Regardless of what really happened, which largely depends on whether one prefers to default to the police version or common sense, for the President of the United States to state that he doesn’t know that facts, yet conclude that the Cambridge Police handled the case of Henry Louis Gates (I won’t call him Skip until he invited me to do so) stupidly was foolish.
Of course, they did handle the matter stupidly, but that doesn’t make the leap by Obama acceptable. Either you first learn the facts or you don’t draw a conclusion. For a president to make such a rash statement while conceding the lack of basis is disturbing.
Left alone, the President’s remarks drew a firestorm of criticism. Life Lesson: When the world is busy criticizing the person who maligned you, keep you head low and your mouth shut. Sgt. Jim Crowley didn’t learn this lesson, so he decided to talk to the media and respond to the President, vowing that he would never apologize. As he did this, heads across the country started turning from the President, who was about to crash and burn, to Crowley. There’s nothing the media loves more than fresh meat.
Today, the rest of the Cambridge Police Department, plus all of their various unions, feeling unloved and unappreciated, decided that they too had to chime in and speak their mind. We ain’t no stupid cops. We think we’re good cops. We stand behind Jim Crowley.
Now, they demand that the President of the United States of America apologize to law enforcement officer across the nation, all of whom he insulted by calling the actions of the Cambridge Police Department stupid.
A catch-phrase from the character Forest Gump was, “stupid is as stupid does.” Welcome to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ironically, the argument on behalf of Sgt. Crowley is that his conduct was not, repeat not, racially motivated. Gates was being “belligerent”. Crowley would never determine a course of conduct based upon race, they claimed. Fair enough. Since I’ve never been able to see inside another person’s head, I can accept that he doesn’t believe that race played any role whatsoever. I don’t know that his saying so makes it so, but I similarly don’t know that it doesn’t.
Of course, some think that a white guy (like me) has no business giving up the racial profiling issue:
That said, let’s go to the place where the cops stand arm in arm, proud of their work. Henry Gates was belligerent. Is that belligerent in the first or second degree? You see belligerence is not, to my knowledge, a crime. Even in Cambridge. Rather, belligerence is an attitude that police officers do not care for and will not tolerate. You must respect their authoritae. Feeling hostile toward a police officer? Then be prepared to pay the price.
Now that the Cambridge Police Department, along with its unions for supervisory personnel as well as the rank and file, have made it that Crowley’s arrest of Gates was not because of race but because of belligerence, the opportunity presents itself to ask why citizens are required to be complacent and cooperative with police rousting them in their own homes? Certainly the path of least resistance, but when did we give up the right to get angry with a police officer?
And in case you haven’t noticed, the discussion has shifted away from the foolishness of President Obama leaping to conclusions to the lame, possibly idiotic, effort of the Cambridge Police Department to justify arresting an American citizen in his own home because he became belligerent after being subject to the commands of Sgt. Jim Crowley. When the cop says jump, you ask, “how high,” Professor Gates.
I don’t think Obama owes Crowley an apology. I do think he owes him a thank you. After all, Crowley did save the President from crashing. It’s the nice thing to do.
Of course, they did handle the matter stupidly, but that doesn’t make the leap by Obama acceptable. Either you first learn the facts or you don’t draw a conclusion. For a president to make such a rash statement while conceding the lack of basis is disturbing.
Left alone, the President’s remarks drew a firestorm of criticism. Life Lesson: When the world is busy criticizing the person who maligned you, keep you head low and your mouth shut. Sgt. Jim Crowley didn’t learn this lesson, so he decided to talk to the media and respond to the President, vowing that he would never apologize. As he did this, heads across the country started turning from the President, who was about to crash and burn, to Crowley. There’s nothing the media loves more than fresh meat.
Today, the rest of the Cambridge Police Department, plus all of their various unions, feeling unloved and unappreciated, decided that they too had to chime in and speak their mind. We ain’t no stupid cops. We think we’re good cops. We stand behind Jim Crowley.
Now, they demand that the President of the United States of America apologize to law enforcement officer across the nation, all of whom he insulted by calling the actions of the Cambridge Police Department stupid.
A catch-phrase from the character Forest Gump was, “stupid is as stupid does.” Welcome to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ironically, the argument on behalf of Sgt. Crowley is that his conduct was not, repeat not, racially motivated. Gates was being “belligerent”. Crowley would never determine a course of conduct based upon race, they claimed. Fair enough. Since I’ve never been able to see inside another person’s head, I can accept that he doesn’t believe that race played any role whatsoever. I don’t know that his saying so makes it so, but I similarly don’t know that it doesn’t.
Of course, some think that a white guy (like me) has no business giving up the racial profiling issue:
The most disturbing aspect of the news coverage about Henry Louis Gates’s arrest has been the running commentary by white men about appropriate decorum for black men.Just so we’re clear, I have no authority to speak on behalf of Gates, so I’m not giving anything away, and fully concede that I have never lived as a black man, precluding me from opining that Gates conduct was inappropriate. I do note, of course, that I think it was appropriate for someone hassled in their home by a cop to be furious and act accordingly, regardless of race. But I’m white, so what do I know?
That said, let’s go to the place where the cops stand arm in arm, proud of their work. Henry Gates was belligerent. Is that belligerent in the first or second degree? You see belligerence is not, to my knowledge, a crime. Even in Cambridge. Rather, belligerence is an attitude that police officers do not care for and will not tolerate. You must respect their authoritae. Feeling hostile toward a police officer? Then be prepared to pay the price.
Now that the Cambridge Police Department, along with its unions for supervisory personnel as well as the rank and file, have made it that Crowley’s arrest of Gates was not because of race but because of belligerence, the opportunity presents itself to ask why citizens are required to be complacent and cooperative with police rousting them in their own homes? Certainly the path of least resistance, but when did we give up the right to get angry with a police officer?
And in case you haven’t noticed, the discussion has shifted away from the foolishness of President Obama leaping to conclusions to the lame, possibly idiotic, effort of the Cambridge Police Department to justify arresting an American citizen in his own home because he became belligerent after being subject to the commands of Sgt. Jim Crowley. When the cop says jump, you ask, “how high,” Professor Gates.
I don’t think Obama owes Crowley an apology. I do think he owes him a thank you. After all, Crowley did save the President from crashing. It’s the nice thing to do.
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Excellent points; in fact some of the most intelligent I have read lately.
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests that demeanor is a factor in sentencing but the few attempts to measure the importance of demeanor have been inconclusive because demeanor is difficult to define and measure.
I think that a lot of the problems with demeanor when there is a police-citizen contact are the results of a self-fulfilling-prophesy as in”Young Black male better keep an eye on him.” or “Oh crap another racist cop.”
Belligerence is a very important factor in public intoxication arrests most likely because alcohol tends to suppress inhibitions. The belligerence is what attracts the attention of the police.
“Ironically, the argument on behalf of Sgt. Crowley is that his conduct was not, repeat not, racially motivated.”
LOL. Yeah. I’ve been telling people, “Look, the cop was an asshole. But that’s what they do. Not defending him. Just saying that he’d have pulled the same stunt on a white guy.”
Seems like the Cambridge P.D. agrees. Yes, their cops are fucking assholes. Just not racist assholes.
Incidentally, Norm and I got stopped by the cops once, after his firm’s alarm went off. (We got a call from the alarm company, so we drove to the office to turn it off.) It’s an amusing story involving a white cop having his gun on his pistol (which he didn’t draw but he was looking for a reason to do so), interrogating us. I should blog it.
Oh, we were compliant in the face of an idiot cop. Which is why we didn’t get shot or throw into jail.
Gates, take a lesson for people who do this shit for a living: Don’t yell at cops. Just play their game and move on. Doing otherwise will get you in jail (which would have been funny for me, anyway); or shot (which is the real reason I’m compliant.)
But you didn’t mention that Norm is an extraordinarily light-skinned black man with peculiar hair, likely to rouse the suspicion of all police officers and most mammals.
It is, of course, reasonable for a cop to check out a report of a guy breaking into a place; a guy who is in his own home doesn’t have to be “reasonable”. Whether or not he is doesn’t matter; it’s his home. Those people who don’t find his behavior to their taste can, well, leave.
It’s one reason that some folks I know recommend that when being interviewed by a police officer while in one’s home, the best thing to do is keep the conversation short, and through the door, and pleasant. (“Just love to talk to you about whatever’s on your mind, Officer — just leave your card and my attorney will call you to set up an appointment, at our mutual convenience. Step outside ‘just for a minute’? Err… what was that word I was thinking of . . .? Ah: ‘no.'”)
I do have some initial sympathy for the cop’s situation — he’s got a legitimate job to check out what sounds like a break-in (and may have been in a physical sense just that). And the guy inside — presumably behind the locked door — may be the homeowner, or the burglar, or the serial murderer who has just finished chopping up all but the last of the family.
But I seem to have read somewhere about how folks have a right to be secure in their persons, effects, and homes under most circumstances, and when I’m in my home, the need of even a good, service-oriented, polite civil servant to do his job as he sees it isn’t all that important to me.
The race issue is, it seems to me, a sideshow. But, this being America, it’s a sideshow that will likely overshadow the main event.
Where is Alan Dershowitz? Perhaps he is deferring to his collegue Professor Ogletree.
I really don’t like the way after being asked for his name and badge number the ‘officer’ decided to make an arrest. Seems retaliatory, although I agree that belligerence, for cops, is the unforgivable sin.
Nice analysis SHG. Now just sit back and wait for the high-end offer at full-time punditry to come in. Got to be better than soloeing.
Here I am, meanwhile, having to remember the list of those not to express my frustration to: Wife, boss, judge, cops. It’s getting complicated.
If this affair prompts a few hundred, or, dare I hope thousands, police and adherents to not vote Obama next time around, it was all worth it.
This article in the Times is really terrifying. It’s cops talking about when they think it’s OK to arrest someone.: almost all of them think it’s a judgment call and the don’t ‘have’ to take abuse. Just like Scott says in this post.
Each cop, in essense, decides for himself where his breaking point is, and then acts upon it. It reduces the concept of law to whatever an individual officer feels is more than he cares to take, at which point he believes himself entitled to use the force of his authority. Some are thick skinned and controlled. Some understand that these are otherwise good people who are pushed to anger and outrage. Some are all about themselves, their tolerance level and using the authority of the state to shut down people who anger them.
Don’t you think that different jurisdictions, judges, and prosecutors also play a part in the development of officer’s varying interpretations/tolerance levels of perceived law violations?
…or at least in determining a minimum threshold?
Tyranny of the constable is often much more oppressive than the King’s tyranny.
Absolutely. If it’s tolerated, then it’s encouraged. It can be put to a stop if the other players choose to do so.
Yup. With some exceptions, PDs get the kind of cops that they want. Doesn’t matter, much, what “it” is — if it is something people might want to do, it’ll be pretty much stopped if the collective culture says that it’s not okay, and not, if not.
(I think that it should be more that “communities get the kind of cops that they want.” But that’s not what the public insists on, and it doesn’t get it without insisting.)