Posted by TheGame:

Posted by izybx:

Posted by TheGame:

This is from an article on CNN:

The issue of whether or not Gates — first in his home and later on his front porch — was in a public place has sparked plenty of debate, including in the blogosphere. Crowley's account of the incident included the detail that "at least seven" passers-by had stopped to rubberneck. Sam Goldberg, author of Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog, thinks the report includes that detail in order to bolster the case that this altercation was playing out publicly. "It's as if he was saying, 'Look, he was really causing a disturbance,'" says Goldberg, a criminal defense attorney at the Cambridge-based firm of Altman & Altman.

Jon Shane, who spent 17 years as a police officer in hardscrabble Newark, N.J., said that had he been the cop called to Gates' house, he would have left Gates and his huffy comments alone once he was sure Gates was the homeowner. He admits he may well have been offended by the professor's alleged bluster, but that's just part of the job, so much so that there's a term in police vernacular devoted to situations like this: contempt of cop.

"In contempt of court, you get loud and abusive in a courtroom, and it's against the law," says Shane, now a professor of criminal justice at John Jay who specializes in police policy and practice. "With contempt of cop, you get loud and nasty and show scorn for a law enforcement officer, but a police officer can't go out and lock you up for disorderly conduct because you were disrespectful toward them." The First Amendment allows you to say pretty much anything to the police. "You could tell them to go f--k themselves," says Shane, "and that's fine."
____

This sums up my point. No police officer should arrest someone for voicing their opinion unless it rises to the point of interfering with the officer doing his job. There is no question these officers knew that Gates lived there and as this officer said, once they determined that, they should have taken their butt on.

Beautiful. You guys want to argue about whether this guy crossed the gray line and locked up a guy for discon then go ahead. Its actually a worthy debate. But what I like about this post is there is no nonsense about how this only happened because the guy is black.

I don't think the initial situation happened because Gates was black. But the decision to arrest him was certainly influenced by the fact he was black. No way those cops arrest Gates if he was a white man who took offense to them being there once they determined it was his house. And, I absolutely will not excuse a police officer abusing their power by unnecessarily wasting all our tax payers dollars by arresting someone, when they know they have no valid basis to arrest them but rather are merely trying to get "payback" because the person was not as nice as the officers thinks he should have been. I guess I should be allowed to conduct a citizens arrest the next time an officer acts like an a-hole to me, because he is not treating me with the respect I think I deserve. If I tried to do that, I would really be arrested and probably charged with assaulting an officer. A police officer who does the same thing should be subjected to no less punishment. These cops should all be suspended for their actions to send a clear message that this type of unprofessional behavior will not be tolerated from the police.

really? because a white guy mouthing off at a cop, making threats and barking at him would NEVER get arrested right?

Here's a news flash fellas. You jaw at a cop long enough you going to get a free ride to the station. If he tells you pipe down I suggest you do it. you can threaten him and cry racism and militant nation or you can drop it walk away and get on with your life. Gates chose the first one.

Is it so hard to believe?

This pisses me off, and I will tell you why. I live in an area of NJ where racial profiling takes place. Its nasty and its a problem. Twice I got pulled over in one paticular town because my passenger was black. We played ball together and he didnt drive. I will spare you the specifics but it was typical profiling BS.

The problem is what Gates did takes attention away from the real problem. Gates comes off like an upitty harvard professor with an axe to grind. He's succeeded in helping people "tune out" accusations of racism in the future. His buddy Obama said the cop was a good man and cooler heads should have prevailed.

If your going to publicly bark racism at someone you better be damn sure your right because thats a nasty thing to say to someone if its not true.

Posted by fishmike:

Posted by TheGame:

Posted by izybx:

Posted by TheGame:

This is from an article on CNN:

The issue of whether or not Gates — first in his home and later on his front porch — was in a public place has sparked plenty of debate, including in the blogosphere. Crowley's account of the incident included the detail that "at least seven" passers-by had stopped to rubberneck. Sam Goldberg, author of Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog, thinks the report includes that detail in order to bolster the case that this altercation was playing out publicly. "It's as if he was saying, 'Look, he was really causing a disturbance,'" says Goldberg, a criminal defense attorney at the Cambridge-based firm of Altman & Altman.

Jon Shane, who spent 17 years as a police officer in hardscrabble Newark, N.J., said that had he been the cop called to Gates' house, he would have left Gates and his huffy comments alone once he was sure Gates was the homeowner. He admits he may well have been offended by the professor's alleged bluster, but that's just part of the job, so much so that there's a term in police vernacular devoted to situations like this: contempt of cop.

"In contempt of court, you get loud and abusive in a courtroom, and it's against the law," says Shane, now a professor of criminal justice at John Jay who specializes in police policy and practice. "With contempt of cop, you get loud and nasty and show scorn for a law enforcement officer, but a police officer can't go out and lock you up for disorderly conduct because you were disrespectful toward them." The First Amendment allows you to say pretty much anything to the police. "You could tell them to go f--k themselves," says Shane, "and that's fine."
____

This sums up my point. No police officer should arrest someone for voicing their opinion unless it rises to the point of interfering with the officer doing his job. There is no question these officers knew that Gates lived there and as this officer said, once they determined that, they should have taken their butt on.

Beautiful. You guys want to argue about whether this guy crossed the gray line and locked up a guy for discon then go ahead. Its actually a worthy debate. But what I like about this post is there is no nonsense about how this only happened because the guy is black.

I don't think the initial situation happened because Gates was black. But the decision to arrest him was certainly influenced by the fact he was black. No way those cops arrest Gates if he was a white man who took offense to them being there once they determined it was his house. And, I absolutely will not excuse a police officer abusing their power by unnecessarily wasting all our tax payers dollars by arresting someone, when they know they have no valid basis to arrest them but rather are merely trying to get "payback" because the person was not as nice as the officers thinks he should have been. I guess I should be allowed to conduct a citizens arrest the next time an officer acts like an a-hole to me, because he is not treating me with the respect I think I deserve. If I tried to do that, I would really be arrested and probably charged with assaulting an officer. A police officer who does the same thing should be subjected to no less punishment. These cops should all be suspended for their actions to send a clear message that this type of unprofessional behavior will not be tolerated from the police.

really? because a white guy mouthing off at a cop, making threats and barking at him would NEVER get arrested right?

Here's a news flash fellas. You jaw at a cop long enough you going to get a free ride to the station. If he tells you pipe down I suggest you do it. you can threaten him and cry racism and militant nation or you can drop it walk away and get on with your life. Gates chose the first one.

Is it so hard to believe?

This pisses me off, and I will tell you why. I live in an area of NJ where racial profiling takes place. Its nasty and its a problem. Twice I got pulled over in one paticular town because my passenger was black. We played ball together and he didnt drive. I will spare you the specifics but it was typical profiling BS.

The problem is what Gates did takes attention away from the real problem. Gates comes off like an upitty harvard professor with an axe to grind. He's succeeded in helping people "tune out" accusations of racism in the future. His buddy Obama said the cop was a good man and cooler heads should have prevailed.

If your going to publicly bark racism at someone you better be damn sure your right because thats a nasty thing to say to someone if its not true.

couldnt agree more - and since no one who has contributed to this thread was actually there, no-one has a difinitive view of the truth....that's what gets me about all the back and forth on this thread - people claiming things like they were at the scene and know the whole story.

i think based on some of the responses i've read on this thread that you're seeing alot of what people's beliefs are on black/white relations in general rather than commentary on just the actual facts. NONE OF US WERE THERE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED FOLKS, so dont jump to conclusions based on what you read.....

Posted by TMS:


just using my own race as an example, look at every Hollywood movie & television series out there... when's the last time u watched a movie where an Asian man was represented in a positive light other than as some kinda kung fu expert? it's always either a yakuza gangster, or a non-English speaking chinese food delivery guy William Hung type mockery, or sometimes both...

Posted by TMS:

1 suspicious of cops black man vs. 1 power tripping white cop is a powderkeg just ready to go off at the slightest provocation... arresting someone in their own house for no reason would likely qualify... the cop shoulda backed off, no ifs ands or buts here... if that cop was arrested in his own house for the same reason i'm sure he'd be pissed off about it too, race or no... he shoulda taken that into account & added in the fact that the whole racial profiling question obviously comes to mind in this type of situation & given the suspect some leeway in his annoyance over the misunderstanding & just let him go on his way w/no further incident... instead he chose to confront the anger directed at him by challenging it & proving some kinda point that u don't mouth off to the cops under any circumstances, which to me is the biggest load of BS i've ever heard on these forums... if you feel like you're being treated like a subhuman & having your rights violated, u should have every right to voice your displeasure over it w/o fear of prosecution, i don't care if you're talking to the President of the United States.

[Edited by - TMS on 07-27-2009 3:06 PM]

Posted by Cosmic:

Has anyone even figured out why this guy was arrested? I mean, it's his house, he didn't have an ID card? The cops didn't look for one? The cops claim he was acting crazy and refused to calm down. That onto itself are grounds to be detained like it or not.

However, again, how stupid can a cop be to not say, Alright, Alright, hold up, where's your wallet let me see your ID... and then see it's his house and leave the guy alone?

I think a lot of things are being left out here, intentionally, by both sides. Cops want to make it look like they responded to a major break in with "black guys" rooting through the house and acting irrational putting the public at risk. The African-American population want to make it look like Hitler came storming through with his SS murdering everything in it's path.

There has to be a middle ground here I would assume. I guess that doesn't make good press though.


Again, 2 things that stick out to me.

1) The Cops couldn't identify the man as the owner of his own damn house!? Really!?!?
2) Why was this man acting so insanely that the cops, several of whom WERE BLACK (another convenient point left out), deemed him a danger and quite possibly a robber and needed to detain him? And lets face facts - someone calls in a robbery - cops show up - their primary objective is to contain the situation and detain all parties NO MATTER their color - and then sort it out after they have control. It doesn't help that this professor went ape **** on them when they showed up. Calm down, tell them it is your house, offer to show ID, and all would have been fine. But...no....so here we are.


To me this is very simple and cooler heads would have prevailed on both sides.

Unfortunately, we don't have even half the answers to what actually happened that night, and now that this thing is embroiled into a huge fight of "Kill Racist Whitey" versus "All Blacks are Criminals Arrest them All and sort them out later!" fight? WE're never going to know.

Last thought: Obama getting involved is ludicrous. The racial overtones of this one got to him and he was made foolish for doing so. I like that he wishes to sit down with both parties over "a beer" though but that is his way of conceding he screwed up jumping into the fray. Yet, still, focus on stopping our country from falling into 3rd world status and stay out of random local matters.

the ID thing was the root of the problem. The cops HAVE to ID him. They have to. If he's Jesus Christ they have to ID him. Its protocol. If they get a B&E call they have to ID the guy in the house. Gates refused and got hot. Eventually he did, but after getting hot (he admitted all this.)

THEN

He asked the cop for his badge and name. Gates says the cop ignored him and walked away. Here is where the stories dont mix but I say it doesnt matter. If the cop said or did something that got under Gate's skin he should have called the station and asked for the cops ID and made a complaint.

Instead

He lost his cool. He yelled. He screamed. He called the cops racist. He threatened them with the whole "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!??!?" mantra. Cops told him to calm down. He didnt. Pop... arrested for disturbing police. These are all confirmed facts and not up for debate.

Cops, good or bad are human. Some have short fuses and others long. Eventually there is a popping point and Gates clearly pushed this guy to his. He doesnt strike me as a guy with a lot of street smarts.

(CNN) -- The woman who made the 911 call that led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. never referred to race when she contacted authorities for what she thought was a potential break-in, her attorney told CNN on Monday.
Attorney Wendy Murphy also categorically rejected part of the police report that said her client, Lucia Whalen, talked with Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, at the scene.

"Let me be clear: She never had a conversation with Sgt. Crowley at the scene," Murphy said. "And she never said to any police officer or to anybody 'two black men.' She never used the word 'black.' Period."

She added, "I'm not sure what the police explanation will be. Frankly, I don't care. Her only goal is to make it clear she never described them as black. She never saw their race. ... All she reported was behavior, not skin color."

Calls to the Cambridge Police Department about the issue have not been returned. In the police report, filed by Crowley, he says he spoke with Whalen outside the home before he approached Gates' house.

"She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of Ware Street," the report says. "She told me that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

Murphy's comments add yet another layer of intrigue to the July 16 arrest that has prompted heated discussion across the nation on race relations in America.

Murphy also disputed accounts of her client as a white woman in the traditional sense. "The fact is she's olive-skinned and of Portuguese descent. You wouldn't look at her and say necessarily, 'Oh, there's a white woman.' You might think she was Hispanic," Murphy said

In a 1976 decision, Commonwealth v. Richards, 369 Mass. 443, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the First Amendment prevents application of the disorderly conduct law to language and expressive conduct, even when it is offensive and abusive. The one exception would be language that falls outside the protection of the First Amendment, "fighting words which by their very utterance tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."


Jury instructions used by the Massachusetts courts spell out three elements that must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to convict someone of disorderly conduct:

1. The defendant engaged in fighting or threatening, or engaged in violent or tumultuous behavior, or created a hazardous or physically offensive condition by an act that served no legitimate purpose.
2. The defendant’s actions were reasonably likely to affect the public.
3. The defendant either intended to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly created a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm.

Posted by sebstar:


The plot thickens...Crowley might have lied. Racial profiling expert, my ass


http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/27/gates.arrest/index.html

(CNN) -- The woman who made the 911 call that led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. never referred to race when she contacted authorities for what she thought was a potential break-in, her attorney told CNN on Monday.
Attorney Wendy Murphy also categorically rejected part of the police report that said her client, Lucia Whalen, talked with Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, at the scene.

"Let me be clear: She never had a conversation with Sgt. Crowley at the scene," Murphy said. "And she never said to any police officer or to anybody 'two black men.' She never used the word 'black.' Period."

She added, "I'm not sure what the police explanation will be. Frankly, I don't care. Her only goal is to make it clear she never described them as black. She never saw their race. ... All she reported was behavior, not skin color."

Calls to the Cambridge Police Department about the issue have not been returned. In the police report, filed by Crowley, he says he spoke with Whalen outside the home before he approached Gates' house.

"She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of Ware Street," the report says. "She told me that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

Murphy's comments add yet another layer of intrigue to the July 16 arrest that has prompted heated discussion across the nation on race relations in America.

Murphy also disputed accounts of her client as a white woman in the traditional sense. "The fact is she's olive-skinned and of Portuguese descent. You wouldn't look at her and say necessarily, 'Oh, there's a white woman.' You might think she was Hispanic," Murphy said

Posted by martin:

Posted by sebstar:


The plot thickens...Crowley might have lied. Racial profiling expert, my ass


http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/27/gates.arrest/index.html

(CNN) -- The woman who made the 911 call that led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. never referred to race when she contacted authorities for what she thought was a potential break-in, her attorney told CNN on Monday.
Attorney Wendy Murphy also categorically rejected part of the police report that said her client, Lucia Whalen, talked with Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, at the scene.

"Let me be clear: She never had a conversation with Sgt. Crowley at the scene," Murphy said. "And she never said to any police officer or to anybody 'two black men.' She never used the word 'black.' Period."

She added, "I'm not sure what the police explanation will be. Frankly, I don't care. Her only goal is to make it clear she never described them as black. She never saw their race. ... All she reported was behavior, not skin color."

Calls to the Cambridge Police Department about the issue have not been returned. In the police report, filed by Crowley, he says he spoke with Whalen outside the home before he approached Gates' house.

"She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of Ware Street," the report says. "She told me that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

Murphy's comments add yet another layer of intrigue to the July 16 arrest that has prompted heated discussion across the nation on race relations in America.

Murphy also disputed accounts of her client as a white woman in the traditional sense. "The fact is she's olive-skinned and of Portuguese descent. You wouldn't look at her and say necessarily, 'Oh, there's a white woman.' You might think she was Hispanic," Murphy said

wow, what's this world turning into when the woman who called in the 911 report has to retain a lawyer?