…I will go ahead and make a specific comment about the event. I have given the situation a lot of thought, and there are two conclusions that I have reached.
The first is that it would have been better had the president not weighed in on the subject the way that he did. It strikes me an inappropriate for a president to render so specific an opinion on a local matter wherein the facts had not yet fully come to light. I think he let the fact that he is friends with Gates get the better of him. Further, it was a politically unwise thing to do, as it made the Gates incident the story for the week.
Second, regardless of anything else that happened that night (i.e., whether race was a motivating factor or whether Gates was rude), the fact that he was arrested makes no sense and smacks of police overstepping their authority out a fit of pique. Because, quite frankly, the entire incident sounds enough like the following to give one pause:(from Peter Moskos’ book, Cop in the Hood, p. 117-118 as quoted the other day by Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber):
Police may not order a person from his or her home. But an officer can request to talk to the man outside his house. At this point the officer might say, “If you don’t take a walk, I’m going to lock you up.’ The man, though within his rights to quietly reenter his house and say goodnight to the police, is more likely to obey the officer’s request or engage the police in a loud and drunken late-night debate. The man may protest loudly that the officer has no reason to lock him up. If a crowd gathers or lights in neighboring buildings turn on, he may be arrested for disorderly conduct.
As Henry notes, perhaps the similarity between the events at Gates’ home and the method described about is mere coincidence, but I have my doubts.
Along those lines I agree with Christopher Hitchens
whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own home. It is monstrous in the extreme that he should in that home be handcuffed, and then taken downtown, after it had been plainly established that he was indeed the householder.
Indeed and this is what bothers me the most about the entire affair. Once it had been established that Gates was in his own house, there was no reason for the police to remain, and if Gates was being belligerent in his own home then the police should have walked away, gotten in the squad car, and left. The only reason to arrest Gates at that point was to show him what for. He was not a criminal and his “disorderly conduct” had was not a risk to the community. That the charges were dropped doesn’t erase the indignity of being arrested in the first place, or give back the time lost as a result of the incident.
As Radley Balko wrote in Reason:
By any account of what happened—Gates’, Crowleys’, or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. “Contempt of cop,” as it’s sometimes called, isn’t a crime. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The “disorderly conduct” charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults.
Exactly. Balko continues:
The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It’s taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights.
This should not be so. Yes, I understand that police have difficult and dangerous jobs and that they deserve to be treated with common courtesy and sometimes more than that, but the notion that the public owes them deference to the point of quiet compliance no matter what the circumstances is misplaced (to put it mildly). Along those lines, Balko notes:
This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.
I think that Maureen Dowd is correct: this incident was very much a class of egos between “the hard-working white cop vs. the globe-trotting black scholar, the town vs. the gown, the Lowell Police Academy vs. the American Academy of Arts and Letters.” However, in such a situation, the police officer should have backed down and left. Instead, he chose to, it seems to me, abuse his power because he didn’t like a mouthy citizen. While I am not suggesting that we go around mouthing off at the police, or that Gates was right to do (although I remain unclear on exactly what happened that night), I steadfastly believe that given the power entrusted to the police, that they need to remember that they are there to protect and to serve, not to prove how tough they are or insistent that citizens defer them just because they are the police.
Sphere: Related Content
July 30th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
[...] so that their behavior can then be said to be “disorderly” as the Moskos quote noted in the previous post. addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.poliblogger.com%2F%3Fp%3D16438′; addthis_title = [...]
July 30th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I think it’s a case of testosterone run wild. Gates - tired and jet-lagged - didn’t like being “harassed” in his own home. According to the report - and according to the other officers later at the scene - Gates would not cooperate whatsoever. Even after several warnings he would not back down and continued on his tirade. If the police officer did give him warnings about his behavior first, then he certainly had the option of bringing him in. Still, both should not have let it escalate to that level.
Obama may have been the worst offender of all, though. He bluntly called the police officer stupid at a national press conference before all the facts were generally known. As a private citizen, he’s allowed to support his friend, but as President, he should never have gone there. Given a chance to speak a few days later, he couldn’t apologize and admit a mistake, he just talked about how he should have “recalibrated his words”. He should have been equally blunt about his own foul-up. Instead he gave the standard political tap dance. Not so much change going on with this event.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Tapping into generational wounds aside, I personally cannot see how anyone wouldn’t be upset in that situation. Add a generational wound to that and an outburst seems guaranteed.
I’ve been trying to stay silent because I feel that I would be written off as biased, not because I can relate to that situation but because of my race. I was subjected to profiling after believing it would never happen to me because I was a good citizen. It carries with it a pain for which there are no words. You wonder why do you bother to follow the rules; why put such effort into being a good citizen if it doesn’t count. It is an experience you never really get over.
July 30th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Mark: I do think that part of the problem was a clash of testosterone-fueled egos. Both men are authority figures and neither wanted to be questioned. Still, I think it was incumbent upon the police to leave once it was clear it was Gates’ home and the released tapes, and the police report, make it clear that before the situation was moved outside that they had established that he was the resident of the home.
Sheri: I think that you have every right to speak up on this matter, as your own personal experiences are quite relevant. It is impossible to divorce race from the matter, given the history that black men in particular have had with police and the generational factor is quite important for a broader understanding of the event.
August 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
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