The Gates Fiasco – Abuse of Power, Not Racism

[Joanne98]

There is a disturbing trend emerging from the Gates travesty this past week. There are people actually defending the actions of the police officer in question. For the uninformed, Skip Gates is a Harvard Professor who came home from a trip and realized he did not have his keys to his home. He essentially broke into his own home and someone called the police to report someone breaking into the home. The police responded and confronted Professor Gates in his home. Up to this point everyone is to doing their due diligence. The neighbor called I assume out of genuine concern. The police responded as they are paid to do. The problem is what unfolded next.

Despite the contradictions between Officer Crowley and Professor Gates it seems apparent that AFTER Professor Gates had proved that he did indeed live in the home he was in, he was arrested for the unbelievable charge of disorderly conduct. The charge was of course dropped because it contained no merit to begin with. The differing details really do not change these facts. Supposedly the professor was irate and was challenging to the officer about why he was being accosted. Supposedly he was irate, yelling, screaming, and perhaps even cursing. None of these things bear any relevance to the fact that the police officer was 100% wrong in this case.

I have heard the silly refrain that somehow Skip Gates was wrong for daring to confront the police officer and I ask, why? The police are public servants. They work for the public; for us. The notion that somehow you cannot get upset with a police officer, in your own home, after you have proven he has no business being there is patently absurd. To be frank the truth in this case is simple. Both people were clearly upset with the exchange that occurred but only Professor Gates had the right to be. You can say that he was too sensitive to the possibility of racism but he has that right, once again in his own home. You can say that he has a short fuse but wouldn't you be upset if you had to explain to the police why you were in your own home? Sure, Gates could have been kind and cordial and just showed his ID and waited silently for the officer to leave but he does not have to! It was his house! Out of the two people involved only one of them was there in an official and professional capacity and that was Officer Crowley. Gates does not have to act professional, Crowley does. Period.

Let's be honest. This was a case of an abuse of power, plain and simple. Officer Crowley simply did not like being yelled at. His ego was wounded and instead of apologizing he abused his position of authority to punish Gates for having the temerity to not kiss his rear. Disorderly conduct? Who was at threat here? This was not in public. It was in a private home. A tax payer's home. But Officer Crowley is merely a microcosm of what is wrong with the condition of law enforcement in this country. Thirty years ago you could talk to a cop but no more. Look at the spike in uncalled-for tasering of citizens or other instances of alleged police misconduct. In nearly every instance there is this knee-jerk reaction to defend the indefensible. As if the police should hold some loftier position than they do. Nonsense. It is a systemic problem in how modern police approach their jobs. Our country is founded on the principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty but the police work on the opposite premise. Everyone is a perp until proven innocent. And please, enough about how dangerous the job is. You took the job, do the job. If you don't want to do the job, then quit the job.


President Obama got dragged into this at the end of his press conference on Healthcare and because he told the truth, he has been backpedaling ever since. Obama stated that the police had acted "stupidly." Is there any question that the police acted stupidly? The charges were never upheld and dropped immediately. I am sure Cambridge did not want to try to prosecute disorderly conduct against a 58 year old man with a cane in his own home. Obama correctly outlined that everything was fine up to the point that the police officer decided to arrest Gates after he had established he was indeed in his own home. Can anyone truly make a cogent argument against this? The only reason the cops are there is to establish who is in the home. Once it is established to arrest Gates is not only beyond stupid it is criminal in and of itself. Officer Crowley should not have a badge.

Sounds harsh? Well look, if he had come out after and simply said, "Things got heated, maybe I shouldn't have arrested him, my bad" then I would probably say let this just go away quietly. But instead the officer stands by his stupidity and his bosses sidle up to his stupidity and actually support it. Then the bosses have the gall to chastise the President for telling the truth. The refrain now is that Obama insulted all cops. What garbage.

Quite candidly, race is the distraction in this case. As long as the debate is about race, Obama and Gates lose. Because ultimately you cannot prove the motives behind why Crowley was there or why he chose to arrest Gates. You cannot prove profiling. What you can do is talk about the unbelievably stupid decision to arrest a 58 year old man in his own home for disorderly conduct simply because he had the nerve to speak back to a police officer. Now Obama says that Crowley is an "outstanding police officer and a good man." Maybe he is but apparently even outstanding police officers can make stupid decisions. They apparently just cannot own up to the stupidity of those decisions.

Forget race, this is the time to have serious discussion about the rights of citizens to be protected from abuse of power. The debate should be about if we want to live in a police state, where cops have more rights than the citizens they allegedly are employed to protect.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Gates-Fiasco--Abuse-o-by-Anthony-Wade-090725-226.html

[Tim01]

1. Now you are going to be called a racist.

Gates could have behaved better. Crowley over stepped his authority. Obama didn't have to fan the flames.

Obama has now taken the high road and is moving past this, as a good leader would. Why can't everybody else show half as much class.
Maybe I am the only person in the country who fucks up occasionally and has to fix it.

[bobburgster]

2. No argument here!

There has been way too much abuse of power in the police ranks....from the feds, right down the line to the local town cop. Politicians are scared crapless of them, for fear they will be labeled soft on crime.

[Mythsaje]

3. I would agree...

Abuse of Authority, in my mind, is truly one of the worst crimes ANY public servant (or, teacher, or supervisor, or anyone WITH authority over others) can commit. It's a betrayal of the public trust, and truly pisses me off. I have no doubt that people--innocent citizens--have DIED because an officer has abused his/her authority. But there's an unwritten rule in our society that police should always get the benefit of the doubt. I disagree. Anyone who goes armed with the express purpose of PROTECTING people from one another should be under the highest degree of scrutiny. I might go so far as to say ALL interactions between police and civilians should be recorded. From their perspective, this should be a good thing--it would eliminate ALL false accusations of misconduct or brutality in a wink. The only reason I can see to fight it is because the police believe that such close scrutiny would, in fact, prove that they believe they have something to fear from such oversight.

edited to close parenthesis.

[FrenchieCat]

4. the fact that their was abuse of power does not negate racism in this case.....

but of course, Racism can always be denied as it could always be something else
that drove the facts to happen as they did.

The woman who called in the complaint simply couldn't have done so because she saw a Black man doing what was being done, right? sure...impossible.

I remember in the case of the Country Club swimming incident....
there it was.... the number of kids, and not their color,
or it was.... the fact that they weren't rich kids, and not their color,
or....

In otherwords, racism is always the last thing to consider, because there isn't
any racism in this country anymore. :sarcasm:

The guy with the gun somehow was abusing his power....
The question becomes why was the guy with the gun abusing his power....
what made him feel that he needed to do this?

[SusanaMontana41]

7. Yup.

I agree 100 percent.

The writer urges us to "forget race." Wish we could. We're not there yet.

[MADem]

5. Gates had the keys to his home. He went round back and got in and turned off the alarm.

Officer Crowley should not have a badge.

Why he shouldn't will probably be determined when the investigation is completed.

[PSzymeczek]

14. True. He had his keys,

but his front door lock had been damaged (maybe by a break-in attempt while Professor Gates was in China?). He went to the back door and let him self in, and disarmed the alarm. He was phoning the Harvard maintenance department when Sgt Crowley showed up at his door. Crowley started treating him as a burglary suspect. Professor Gates was tired, ill, frustrated, but produced 2 forms of ID, establishing that he was the legal resident of the home, whereupon Sgt Crowley SHOULD have said, Sorry for the inconvenience, good afternoon. Professor Gates, who was tired, ill, and frustrated, asked Sgt Crowley for his name and badge number, as he is entitled to do. Sgt Crowley did not provide his business card with this information and apparently baited Professor Gates to come onto the porch. As soon as Professor Gates did so, from having seen the photo, Sgt Crowley placed him under arrest. For one thing, where was the CPD when the lock/latch was damaged? Where was the neighbor reporting an attempted break-in?

[MADem]

16. The passer by who phoned the report in was apparently standing on the sidewalk.

At least according to Crowley's report.

I think Crowley left a few things out of his report. The question is, will there be anyone in the crowd of bystanders who will be able to speak to it? For example, if the Sgt. went into the house before Gates was cuffed, and someone saw that, then the police have a problem, because that's not in the report.

[noiretextatique]

6. both and, not either or

:wtf: why the need to dismiss the racial component given the *problem* of police brutality towards african-americans? it's both and, not either or.

[enough]

8. The point here is not to "forget race," but to make sure that the underlying issue

of citizen's rights with regard to police encounters is not forgotten or misunderstood.

I urge everyone to watch the ACLU video found in this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6147206

The video clearly lays out our rights and how to assert them intelligently.

[omega minimo]

9. by dismissing the racial component, which affects the civil rights supposedly being highlighted

:thumbsdown:

How convenient for those not of color to agree with the sensible POV of the (white?) writer
:sarcasm:


FWIW
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6128545

[enough]

11. I am not at all dismissing the racial component, I am saying that the issue of

citizen's rights is fundamental. It does not "dismiss" racism at all. The two are not in conflict. The idea is that all citizens of the US are supposed to have certain rights. If any citizen is denied his or her rights (which Gates was), then we all are denied. It is not only an issue for people of color.

My worry is that President Obama, by deciding to defuse the situation (which in my opinion was the right thing to do) has obscured the issue and has suggested to all Americans that it is okay for the police to abrogate our rights as citizens under the constitution (which the police did in the Gates case.) It is not because Mr. Gates is black that the situation is wrong. It is because he is a citizen.

[omega minimo]

12. "The two are not in conflict" yet you think one has to be subtracted for your point to be made

It doesn't :thumbsup:

[enough]

15. In fact I agree with you -- it doesn't. I was trying to say that, but apparently

failed.

Actually, omega minimo, I think you and I have no quarrel. The way I see it is that Gates was abused by the police officer, and that that basic fact has been obscured by the perversions of the way race is discussed in this country. Even a constitutional scholar like Barack Obama was diverted from talking about the true issues by the corrupted discourse we are apparently all subjected to, a discourse in which the police officer somehow becomes the victim.

Gate's constitutional rights were abused, but that fact will not be discussed because we are forced to make it an issue of race. In not discussing the underlying constitutional issues, we are being hypnotized by centuries of racism. And Limbaugh gets the last word in our corrupt world. The cop will get off scott free, and Barack Obama will have enabled that, with the very best of intentions.

Also, the citizenry is getting an absolutely false impression of our rights as citizens in our homes.

[Misskittycat]

13. Agreed. The abuse of power & inability to defuse an emotional situation

is a very big element here. It was the police officer's job to wind down the emotional level, once that officer determined that Gates was lawfully in his own home. I understand there was at least one other police officer present. If that's true, then the possibility of Gates as a "threat" lessened significantly, especially after it was determined this was no crime situation.

Indeed, the police should expect any homeowner to be upset about being challenged about being in his own home. Part of the "protocol" -- the term stressed by the police department here -- should have been to deal respectfully towards the citizen after it was clear that the neighbor had merely seen a homeowner having difficulty entering his own home. In fact, as part of the "racial profiling" courses that Sgt. Crowley teaches, it should be stressed that minority citizens may, legitimately, be expected to be more sensitive, even hyper-sensitive -- to any encounter with the police, and that some sort of mollification post-incident is generally in order and a good "protocol" to follow.

[starroute]

10. Did things go wrong when they took cops off the street?

When I was a little kid in New York in the 50's, my mother told me that if I ever got separated from her while we were out, I should find the nearest cop and tell him I was lost and he'd help me. The assumption was that the police were there to help people and that you could call on them when in need. Kids' books were full of pictures of smiling cops helping lost children or getting cats down out of trees. That was just the way it was.

But that was when you could still find a cop on the corner, patrolling a beat -- or maybe even helping to direct traffic during rush hour. Somewhere along the line, things changed. We knew they had changed by the late 60's, but I think it must have actually happened earlier. Certainly by then there we no cops out patrolling a beat the way there once had been. They were all in patrol cars, driving around and looking for trouble instead of getting to know the community.

So when did it change? And why did it change? When did the militarized police force of today replace the community protectors of 50 years ago? Or was it always partly illusion?

[omega minimo]

17. Good questions.

"So when did it change? And why did it change? When did the militarized police force of today replace the community protectors of 50 years ago? Or was it always partly illusion?"

Great post. Don't have the answers. IMHO the past twenty years since Gulf War 1 had a lot to do with the change and the militarization.

FWIW some communities have cops on local street beats on bike or (state) horseback.