Reply #61: Sure I do, the words from his mouth at the link [View All]

[MicaelS]

Which you must have not read.

Before he could finish the conversation, a police officer was standing on his porch and asking him to come out of the house.

"Instinctively, I knew I was not to step outside," Gates said, describing the officer's tone as threatening. Gates said the policeman, who was in his 30s and several inches taller than him, followed him into his kitchen where Gates retrieved his identification

"I was thinking, this is ridiculous, but I'm going to show him my ID, and this guy is going to get out of my house," Gates said. "This guy had this whole narrative in his head. Black guy breaking and entering."

After handing the officer both his Harvard and Massachusetts state identification, which included his address, Gates said he began to ask the officer this question, repeatedly. "I said 'Who are you? I want your name and badge number.' I got angry."

According to Gates' account, the officer refused to give it. The police report says, however, that the officer identified himself.

"I got angry."

Getting angry with the cops on the scene is a very bad idea. They have the badge and the guns and sworn powers of arrest. His anger fed their anger, which fed his anger, which fed their anger..... repeat as many times as you wish.

The driver had LEFT.

Gates described his driver, whose car service Gates uses regularly, as a large, Moroccan man. The driver brought Gates's three bags to the front door, but when the professor tried to turn the lock, it would not budge. After going around and unlocking the rear door, Gates returned to the front, which still would not open.

"I thought it had been latched from the inside by my secretary who comes to get the mail," Gates said, "but the lock had been tampered with. I said, 'Let's just push it.'"

He was wearing a blue blazer and leather shoes, he said. The driver, dressed in a black uniform, began to lean his shoulder into the door to try to force it open. They pushed for 15 minutes and got the door free. The driver then left. Gates said he would later find out that a neighbor called to report two black men wearing backpacks were breaking into his house.

So cops rolled on a burglary call looking for TWO black men, not one. One was all they saw, they were probably thinking "OK where's the second one?" They were on edge because cops have been killed on burglary calls.

I'm not excusing what the cops did, they overreacted, but I'm not going to excuse Gates' behavior either, he overreacted, too. That's my opinion, yours may differ.