing Gates to someone who is trying to get away with committing a crime? Especially in this context?

I accept the accusation of shifting. My bad. I revise:

“When it is quietly used to try to deny your tenure, not so much.”

Still seems pretty objectionable, even if you are not fully vulnerable to it.

“Extra legal remedies”—like calling one’s lawyer?

Gates or anyone can call a lawyer at any time in order to afford themselves of counsel in a situation such as this one. If the call was to in turn get the phone number to the Cambridge police chief right there, however, to show the cop “who he was messing with” then this was an inappropriate reason to call the lawyer. In such a case, it was incidentally a call to a lawyer; it could have been a call to anyone who had the phone number. It seems needless to say, but I would not have an ethical problem with any other elements of Gates’ conversation with his lawyer.

So basically what you take away from this situation is that Gates did something that is objectionable because sometimes people use it to do bad things (even though he wasn’t), and that Crowley did something that could be acceptable because sometimes police officers use it to do good things. That’s a truly bizarre way to respond to a situation like this.

At first I thought Steve’s “sophisticated philosopher version of the Blue Wall” was unnecessarily nasty but the more I think about it, the more it seems appropriate. This reminds me (as so much in life does) of William James’ great line: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” I think a philosophical education can make you better at thinking, but I think it can also make you better at merely thinking you are thinking. I see that you have a larger point about how influence is often used in society by nasty people for illicit ends. I see also that you have a larger point about how being verbally combative (I’ll give you the term, even) with a police officer, however justified, might impede an investigation. I see that you have these larger points despite the fact that Gates was not pursuing illicit ends and was not impeding any investigations.

You have lots of larger points, lots of arguments, lots of hypotheticals.

snarkfree: He says absolutely nothing of the sort during that interview. He says exactly what he says in his interview with The Root, namely that he stepped onto the porch to ask another officer for Crowley’s name and badge number. Lucky coincidence that this slip of the memory happens to reinforce a popular theme in the attacks on Gates.

I had become embarrassed for Capt. del Pozo—who early on seemed to be making a good faith effort to maintain integrity in argument/commentary.

It’s sad that he is still unable either to comprehend or acknowledge, despite much experience in the NYPD, why a black man in his own residence—having done nothing wrong and having not yet been made aware of any problem—would be disinclined to follow a command-type request from a white police officer to step outside.

It’s disturbing that in Capt. del Pozo’s world, (allegedly) pulling status rank in an effort to confront or counter perceived unjust or unreasonable police treatment is civically and morally irresponsible, an attempt “to wield inappropriate influence.” Apparently, whether Crowley was doing something like racial profiling would make no difference.

Why, if one were arrested on a trumped-up drug charge, say, would it be unfair, elitist, anti-democratic, etc. to make a call in order to talk with a person who, on reasonable substantive grounds, could get the charge dropped? The implied notion that people generally, let alone African Americans in particular, have a virtually overriding duty to let the policing and legal systems ‘naturally’ play out is perverse.

(Btw, Rawls is not directly relevant here, since the Crowley/Gates affair would fall under non-ideal theory. And, yes, I do know what I’m talking about.)

Now that more of Capt. del Pozo’s true colors have come out—with his voicing fears (in response to Steve LaBonne @ 580) about what can happen when a member of a group that is disproportionately targeted has enough clout not only to force a national conversation about race but also “to deny you tenure”—there really isn’t much left to say.

If only more people would take LizardBreath’s sage advice (@ 519) to heart.

I found both halves, snarkfree, and he never says what you claim he says.

“would fall under non-ideal theory.”

Okay, I accept that. Everything else but the basic structure falls under non-ideal theory. I admire Rawls’ circumspection in that way. I just see all these Rawlsian theory articles applying Rawls to everything so I figured, “no harm getting on the bus everyone else is riding on.”

I still stand by my belief that it is wrong to use personal influence and connections to seek remedies for yourself. I think you could draw this into ideal theory if you are careful enough. But read what I write if you must criticize me. I said that “If you can show me that, like MLK, Gates’ threat was meant not to seek personal remedy, but to spark a nationwide debate on this issue because he felt there were insufficient remedies in the current process, then I would be more likely to support what he had done.”

For what it’s worth, to me that email didn’t indicate so much that there are racist cops, as that there are insane cops (“An infidel”?!). On a case-by-case basis, probably a more severe problem but I’m hoping a very infrequent one.

“Now that more of Capt. del Pozo’s true colors have come out—with his voicing fears (in response to Steve LaBonne @ 580) about what can happen when a member of a group that is disproportionately targeted has enough clout not only to force a national conversation about race but also “to deny you tenure”—there really isn’t much left to say.”

This is a profound misreading of what I said. In my “deny you tenure example,” there is no reason at all to think I said “a member of a group that is disproportionately targeted” is denying you tenure, as if the actual problem is that newly-empowered African Americans can deny tenure as remedy for perceived slights against them. The problem is that this is simply a model where any appropriately empowered person from any group can deny you tenure, or whatever, to redress what they perceive to be violations against them. If we intend to levy a consequential punishment agaisnt a person, there must be a process to verify actual harm. We cannot rely on the perception of the victim alone, even if it turns out to be totally correct, or think it is acceptable for the victim to threaten something like this in order to influence the course of events. As a practice, people will use this unfairly, and the unfair use of power in general seems to be the whole problem here. I don’t think we want a model where influential people from any group can use influence to gain extra-process remedies for perceived slights against them, or can meaningfully threaten do so.

There are a million better things he could have said, all of them broadly akin to “Officer, I know my rights, I think you’re violating them, and I am a man who has the power to see that in the end these rights will be respected.”

Well, we don’t know that Gates said, “Do you know who you’re messing with?” According to him, he said, “I live here and am a faculty member at Harvard.” Perhaps Crowley only thought Gates said it—in some people’s mind the notion that some people have professorial tenure at selective universities is like a red flag to a bull, since most other people today have virtually no economic security or dignity of workplace—more’s the pity— but if he did say it, it is hardly grounds for arrest, let alone unethical. I agree though that “I know my rights, etc.,” would have been in better taste. As it was, by making an abusive and improper arrest Crowley jeopardized his own career without outside help. Blaming the victim here is a complete red herring since it doesn’t matter at all what he said or didn’t say. I can’t believe Brandon isn’t perfectly aware of this—his colleagues seem to be.

Harold: according to Gates, he did not say “You don’t know who you’re messing with” but he did say, as he was being put into the police cruiser, “You’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.” Which could be interpreted the same way, but I think more reasonably would be interpreted as, well, an accurate prediction of things to come. I don’t know whether Crowley would describe it as the biggest mistake of his life but he probably regrets it (whatever he says) and Gates didn’t have to lift a finger. It turns that if you arrest one of the most respected black men in America for basically no reason, people tend to get upset.

“No, I think what Crowley did was wrong.”

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe this is the first time you’ve said so. In your post you refer to being “let down” by Crowley (which doesn’t necessarily mean that he did something wrong) but only as an introduction to explaining how much more let down you were by Gates. I don’t think you brought up “these larger points” in order to assail Gates, but I do think you brought them up in order to blunt criticism of Crowley. Kind of like chaff (in the military, not botanical, sense). You didn’t defend his actions, exactly, but neither did you condemn them directly, while you did spend a good amount of time talking about how actions like his could be justified. I know this sounds arrogant but I do think you’ve exhibited a good amount of rearranging of prejudices here.

A conversation about the larger issues surrounding police-citizen encounters sounds good, but I don’t think it can begin by taking an incident in which a police officer has clearly abused his power and then taking his accounting of the events as fact. Mutual respect and decency between police and citizens is something I think everyone here supports. In fact, Gates has said that what set this whole thing off (more or less) is that he felt he was treated with a lack of respect and, in particular, with less respect than a white man in his circumstances would receive.

Actually, let me ask you a question (one which I have been speculating on in my head, but which have better data for): if “the average police officer” responded to a possible breaking and entering in a nice neighborhood and arrived at the door to find a 58 year old, limping, primly dressed and bespectacled white man standing in the foyer, how do you think he would begin his interaction with that citizen?

The problem is that del Pozo is inventing made-up rules for the citizen, in order to ignore any responsibility on the part of police officers and place all the onus on the citizen. He argues that Gates is obligated not to use his prominence to obtain remedies for himself that aren’t available to every citizen by going through channels, and whether Crowley behaved in a dishonest and corrupt manner doesn’t affect his viewpoint. This is just a made-up rule to keep the focus on the issue he wants to focus on and avoid the real issue. Obviously, someone suffering as a result of actions taken by a dishonest and corrupt police officer should use every mechanism at his disposal to free himself from, and avenge, his suffering.

If he knows the chief of police, call him, it’s the chief’s responsibility to eliminate dishonesty and corruption from the police force, and the prominent citizen can be heard by the chief of police. If he knows the mayor, call him, if he knows the president of the United States, call him. The prominent citizen has a voice that is more easily heard, and when it can be used in a just cause, it should be.

Del Pozo’s initial argument slammed up against a wall as it was more and more clearly revealed that Crowley’s report was all lies. Now he wants to avoid talking about the specific case because talking about the specific case doesn’t support the point he wants to make, which is to promote some made up rule that the citizens must operate not only under the framework created by the law, but under any framework the police want to invent to constrain the actions of citizens in police encounters.

If the question is, what’s the best way to promote positive outcomes in police encounters with citizens, the lesson taught by this case is not what del Pozo would like it to be. He would like it to be, the citizen should not do anything to upset the police, and any protest should be made in such a way that it is easy to ignore. Such a rule doesn’t promote respect for the law or the police, it makes the public see the police as a gang. The lesson to be taken away from this case is, any police officer abusing a citizen should reap the whirlwind. Such a rule would promote public confidence in the police and respect for the law. If Crowley is fired, and tried and imprisoned for false arrest and for filing a false police report, police-community relations will vastly improve because the police will have, and the public will perceive them to have, a much stronger motivation to serve the public and avoid using their official positions for their own ends.

Watson, 567
He was, at best (and of course this is debatable) technically viable for a disturbing the peace charge if Crowley orchestrated it by convincing Gates to step outside.

You accuse me of caricaturing, and yet you yourself insist on using this tendentious description: “Crowley orchestrated it…”; the language reminding me of a N.Korean press release or something.

Gates came out to the porch at his own will, yelled at his own will, thus becoming technically viable for a disturbing the peace charge, and he got arrested. End of the arrest story.

However badly Mr. Gates acted, the police officer, Sgt. Crowley, behaved worse, given his responsibility.

Firstly, an important reason for a cop to ask a person to “step out of the house” is so that the Sgt. can arrest him without a warrant. Police can only arrest with a warrant, or on seeing a criminal offence, if the subject is in a house. You left this important fact out.

Secondly, Mr. Gates can only be “disorderly” in a public place. Does his porch qualify? And how did the Sgt lure him out? By not giving, after multiple requests, his name and badge number, and going away from the front door. (Accounts vary somewhat on this, but the Sgt. has not said that he gave his badge number.) In other words, the Sgt. actually contributed to the “publicness” of the disorder by luring the upset professor out his door.

Thirdly, Police should take the time to finish their investigation. But surely the investigation is finished the moment Mr. Gates showed ID that he lived there. Or is denying Mr. Gates his badge number part of the investigation?

There is far more danger these days from abuse of power, and Sgt. Crowley abused his power by drawing Mr. Gates out of his house, making his legal in-house behaviour somewhat arrestable, by not answering Mr. Gates’ proper questions.

Being a policeman is not an easy task. Mr. Gates was certainly an upset person. But the police have the responsibility to treat him properly and with respect, not entrap him, and to leave once he identified that this house was his residence.

Police on power trips should be not be police. They should seek another career that does not victimize the public and cause more people to fear and hate the police.

I agree completely with Digby at DigbysBlog

tOM Trottier

Well, before he came out to the porch he was saying something like “I’ll talk to your mama outside”, so I suspect there probably was some profanity there too. And at that point he wasn’t asking for the badge number, he was mostly yelling something like “this is what happens to a black man in America”.

Anyway, I quoted the statute in 318, take a look. Seems to me that just being sufficiently noisy should be enough to get arrested. As a city resident myself I certainly hope so.

according to Gates, he did not say “You don’t know who you’re messing with” but he did say, as he was being put into the police cruiser, “You’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.”

Moreover, even if Gates did say the former, why couldn’t this be interpreted as meaning “I’m not the sort of person who will fail to continue fighting for my rights through legal channels available to all citizens”, as opposed to “I’m going to have my cronies pull strings”?

Anyway, I quoted the statute in 318, take a look.

I did, that’s where I got my “letter of the law” from (along with the other comments on the law in this thread).

I suspect there probably was some profanity there too.

Well, Crowley didn’t report it, so I see no support for this suspicion. (And suspicions don’t count for much—I mean, someone could “suspect” that Crowley told Gates to f—- off in the house, but that’s not supported by anyone’s report, including the citation for disorderly conduct. So all “suspect” means is “I want to believe this is true and so I will” in this context.)

Seems to me that just being sufficiently noisy should be enough to get arrested.

Let’s see:

• with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or

I don’t think this is applicable. Gates wanted the badge number of the police officer. Indeed, even if at the time he was shouting “This is what happens to black people in America” he is shouting this largely because he isn’t being given the officer’s badge number.

• recklessly creates a risk thereof

I don’t see how this holds.

• engages in fighting or threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior, or

Again, what is tumultuous behavior? I claim yelling from your porch across the street in mid-day because you need/want information that you are entitled to have, should definitely not be considered unlawful/disorderly/tumultuous.

• creates a hazard or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose.

Gates’ act has a legitimate purpose: he communicated his displeasure that Crowley would not provide his badge number.

Also, the police on duty do not count as persons in a crowd. This is what they said on Brian Lehrer (while laughing)— so—

Gates came out to the porch at his own will, yelled at his own will, thus becoming technically viable for a disturbing the peace charge, and he got arrested. End of the arrest story.

He was almost certainly (of course we can’t know this for certain) asked (and he was asked) to return outside explicitly and only for the purpose of allowing an arrest to performed. Hence the accurate word “orchestration”. It is possible that this is not what happened, as I noted before, but it is not probable. This is after all a standard practice by an officer wishing to make an nuisance arrest, though not one that Gates could have been expected to know.

Regardless, there is no evidence that he actually performed any actions outside that would justify or necessitate said arrest, and that is the real end of the arrest story. Crowley messed up, and quibbling about exactly the degree to which he messed up is perhaps useless and distracting. However, sserting that he performed his job admirably is instead risible, but you seem to insist on it.