I don't give a damn what his tone of voice was; once his residence was established that should have been the end of story and the cop should have left.

Posted by kam77:

Posted by BasketballJones:

Posted by kam77:

Posted by bitty41:


After it was determined that he wasn't breaking into his own residence why was it necessary for him to be arrested?

Exactly what I'd like to know. What did he say to the cop. How did he say it? It's just like a Coach saying the magic word to a referree.

What was the cop doing other than his job for Gates to become so indignant and accusatory?

Here's my question to you: Why didn't the cop just leave?

I've dealt with cops. The worst thing you can do around them is keep yapping.

Check this:
After handing the officer both his Harvard and Massachusetts state identification, which included his address, Gates said he began to ask the officer this question, repeatedly. "I said 'Who are you? I want your name and badge number.' I got angry."

So by his own admission, Gates "got angry" and questioned "repeatedly". At some point the cop will react just like a ref would react. He's human too.

Moral of the story: Start a scene in your own house with a cop present -- fine.
But walk outside to angrily continue the dialog? That is apparently crossing the line.
You can see the cops trying to keep him calm in the pic.

He kept it real and got burned.

They'd have to keep me calm too if they were leading me from my own home in handcuffs for no reason.

Posted by kam77:

I don't give a damn what his tone of voice was; once his residence was established that should have been the end of story and the cop should have left.

Cop left. Gates followed.

Posted by misterearl:

The Washington Post

So here's Gates the other day, just back from China, in his house (a tony neighborhood that I wouldn't have been caught fooling around in after, say, midnight, and by fooling around I mean walking home, because then, as a black man, you want to cross the street before the group of white females does, which you find insulting) after struggling with the jammed front door, and he suddenly notices police officers out front. Someone has called the police on him: a black man in a pricey neighborhood seen trying to get into somebody's home. The squad car rolls right up. (That's real estate reality for you: The police car might not have gotten to one of the streets over in mostly black Roxbury so quickly.) Gates wonders why the police are there; they explain why, a call about a possible break-in.

And then it probably starts to whoosh in Gates's own mind, like a desert wind that must peak before leveling off. Here we go again. Heated words because Gates, in these flashing moments, is not a scholar who studied at the University of Cambridge (in England) but a suspect. Forget the Harvard and personal ID's, he's in that touchy nexus and zone of black skin and law enforcement. And that peculiar zone can be exposed day or night. And when it beams on, it can show that the black man is carrying a lot of historical weight -- weight that Gates himself has put into scholarship and documentaries -- surrounding the heaviness of race in America. It's suddenly pent-up anger and jet-lag words flying on that wind that can't be taken back and skin color and real estate and cold eyes and I'm not breaking any law so just leave me alone please, dammit, please. Please.

But the wheels are already rolling, off to the police station.

- Wil Haygood

Posted by misterearl:

One More Thing About Context

I was standing on Boston's City Hall Plaza the afternoon in 1976 and watched the anti-busing mob from about 500 feet away. That was the afternoon Attorney Ted Landsmark (PhD Boston University) was stabbed in the face with the American flag.

Like Yogi said. "You could look it up"

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ted+landsmark&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[Edited by - misterearl on 07-22-2009 07:21 AM]