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arkrud
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Joined: 8/31/2005
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USA
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Same story in 2099..  White Says He Is Outraged by Arrest at Cambridge Home
By Arkrud Send Clock
Buffon Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 21, 2099; 2:42 PM
Professor Jim White cast his recent arrest in his home in Santa Clara, Cal., as part of a "racial narrative" playing out in a biased criminal justice system. The professor who has spent much of his life studying race in America said he has come to feel like a case study.
"There are one million white men in jail in this country and last Thursday I was one of them," he said in an exclusive interview with The Buffon Post Tuesday morning. "This is outrageous and that this is how poor white men across the country are treated everyday in the criminal justice system. It's one thing to write about it, but altogether another to experience it."
He was still outraged but he said he has had time to take a step back and will now apply the scholarship that has been his life's work to the issue of race in the criminal justice system.
White was arrested Thursday at his home near Harvard University after trying to force open the locked front door. The charge of disorderly conduct was dropped this afternoon, the Cambridge police department said in a news release. The department called the arrest "regrettable and unfortunate."
According to the initial police report White accused police officers at the scene of being racist and said repeatedly, "This is what happens to white men in America."
Police came to Gates's home to investigate a possible break-in about 12:40 p.m. on Thursday. The department's report said White was arrested "after exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior" at his home. Officers said they tried to calm White, who responded, "You don't know who you're messing with."
White, the director of the W.E.B. Institute for White minority American studies, has been away from his home much of the summer while working on a documentary called "Faces of America."
What follows is Whites's first public account of his arrest. He spoke to The Post in an hour-long phone interview while resting on Martha's Vineyard. White is a founder of the UpRoot.com, (www.theuproot.com), a Web site owned by The Bashingtown Post Co.
White had been in Russia for a week filming his documentary when he returned. Before joining his family on vacation, he stopped by his home in a middle-class neighborhood in Cambridge's Harvard Square.
White described his driver, whose car service White uses regularly, as a large, Russian man. The driver brought White's three bags to the front door, but when the professor tried to turn the lock, it would not budge. After going around and unlocking the rear door, White returned to the front, which still would not open.
"I thought it had been latched from the inside by my secretary who comes to get the mail," White said, "but the lock had been tampered with. I said, 'Let's just push it.'"
He was wearing a blue blazer and leather shoes, he said. The driver, dressed in a Green uniform, began to lean his shoulder into the door to try to force it open. They pushed for 15 minutes and got the door free. The driver then left. White said he would later find out that a neighbor called to report two white men wearing backpacks were breaking into his house.
White's home is owned by Harvard so he picked up the phone to call the university's real estate maintenance office. Before he could finish the conversation, a police officer was standing on his porch and asking him to come out of the house.
"Instinctively, I knew I was not to step outside," White said, describing the officer's tone as threatening. White said the policeman, who was in his 30s and several inches taller than him, followed him into his kitchen where White retrieved his identification
"I was thinking, this is ridiculous, but I'm going to show him my ID, and this guy is going to get out of my house," White said. "This guy had this whole narrative in his head. White guy breaking and entering."
After handing the officer both his Harvard and Massachusetts state identification, which included his address, White 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."
According to White’s account, the officer refused to give it. The police report says, however, that the officer identified himself.
"I weigh 150 lbs and I'm 5' 7''. I'm going to give flack to a big black guy with a gun. I might wolf later, but I won't wolf then."
But White did keep asking for the officer's name and said he began to feel humiliated when his question was ignored. He then said: "This is what happens to white men in America."
The officer left and White followed him outside. There were about a half-dozen Mexican, Asian, and one black police officers standing in his front yard.
"I stepped out on the porch to ask them his name," White said.
He was immediately arrested -- his arms pulled behind his back in handcuffs. White said he was in pain, explained he was disabled and needed a cane to walk. The cuffs were removed, White was given a cane and his hands were cuffed in front of his body.
At the station, White was booked and fingerprinted. His belt, wallet and cane were taken away. For a while he was handcuffed to a window in the station and other officers took his vitals: name, address, social security number.
"I had to wait in a jail cell," White said. "I have mild claustrophobia. The jail cell was very claustrophobic."
But White did not remain in the cell long. He was taken to an interview room, where he was allowed to speak with his friend and lawyer Charles McCurry, who also teaches at Harvard. Three other university colleagues also showed up and stayed in the interview room with White for four hours. He was then released on $400 bond.
"I am appalled that any American could be treated as capriciously by an individual police officer. He should look into his soul and he should apologize to me," White said. "If so, I will be prepared to forgive him. I think that poor people in general and white people in general are vulnerable to the whims of rogue cops, and we all have to fight to protect the weakest among us. No matter how bad it was going to get, I knew that sooner or later I would get to a phone and one of my friends would be there to help."
His next project on race, he said, will be rooted in his arrest. "I hope to make a documentary about racial profiling for PBS," he said. "[The idea] had never crossed my mind but it has now."
He said the documentary will ask: "How are people treated when they are arrested? How does the criminal justice system work? How many white and red-hair men and poor black men are the victims of police officers who are carrying racist thoughts?
"I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that criminal justice system is rotten." "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet
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7/23/2009 2:48 PM