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The Skip Gates Smokescreen
By Kyle | July 27, 2009
Never let it be said that the American media fail to mischaracterize a story that has inflammatory implications. But let me be blunt: The Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest has nothing to do with racial profiling, or even with race. It’s about a cop abusing his badge.
Cops can and do arrest people for no other reason than that they are annoyed or embarrassed or are losing an argument. The cop at issue didn’t arrest Gates for being black. He arrested Gates — issued him the irreversible, unreviewed punishment of cuffing and booking him — as payback for making him look bad in front of the neighbors. If the First Amendment means anything, it means the right to talk back to authority. Many commenters have said, essentially, that Gates was rude to the cop. Just so! Especially when he made the “Your mama” crack, which is closer to a comic putdown than an actual insult. Being rude to an authority figure is not against the law. Cops hate being talked back to so they drum up a disorderly conduct charge they know won’t stand up in court just so they can have the last word.
The cop’s behavior was sheer bullying and nobody should defend it. In a universe where lots of people have cellphone cameras and videocameras, we should all be on the alert for police abuse of authority.
Topics: Barack Obama, Politics |
July 27th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest has nothing to do with racial profiling, or even with race. It’s about a cop abusing his badge.
Well, that’s the question. Just how disorderly and disruptive was Gates? If very, the cop didn’t abuse his badge; if not so much, he did.
Either way, though, it is about race, b/c Gates made it about race.
July 27th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Nope. Gates could have been yelling at the cop for any reason: “How dare you interrupt my dinner?” The whole story would have been the same. I have seen no reports that Gates was in any way disorderly.
July 27th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Funny, 99-percent of cops everywhere would have reacted the same way as Crowley. Be it small town Ohio or outside some tenured doofus’ house in Cambridge. Meanwhile, cops openly shrug off bomb-throwing thugs at leftists protests in places like San Francisco and Seattle. Go figure.
This was Lawrence Summers, no one would care. It’s the race, stupid.
July 27th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
“This was Lawrence Summers, no one would care.”
Yes, I’m sure that had Larry Summers been arrested and thrown in jail when he was president of Harvard, no one would have cared. Don’t be ridiculous.
But you’re right, most cops would have acted this way. All the guys I knew from high school who became cops were bullying morons who quickly realized after high school that the only way they could still have any authority in the community is if they had a gun and a badge to boss people around with.
The more I read about what happened and about the cop in question, the more I think Kyle is right. This arrest itself had nothing to do with race. Because, however, it involved one of the most prominent African American intellectuals we have, it is also inconceivable that race would not play a big part in how people reacted to it.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
I just don’t know how far advocating back talking a cop is going to get you, I’ve been in situations where a person I was confronting for committing a violation was completely civil and wound up walking away without an issue, I’ve been in situations where someone I had no intention of arresting walked away in cuffs because of their mouth, is it really so damn hard to be polite? Especially to an Officer, keep your mouth shut, say yes sir, no sir and go home, or take a stand on behalf of losers everywhere and enjoy the bookings.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
To a point, I’d try to be sympathetic to the officer. He is following up on a report only to be insulted by the homeowner. While that would be pretty galling had the officer just got in his car and drove off, it’s certainly an extraordinary abuse of his authority to handcuff the man and haul him to the station. Exactly what purpose does arresting this man who has hurt nothing other than this one officer’s pride do?
In the audio the officer labels Gates “uncooperative.” This brought back a memory of me to when I was 19 and a party I threw got busted. Big deal, happens all the time, but the police got the completely insane idea that I was a drug dealer and wanted to search my entire apartment. When I told them that I did not consent, they went on a tirade about how “uncooperative” I was being, as if civilly exercising my rights was an affront to human decency. Even though I’ve tried to convince myself that outrageous conduct such as that isn’t indicative of the character of most cops, reading about nonsense like this episode makes it a hard sell.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Right on! You are 100% right Kyle.
July 27th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
“I’ve been in situations where someone I had no intention of arresting walked away in cuffs because of their mouth, is it really so damn hard to be polite?”
Interesting, if not surprising admission (if you really are a cop). So you arrest people for being impolite when you wouldn’t if they said “yes, sir” and “no, sir”? Great. I hope you lose your job, and soon.
Personally, I think it’s stupid to mouth off to cops, but only because 1) I do think it’s generally better to be polite to almost everyone (this comment notwithstanding) and 2) cops seem to have such fragile egos and are likely to illegitimately arrest you for pissing them off, regardless of the fact that that’s completely bats**t insane. Who the hell gave Miss Manners a gun and badge?
July 27th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
There’s a thin line between being uncooperative with an investigation and just being an a*hole - I’ve always managed to walk on the line of being an a*hole when dealing with the police (especially the wifebeating donut champion across the street who liked to ring the doorbell at 11 p.m. to say I was parked too far away from the curb).
If this was Summers, while he was at Harvard, this would have been on the Fox News crawl for 10 minutes, made a write up in the Globe, and that would be the end of it. It wouldn’t be fodder for Presidential press conferences. And Summers wouldn’t be getting the sympathy, in fact the Harvard women’s math team would probably wish he was tazed.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Commenter no. 5, AC1, proves what I’ve been saying for a week: Cops use the power of arrest to punish people for annoying them, then make up a phony charge to cover their tracks. There are a lot of Paul Blarts out there.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Credit where credit’s due: Kyle has been right about this story since day one.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Kyle might be right about the cop being wrong (although I’m not convinced, and it’s a really bad sign when Hunter agrees with you). But the story is all about race, b/c Gates made it about race by accusing the cop of racism.
July 28th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Of course Gates made it about race. His whole career is based on “making it about race.” The very house at the center of this controversy was built on “making it about race.”
Kyle, I must confess I’m mystified by your passion here. It’s like getting upset about the fact that although most cops, like everybody else, routinely break the speed limit while off duty, they’ll give you a ticket for it when they’re on duty. It’s just one of life’s many everyday hypocrisies.
July 28th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Receiving a speeding ticket is annoying, but here we’re talking about a man who was arrested without committing any sort of crime other than getting on the officer’s nerves. That constitutes flat out abuse of police powers, not merely one of life’s little hiccups.
July 28th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Kyle is right. But I still think this is funny.
http://tinyurl.com/l6cc8a
July 28th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Well you misunderstood me, which isn’t surprising because you’re a writer not a lawyer. Disorderly Conduct means you are guilty of creating unreasonable noise, that’s what the law states. Whether the noise is unreasonable is up to the officer. If your testosterone is really flowing because you are really letting a cop have it, maybe you move your hands around wildly or point your finger in his face = menacing. The cop tries to use moderate force to move you from an area, you push him off
Attempted assault of a Police Officer, the cop tells you you’re under arrest you pull your hand away when he grabs for it, that’s resisting arrest, so what is that four charges? A simple misunderstanding can mess you the hell up. Oh and you could throw obstruction of governmental administration in there too so that’s five charges. So when you’re confronted by a cop and you want to mouth off just remember that sting you’re feeling is just pride, screw pride, pride only hurts, it never helps.
July 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
To be really cynical, and put even a more sinister motive behind all this Cop evilness, (rubs hands, laughs manically)
overtime = time and a half, so its easy to view you civilians as an ATM with legs.
July 28th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Receiving a speeding ticket can be more than annoying depending on how many “points” you have on your license, how much the fine is, etc. But at any rate, the point I’m making still stands. If cops arresting folks for talking smack to them constitutes an “abuse of police powers,” it’s one that takes place every day in every corner of the land. Get used to it, kids. Don’t know what else to tell ya.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Now here’s Colin Powell talking sense. Skippy Gates ought to listen.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/28/powell.palin/
July 29th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Now here’s Colin Powell talking sense. Sarah Palin ought to listen.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/colin-powell-suggests-rep_n_246662.html
July 29th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Hunter are you seriously still obsessing on Palin? The woman isn’t even in office anymore what else do you guys want?
On this Gates thing Kyle you are dead wrong. Gates was clearly creating a disturbance and a crowd was gathering. Nothing the police or anyone else did was easing the situation in fact all of their efforts to resolve it were merely escalating the situation. Do we have a right to free speech, of course we do there is however an implied responsibility in it’s use. Just as we cannot yell “FIRE” in a crowded movie theatre without being arrested for public disturbance you cannot continue to loudly scream, not just at a police officer, but anyone in public once the police have informed you that you are creating a disturbance. This is no different than a couple loudly having a verbal argument in public and the police taking one of them into custody for disorderly conduct when they continue to argue after being instructed to stop. By your assertion there is no arrestable offense unless it causes bodily or property harm and that simply is not how the law is structured.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Is this what you mean, Hunter?
Powell also talked about Sarah Palin, calling her an “accomplished woman,”
Glad you agree, although it absolutely contradicts just about everything you’ve said previously.
Another day, another dumb comment by Hunter.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Disorderly is not merely a noise ordinance. Skippy was drawing a crowd — and crowds can be dangerous — though maybe not in Skippy’s tony white neighborhood (apparently not so oppressive as to make good neighbors) to officer safety.
I blogged on the MA statute here…
http://www.threedonia.com/archives/10462
I actually think the law is too vague, but Skip escalated this by exiting his house voluntarily and pushing the matter. He should pay for the beer, apologize and shut his pie hole.
July 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
From every account I’ve read, the cop handled everything pretty well. Right up until he chose not to walk away from Gates but arrest him instead.
Though I do wonder exactly what I am allowed to say to a cop without fear of arrest. “Your Mama”? Can I really say that?
July 29th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
That would depend upon how well you knew his mother.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:35 am
Getting back to Caribou Barbie, here’s a masterful rendition of her farewell speech delivered by a master thespian:
http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/clips/shatner-does-palin-072709/1139665/