The white police sergeant criticized by President Barack Obama for arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Massachusetts home is a police academy expert on racial profiling.
Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class on racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.
“I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy,” Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The course, called “Racial Profiling,” teaches about different cultures that officers could encounter in their community “and how you don’t want to single people out because of their ethnic background or the culture they come from,” Fleming said.
AS soon as I saw that a black man was involved I would have stayed in my car and kept driving. A white cop and a blackman is a no win. The race card will always be played. No one was being injured and the worst would have been a residential burglary. Who cares. I would have radioed back…”nothing to see here” Clearing the scene…
There would be a lot less outrage if you didn’t jump to conclusions. Perhaps before you make a fool of yourself with these knee jerk reactions, you should check for a few facts.
The officer responded to a call of two black men breaking into a house in a wealthy neighborhood. A black man was found in the house, who later turned out to be the owner. The owner was very uncooperative and was arrested for disorderly conduct.
Yes, it was his own home. Yes, it was a mix-up. But sounds to me like the owner was being a belligerent jackass who needed to cool off.
It’s true. Being black is not a license to be an ass to the police, even if they are in your home due to mistake.
I have always treated the police with overt respect, for three reasons:
1) because I understand the nature of their job (they are wary of me, as a member of the public, in a way that I think is justified, and that I think lots of people don’t bear in mind)
2) because I am grateful to them for the job they do (this does require a certain amount of benefit-of-the-doubt, especially here in my horrendously crime-ridden home town of Memphis) and
3) because they have the explicit authority to do to me exactly what they did to this arrogant moron.
What Gates did was clueless, naive, and callow – he responded like a child. Shame on him, and he should stfu and go back to his good life.
On a tangent – this whole episode underlines the fact that COPS SHOULD BE RECORDED. It would be easy for every cop to wear an audio/video recording device for every minute he’s on duty. I doubt it would cost as much per cop as their service revolvers cost. That recording would save the cops a lot of trouble in this and many other cases, yet cops don’t want it. Why not? Until someone gives me a better theory, I’m going to believe it’s because they’d rather retain the ability to do wrong than gain the ability to show that they’ve done right.
#1
Hard to argue with you.
Why did the officer fail to identify himself? After verifying the man was the resident, why was his response not “My apologies sir, have a good evening.”
No, Gates didn’t make it easier by being a belligerent dick. But that’s not illegal.
That’s also assuming the officer hasn’t whitewashed (ha ha) his report to make the situation look more favorable.
My apologies. Upon closer inspection, it appears that exactly what he was doing.
I still don’t discount the possibility that things are not as they appear.
What say the civilian witnesses?
More reason cops should wear helmet cams at all times.
It would totally nullify the he said she said, I think.
There was no credibility left to be tarnished in my opinion.
Interesting, when I heard of this, I though the guy had to be mouthing-off and got arrested. Sure enough, according to the report, I was right.
Sad thing is, if the cop had been black or Gates white, the media and Obama would have never covered it.
We’ve been bamboozled into believing that racism is always white on non-white, racism is alive and well in the US.
Can’t wait until those race-baiters Jackson and Sharpton get on their high-horses.
Still think that the Cops Poster Boy got it wrong. 2 Wrongs dont make it right as we all know. He could have reasoned with the man, after all he is the cop with the upper hand. And being a little upset with the police in your own home…this would be normal under most circumstances, under false reasons. We all have our breaking point, and the man was already pre-positioned to be upset for simply having to “GET” into the house, under the manner he needed to., the last thing he expected was to be treated like a criminal after showing his ID etc…..simply put..it was handled incorrectly…no matter how u slice it.
“Tarnishes all cops’ credibility”???
What credibility do cops have in this day and age?
They are all thugs. I chuckle every time I hear about one of them getting killed in the line of duty. I especially like the way they these tough guys cry like babies when it happens.
Gates has a long history of baiting so I’m not the least bit surprised at what transpired. He was largely responsible for the end result which, under the circumstances, would have likely been the same regardless of his color.
Gates was race baiting from the start. If something like that happened to me, I show my ID, step out of the house, THEN start complaining. It had nothing to do with race, it had to do with police responding to a breaking and entering, and initially being unable to get Gate’s ID. He should have been happy the police showed up at all, not getting offended that they wanted ID.
#4: “because they have the explicit authority to do to me exactly what they did to this arrogant moron.”
Doesn’t it bother you in the least that we have allowed our police to have this arbitrary power to be thugs if they don’t like something that is otherwise legal? Do you actually think someone should be arrested or worse for questioning if what a cop is doing is legal?
The fact that the charges were dropped immediately indicates even the judge thought what the cop did was wrong. The cop should have realized that before throwing his authority around and handled it all differently.
#2: Reading that gives me even more reason to question why the cop didn’t just leave. He knew Gates lived there, so there was no reason for him to stay, no matter what Gates was saying to him. Reading on, the reason is obvious — he didn’t want to lose face with his fellow officers. So, Gates was arrested because the cop had to show he was a tough guy.
Troublemaker, you’re an asshole.
Love how the blog about things the other media misses jumps right on the PC bandwagon and simply accepts that the cop was wrong and Gates (a known prickly jackass despite his excellent books).
This cop will be lucky to keep his job, as now the President of the US has already declared him guilty of racism. Watch for Obama’s henchmen to start attacking his family and friends and pressuring the dept to fire him. He crossed paths with a Friend of The One and will pay the price.
No, Dave, I don’t think so. He didn’t simply ask them questions, he engaged in behavior (yelling, refusing to show ID, following the cop onto the porch yelling as cop was trying to leave) that anyone should know is going to cause problems with the police.
And that’s how it has ALWAYS been, and in my view that’s how it has to be- it’s always hard to draw these lines but the fact is the cops must be able to control the situations they enter. Saying that would be meaningless if they couldn’t arrest people who don’t cooperate.
#17: Gates may be an ass, he may have stirred things up by injecting racism into this, but that still doesn’t mean the cop didn’t handle the situation incorrectly.
#18: A well trained cop wouldn’t have allowed things to go as far as they did. The cop said in the report that he had determined Gates lived there. That should have been the end. Period. Going farther was to provoke Gates into doing something to get arrested because the cop didn’t like what Gates was saying to him.
The bottom line is no matter what happened, the judge didn’t believe the cop was right and threw out the charges.
I noticed that Uncle Dave did not bother to show the very revealing photo of Gates spewing his never-ending slew of racial epithets toward the police.
Gates freely admits he “got in the cop’s face”.
When Crowley told Gates that he was investigating a possible break-in, Gates opened the front door and exclaimed, “Why? because I’m a black man in America?”
The neighborhood where Gates lives had numerous break-ins reported over the past few months. The cops get a call from someone in the neighborhood that two men are trying to break into a house. They show up, knock on the door, and are greeted by Mr. Racist Chip-on-his-shoulder-hates-whitey saying “you’re only here because I’m black”.
Yeah. Someone has a problem with race, and it ain’t the Cambridge Police.
No, the judge wasn’t stupid and didn’t want to be caught on the anti-President of the US on this issue.
If you want to call racism in this blame the neighbors that called the cops. The officer was just doing his job and the guy entering a house with a crowbar was an ass. I would hope in the same situation, but me white, that the cops would show up at my house too. Maybe next time someone is entering your house with a crowbar the cops will not respond because they are afraid the president will call them stupid.
What truly saddens me is Obama. It would be fair to say that Gates is a racist, given the police report posted in #2 and his past history.
Obama has shown his hand, and it is full of race cards.
He is supposed to be smarter than this. He is supposed to be a “uniter, not a divider”. So how is this uniting??
Did you know that Gates, this dyed in the wool racist, is Obama’s friend, and that Obama – as usual – spoke without knowing all the facts?
http://tinyurl.com/nx7djr
The only thing Obama can do is apologize to each and every policeman, sheriff, and security guard in the country. Fat chance.
Obama is a train wreck.
Yep,
It looks like its time for the Cambridge PD to do a little “depolicing”. Works like a charm when dealing with stuff like this.
My previous question on the first post on this issue remains.
Lets accept the police report as exactly what happened.
Should “the law” be that a citizen on his own property can say ANYTHING AT ALL to investigating cops, or can the citizen be arrested if loud and tumultumous/drawing a crowd persists and does not stop after multiple warnings to stop?
I can live with either rule. I think the rule in USA right now is you can be arrested. Like everything else, there are pro’s and con’s to either position you take.
The obivous fact here is that the hair-trigger racist was Gates, and the Blue Line Fascist line was held by the Cop.
What other kind of person do we expect/demand/need to go out on real burglary calls at night in the bad part of town? If you (Uncle Dave) demand officers that are equally adept at both environments, then you have high standards indeed.
You probably want the cashier at McDonalds to be able to count, and your housemaid to speak English too.
The real world doesn’t work that way, as much as we all would like it to.
I like the comment on the other thread that all Harvard Faculty are assholes and need to be arrest. After a life time of real and imagined racism, easy to see Gates has been corrupted by his environment too. Thats just what a history/environment of racism results in. It will continue until we are all yellowish brown in color, then we will discriminate on valid variable like ear lobe shape and height.
Cops are trained to keep control of any situation. Many believe they only way of doing this is being an asshole. It evolves in a culture of arrogance, “How dare you question me”. It doesn’t help dealing with the dredges of society on a daily bases.
Arresting a man in his own home because he doesn’t treat you with the degree of respect you desire is too much. Everyone here knows his career is finished with this department. The guy might as well quit and fad into obscurity a few years. He can’t win this one. Maybe he is a hothead that needs a new career.
Being black is not a license to be an ass to the police
No, but the constitution is. You can be an ass to a police officer just like you can be an ass to anyone else.
I noticed that Uncle Dave did not bother to show the very revealing photo of Gates spewing his never-ending slew of racial epithets toward the police.
You can tell from a picture what someone is saying? Wow, that is pretty amazing. What racial epithets were they? What law says you can’t curse at a cop?
In defense of racial profiling, I think that Sgt. James Crowley looks a lot like Los Angeles Homicide detective, Mark Fuhrman.
Jesse Jackson. Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Professor Gates. And that dick, Sharpton. Cut from the same cloth. They all make it harder for decent black people.
#26 “Being black is not a license to be an ass to the police
No, but the constitution is. You can be an ass to a police officer just like you can be an ass to anyone else.”
Yep. And you can go to jail for it, Einstein.