Wow, what a tempest in a teapot this one is.

I think the two things that are most obvious here is that, (1) there was no cause to arrest Gates, and (2) this is a textbook example of playing the race card. There may or may not actually be racism at play here (and it looks like there isn't), but from where I'm standing I can definitely see at least two stupid people.

Why would gates get arrested? According to both versions of the story, the officer had already determined that it was Gates' house and that there was no burglary by the time the arrest happened. Doesn't this mean racism had to be involved? No, in fact it works against the racial-profiling accusation, because at the time of arrest, Gates was no longer suspected of anything by the officer. Race could not have been a compounding factor in the cop's mind about whether he was "guilty" or not, because it had already been determined that there was no crime, or criminal to catch.

So then you're left with the accusation that Gates was arrested because he was being "uppity." Would a white person have been arrested for responding to the officer in the same way that a black person would? Perhaps not, we can't know for certain. But I can say as a white guy, in my experiences with police misunderstandings (noise complaints, accidentally trespassed once, etc), I always got the unmistakable impression that if I so much as looked at the officer the wrong way, I was getting a ride to the police station. I am not surprised in any sense, regardless of racial issues, that a person was arrested for speaking defensively to a police officer.

Which brings me to my larger point... there are lots and lots of stupid arrests all the time. I'm not anti-police or anything, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking that police often overstep what we tend to think of as their bounds. Lots of people get taken in to spend a few hours or an evening at a police station for various misunderstandings, flared tempers, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thats normal. Its also stupid. And while latent racial issues may skew towards more black people than white people experiencing this, there is nothing inherently racist about being unfairly arrested for speaking your mind.

So Gates may have been right in his anger, but it seems a bit excessive to immediately chalk it up to racism. (And arguing about how you "treat a black man in america" before you get arrested is about as immediate as it gets). Gates found himself in a "normal" circumstance of police overracting, and decided that it must have to do with his skin color. Unfortunately, I think this whole incident says more about police being overly impulsive than racist.

If the same thing happened to me, and I stood up for myself with the vigor that Gates did, I really think I would have been arrested too. And thats stupid.

I was impressed with the piece by Richard Thompson Ford and I agree with your assessment that neither party in this incident displayed the best judgment. But in the final analysis, nobody can get inside the head of Gates or the cop and know what he was thinking at the time. A tempest in a teapot, indeed.

I don't see that Gates did anything unreasonable here.

1. The whole reason as to why his actions were deemed "suspicious" was because of his race.
2. The Officer had no actual cause to even be on Gates' porch. Gates would have been perfectly within his rights to refuse ID to the officer and to order him from the porch
3. Gates could not be "causing a public disturbance" since he was on private property and his actions were not extending beyond his property (ie unlike a boom box noise complaint)
4. "looking the wrong way" at a cop isn't the basis for arrest.

There was no "race card" played here. There was plain old racism rearing its ugly head and then compounded by an officer that stupidly overstepped his bounds of authority.

There is nothing excessive in chalking this up to racism. As someone who has problems remembering keys, I have had to break into my house numerous times in various parts of the country. But as a white male, I have NEVER EVER been challenged.

The very notion that a smallish person with a cane in the house speaking on the phone is even remotely possibly a burglar beggars the imagination. But of course if he was black or hispanic....

I don't know the background of the cop. Assuming him to be from a white, working class, local background (the first is true, the next two I don't know, but neither is unlikely), is it unreasonable that he would dsilike Harvard, an institution that he would see as elitist?

If that is true (I don't state it as a fact, merely as a possibility), then what we have here is not a race issue, but a class issue, with Gates standing in for the upper middle class elites and the cop for the working class. The story at least makes more sense to me seen through this lense.

Oh c'mon degsme.

You missed the main point of my post. That was, that I would fully expect the police to arrest anyone who talked back to them if they get called to a scene. Old, young, white, black, most police really don't like being talked back to. I'm saying this from personal experience, and I'm surprised you don't agree.

If there was any racism, it was in the 911 caller who (maybe) assumed that it was a break-in because Gates was black (- also, don't people know their neighbors?).

Nowhere did I say that there was no racism here because the officer was justified in arresting Gates. Of course he wasn't. Gates did nothing wrong. And, like many people who do nothing outside of their legal rights when confronting the police, he got arrested for it.

To slap a racial label on this is to ignore how police very often act in these situations, which is to say, impulsively (or "stupidly" if you prefer the operative media word of the day!)

Interesting theory foobs. It begs the question of whether the officer knew who he was arresting. I don't think he did, because he probably would have expected some kind of eruption like this if he had.

So I don't think it was anti-harvard. I think it was anti talking-back-to-the-badge.

My understanding is that one of the forms of identification that the officer was shown was a Harvard ID. The professor's name would presumably have meant nothing to the cop, but the university name would have meant something to him.

I know that in many places, the town has a grudge against the university, especially when the university is a private, elite one (Duke, for example). If my supposition about the cop's background is accurate, I can easilly imagine him thinking "I come here on a call, doing my job, and you think you can berate me because you're a big Harvard man? Fuck you!"

Wait a second:

"The whole reason as to why his actions were deemed "suspicious" was because of his race."

No, the whole reason Gates' actions were deemed suspicious is because a neighbor saw him muscling through the front door of the house in a manner which appeared to be a break-in. Gates admitted that he in essence had to break into his own house.

"The Officer had no actual cause to even be on Gates' porch."

Of course he did. He was responding to a 911 call about a possible home break-in. Imagine the officer attempting to investigate the situation from the curb.

"Gates would have been perfectly within his rights to refuse ID to the officer and to order him from the porch."

I'm not sure really if that is true. You mean, the law allows him not to provide i.d. when asked, or even demanded to do so?

"Gates could not be "causing a public disturbance" since he was on private property and his actions were not extending beyond his property (ie unlike a boom box noise complaint)

"looking the wrong way" at a cop isn't the basis for arrest."

I agree.

"There was no "race card" played here."

I agree that Gates did not "play the race card," which would suggest a cynical and dishonest accusation of racism. Instead I believe he genuinely felt that the cop was racist for even investgating the 911 call of a possible break-in and acting like a cop, which is to act authoritatively, and "demand" i.d., and so forth. I have never encountered a cop who has pulled me over or questioned me, who has done so in a cuddly way, and I am white. They establish their authority with everyone.

I think that Gates, a black man who has undoubtedly experienced a lot of racism in his day, who sees The Police as the ultimate symbol of anti-black racism in America, was fully predisposed to seeing every action and comment of the policeman's as being racist. It's a shame.

"There was plain old racism rearing its ugly head..."

You mean by the cop? You have proven nothing in that regard.

"...and then compounded by an officer that stupidly overstepped his bounds of authority."

I do agree that there was no basis for the arrest. I tend to think the cop overreacted by being slandered as a "racist" for no other reason than he responded properly to a 911 about a suspected break-in, and he got emotional, and arrested Gates. That is not racism, it's unprofessional policing.

Cmon Degsme too. Answering your points in order:

1. The whole reason as to why his actions were deemed "suspicious" was because the police received a 911 call, saying that 2 black men had broken into the house. The police went to investigate.
2. The Officer had no cause to be on the porch and in the house, investigating a 911 call that had been reported to the police. A suspect in the crimes, Gate could have refused to show ID, but he would have been arrested on the spot.
3. Gates could be "causing a public disturbance" since he was on private property and his actions were not extending beyond his property. Shouting *can* be considered such, but it rarely is.
4. Depending on what was said, it could be cause for arrest. We just don't know all the details.

Our culture is so obsessed these days with fame that many semi-famous hold on to it dearly. So when the police report says that Gates shouted, "Don't you know who I am?" I flash back to Mel Gibson and others who start a tirade with those words. It makes parts of that report seem very plausible to me. Like many here, I think that the officer could have been a bigger man and walked away, but likewise, I find it hard to believe that any man (me included) gets to his 40s or 50s without knowing that you don't yell at the police and expect them to react. Is it what I'd like to see? No. Is it what I would expect to see? Yes.

This has been raised, but overall, it's surely possible. But, there is no way of knowing in a vacuum if it is "more" likely or that race & class (maybe he was uncomfortable with elite blacks?) each had something to do with it. White working class individuals have been shown to have issues with both groups after all. If we work with stereotypes -- I know, a bit ironic. Also, we have to consider the person who made the call in the first place. Would she have if he was white? Was class involved there? Who knows?

Finally, as to the tempest/teapot issue -- the thing is that these things are given so much weight because we cannot look at them in an "all things being equal" sort of way. Racism taints what can be a perfectly innocent (or non-racial) event. And, that too has to be taken into consideration by those involved.

-j

Sorry your rebuttals don't meet the Am4 requirements.

Gates had no reason to know about the 911 call. And absent actual suspicious circumstances upon arriving on scene, the officers had no basis to continue any sort of search or seizure.

An old man talking on a phone inside a house is not the basis for suspision of B&E... unless you expect the owner of the house to be white.

Absent any evidence based on oath or affirmation that Gates was a suspect, he was not. Furthermore he was on Am 4 protected turf. Sorry no arrest possible.

As for public disturbance - for shouting on your property to be a public disturbance it has to occurr at decibel levels above the legal limit AT THE EDGE OF THE PROPERTY and it has to be sustained. Nothing of that sort is alleged here.

this is very much a case of false arrest as well as Am 4 violations.

I don't care what Gates' "shouted". The cops had no business evern remaining on the porch once they saw Gates inside the house on the phone.

As a white male who has problems with keys I have often had to resort to breaking in to my own house from a realtively early age. I have NEVER had the cops called on me despite banging hard on doors, climbing in windows, climbing on the roof and even forcing windows.

The reason the neighbor called the cops was cuz it was a black man doing this in a white neighborhood.

The officer was responding to a 911 call. But he saw no one in the act of B&E and he only saw a small person NOT matching the description except for race on the telephone in the house. That's no longer a "hot pursuit" issue except on the basis of racism.

And yes the law requires you to provide ID if you are in a public space. But Gates was not in a public space. He was in the privacy of his home, which is protectc by the 4th Amendment. Were I in that role I would first demand to see the officer's warrant before showing ID.

This is why the officer wanted Gates to come onto the porch. Once Gates stepped out of the house, his 4th Amendment rights are somewhat attneuated.

Racism reared its ugly head twice here. Once in the guise of the neighbor and once in the form of the officer who had no basis for asking for ID EXCEPT race.

"I always got the unmistakable impression that if I so much as looked at the officer the wrong way, I was getting a ride to the police station."

You'd think that. You might be surprised.

A few years ago, for reasons I won't get into (mostly me being naive and stupid), I was living in a house when the owner of that house got busted by the cops for check fraud and possession of crack. Heavy stuff. There were, as I recall, four people in that house at the time, including me. They lined us all up and asked us a bunch of questions, searched the house and actually came up with some of the aforementioned crack, then the officer in charge said "Let's go," and led the way out the door.

We all got up to follow him, me included - I was sure they were going to take me down to the police station, for further questioning if nothing else. Hell, I'd have arrested me. But the officer told me, "Not you. Get out of here. I'm coming back on Friday, and if you're still living here, I'll arrest you."

So, everybody else headed off to cool their heels in jail, and I called a friend I knew with a van, got my stuff together, and was out of there in fifteen minutes. Naive and stupid I may be on occasion, but I can take a hint when it busts down the door and arrests my housemates.

All my housemates were black. I'm white. I won't say that was all that decided things in my favor (I'm sure the main reason was that I acted surprised rather than scared and was obviously completely clueless), but I remain quite certain that if my skin had been brown instead of pink, I'd have gotten to ride in a police car that day.

"As a white male who has problems with keys I have often had to resort to breaking in to my own house from a realtively early age. I have NEVER had the cops called on me despite banging hard on doors, climbing in windows, climbing on the roof and even forcing windows."

Objection. The witness' lack of harrassment by the police is irrelevent to this case, your honor. Besides, nobody is arguing that there is not anti-black discrimination in the country.

Sustained.

"The reason the neighbor called the cops was cuz it was a black man doing this in a white neighborhood."

Objection, conjecture. There is no way for the witness to know the state of mind of the neighbor. Not to mention, even the complainant admits to the fact that he and his friend were manipulating the stuck front door in a manner which could have been construed as breaking in.

Sustained.

"The officer was responding to a 911 call. But he saw no one in the act of B&E..."

Objection. Irrelevent. The officer's job in responding to a call of a B&E is not merely to disrupt the actual process of kicking in a door or crawling through a window, but to protect the occupants and property inside the house from the person who may have by-then broken in.

Sustained.

"...and he only saw a small person NOT matching the description except for race on the telephone in the house. That's no longer a "hot pursuit" issue except on the basis of racism."

Your honor, it would have been a breach of duty for the officer to not have gone up to the house to investigate, and, upon finding an occupant who matched at least two aspects of the description of the suspect - black and male - not have asked what he was doing there. In fact, if such an investigative process had not occurred in responding to an actual B&E of a black-owned residence, could the complainant not then charge racism and claim that white officers do not properly investigate B&E calls made in relation to black-owned property?

"And yes the law requires you to provide ID if you are in a public space. But Gates was not in a public space. He was in the privacy of his home, which is protectc by the 4th Amendment. Were I in that role I would first demand to see the officer's warrant before showing ID. This is why the officer wanted Gates to come onto the porch. Once Gates stepped out of the house, his 4th Amendment rights are somewhat attneuated."

I agree that Gates was not required to show i.d. under those circumstances. But do you honestly believe that had Gates cooperated by showing i.d. fairly immediately, at the threshold of the home, that the matter would not have immediately dropped then and there?

In fact, what did occur (and as I believe this is not contested), is that Gates did ultimately show i.d., and the cops were ready to leave. But then Gates demanded the cop's i.d., and started yelling about racism and so forth.

And in my opinion, this is when the police acted unprofessionally by making a mountain out of molehill and arresting him under the guise of "disorderly conduct."

I see a pissed off black man who sees every action by a white cop as a racist one, who went apeshit - but not illegally so - and a cop who let his emotions get the best of him and misused his authority. But I do not see racism.

Something just isn't syncing up in this case. There is nothing in either persons background that would explain this confrontation. Crowley is the Cambridge expert on race relations. Gates has been for inclusion in a single body rather than a separate category for African accomplishments. <link>. So what happened in the first 5-10 seconds that caused this to take the route that it did. It is like someone else said when they described Gates and Crowley as dumb and dumber. That is exactly what this evolved into. And the first few seconds are key. To say that both acted stupidly is an understatement.