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Skip Gates speaks

In an interview with The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about his arrest and the outrage of racial profiling in America.

By Dayo Olopade | Posted: July 21, 2009 at 5:34 PM

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...really it’s not about me—it’s that anybody black can be treated this way, just arbitrarily arrested out of spite. And the man who arrested me did it out of spite, because he knew I was going to file a report because of his behavior.

He didn’t follow proper police procedure! You can’t just presume I’m guilty and arrest me. He’s supposed to ask me if I need help. He just presumed that I was guilty, and he presumed that I was guilty because I was black. There was no doubt about that.

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For some reason, I don't see the racism here. This is an issue with LEO's over civilians period, not just with minorities.

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i think gates hit it right on... no way an officer says to a white person "step onto the porch".

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Did you write that in all seriousness?

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Any cop who has *any* reason to think he needs to control the situation is going to ask you to step outside because that's his domain and inside the house is your domain.

The officer was dealing with a *possible* home invasion. If he gets Gates outside, then he can take him down if he's a perp or let him go back in if he's not. There are videos all over the web that deal with cops knocking on your door and knowing your right not to let them in or not to go out because they'll ask you to do so if you won't let them in. If they have *any* suspicions about you at all, they're going to ask you to step out "to discuss it"...knowing damn well that they're posing themselves to detain you if they feel they must after they get you outside. White, black, yellow, green, or otherwise.

No, the real racism (if there was any at all) was the woman who called about "two black guys with backpacks" breaking into a house in the middle of the day after getting out of a chauffeured car...when one was a 60 year old Harvard professor walking with a cane.

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On tracking down and finally arresting Whi... er, Henry Louis Gates. Another sparkling example of Beantown tolerance. Thank God his reign of terror is over. Whitey Bulger can sleep better knowing Skip's off the street.

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This happened in the city of Cambridge, which I guess you weren't aware, is not a part of the city of Boston. Cambridge, in fact, is in a totally different county, known as Middlesex. Boston is a part of Suffolk County.

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AKA the People's Republic. And everyone knows how racist THEY are.

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For every skip gates there are others who don't get headlines.

Parents were at work when a teen kid got home from school and forgot his bag. No keys, no wallet. He called his dad, a professor, to come let him in.

He sat on the porch and waited. But he was black and living in a wealthy neighborhood of Cambridge, so he got hassled. He had no ID on him, so he was arrested for tresspassing - on his own porch.

Dad comes, doesn't find kid. A couple hours go by and he gets worried and starts searching, knowing his son was waiting for him. As mom, also a professor, gets ready to leave work to join the search, she gets a call from the Cambridge PD.

They want to know if she wants to press charges.

Against her own son.

It didn't make head lines cause he's a kid, but Cambridge did offer a settlment.

That's why HL Gates must keep on talking.

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those kind of stories usually have more to the story...

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I am the child of a police officer -- evens so I find you really strain to justify everything -- even when it is downright silly for you to do so.

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Quote: "I love that the 911 report said that two big black men were trying to break in"

Where does it say that? The two police reports don't mention it, nor have any of the articles mentioned anything about what (if anything) the caller said as to their race, or what (if anything) the police assumed about their race. Or, for that matter, _if_ the caller did make an assumption about race, whether it influenced her decision to make the call, or if it influenced the manner in which the police responded to it.

Gates, then, seems to be claiming that a. the caller specifically mentioned race, and yet b. the caller could not have deduced his race. So, Gates is claiming that the caller, who couldn't possibly have guessed his race "from afar," just assumed that the two men who appeared to be breaking in next door must have been black.

Huh? Does this make sense to anyone? I mean, anyone who didn't already decide that everything Gates say was completely and unchallengeably true?

More to the point, if Gates's assertion that it was absolutely, totally impossible to ascertain someone's race from across the street wasn't entirely, completely accurate, was the caller being racist in even mentioning it to the police? Or should she have made the call and, despite getting a look at the two men, not mentioned anything because that would have been bad?

Sorry, but Gates's apparent embellishment of this key fact throws other aspects of his account into question. At least to me, but I'm sure it won't to other people who believe everything he says and nothing anyone else does in this case.

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I've read the two police incident reports but I have not seen the transcript of the 911 call. I think it's likely Ogletree and Gates have seen it but I don't think its posted on line. Is it?

There was a moment after Gates showed the officer his identification that the officer absolutely knew there was no probably cause that Gates was breaking & entering.

And then there was a moment after Gates asked the officer for his identification when the officer chose to not cooperate. Isn't that an interesting choice? I just don't understand the officer's choice. Is he required by law or just decency to respond civilly to this man [in his own home.] He clearly decided to withhold this information, whatever his reasons. I think the press should ask him.

Gates calls the arrest spiteful. Gauging by "Officer Silent Treatments" non-responsiveness to a reasonable request, I'd have to agree.

Arresting a man wrongly accused of burglary, on a public disturbance charge, in his own home, is hard to justify in the court of decency.

Everyone who says that it is your own fault that a cop arrests you for yelling because you get pissed off at unfair treatment by the cop is describing how it is sometimes and not how it is supposed to be.

When the cop decided to enter Mr Gates home, the situation changed. Gates was not in public and the cop was not either. They were both in Mr Gates home. This is why the officer could not arrest him in his home on a public disturbance charge but had to wait until Mr Gates stepped on the porch. When Mr Gates raised his voice in his home, it was by definition, not a public disturbance. Get it? The arrest was spiteful because the charge was bogus. Which brings us back to the question, why does the officer refuse to respond to /cooperate with Mr Gates, who has been nothing if not cooperative with the officer?

It would seem that the Cambridge Police, when they get a hair across their ass, use public disturbance as a means of mopping up situations they are annoyed by, and are inclined to do so inappropriately.

I hope Gates takes him to the cleaners.

I want to live in a country where police do not abuse there authority. I think the officer clearly did. Wrongful arrest, unless it's illegal to be a man, in your own home, yelling at a cop because he wont respond to your request for identification.

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I only asked for comment from those who had _not_ automatically made up their minds that everything Gates said was undeniably and unassailably true, and that everything the police and the neighbor(s) said was false and racially motivated. If you've already made up your mind, and I've already said that I don't want to hear it, why respond?

Furthermore, there's some fundamental disagreement here about the officer "showing identification." Gates, in his own words, clearly realized the guy was a police officer; and, surely, he would know that the officer would be far from anonymnous-- the police keep records and so forth. The officer-- and let's just assume that not everything this officer says is false 100% of the time-- said that he tried to answer Gates-- as one would expect him to do-- but Gates kept yelling at him; the notion that the cop "withheld" his name and badge number is ludicrous.

And why do you hope Gates takes "him" to the cleaners? You do realize that Gates can't sue the officer personally, right? It comes out of the city's pockets, one way or another. Explain to me who benefits from this. Oh wait, don't-- you've clearly made up your mind already that it's necessary and good that Cambridge cut its services and/or raise taxes to make this case go away.

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It doesn't matter who you want to hear from. This is an open forum. You're saying I don't fit the category of people you want to debate this with. That's your problem.

I don't assume or state that the officer's decisions were racially motivated but I think he was terribly mistaken in the following ways:
1) not responding to Gates by giving him his name and badge number and
2) arresting the former suspect for public disorder charge in his own home.

Gates claims the arrest was done out of spite. Let's debate that proposition.

1. The city of Cambridge dropped the public disorder charges and claimed the dropping the charges was a "just resolution".

2. Public Disorder charges require the suspect to be in public. This suspect was in his own home.

3. The arrest was made on the porch, as the officer was leaving, it could not have been made in the house. The officer was not using the law to keep peace and order in public.

4. The cop, as he was arresting Gates, thanked Gates for cooperating with him earlier by showing his ID and yet the cop refused to respond to Gates request for identification. This shows the cop does not believe he is accountable to the same standard, that he is above the person he is arresting and he believes that is the just order. I would call that the arrogance of the law enforcement officer, regardless of what motivated it.

5. Why then did the officer arrest Gates? I believe he was using the law to assert his authority over the person who he had cleared of suspicion of breaking and entering because he felt that the suspect was not treating him with sufficient deference. If so, it is an abuse of the law enforcement powers. For its own reasons, which may be the same as mine or not, the City of Cambridge found that the charges were not justified.

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2. Its been a misconception here that you have to be on a public street to be disorderly. Its not true.

3. Although I don't agree with the charge, you can cause public disruptions from your own house, porch or front yard in many ways. And example would be if you hid in your driveway and scared people as they went by and calling them obsene names or bothering them.

4. The issue with the identification from what I am hearing now is that the Harvard ID did not have the address on it. So the officer now has to confirm with Harvard that the person lives there. While doing this on his portable radio Gates continued to yell and ask for his badge number so the officer could not hear the radio transmission. So before the officer has to give his badge number and name, he must complete the investigation.

I might agree with #1 and #5

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if he wanted to.

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Whalen, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of the residence, held a wireless telephone in her hand and told me that it was she who called. She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of {redacted} Ware Street. 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.

I went back to the Globe article to read the PDF of the police report again and found that they'd quietly removed it from their website. So, I uploaded a copy of it at Scribd. Feel free to go back and read any other details you might have missed the first time.

Feel free to also apologize to Gates here when you're done taking your foot out of your mouth.

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...just as soon as you apologize for contributing to the outing of the neighbor. Which you're not going to do. Best of luck to you in outing the other neighbor. Perhaps you can cry about it on your blog. (How's the Sox's race record lately, by the way? Not good?)

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Try sticking to the point. Since you can't, here's a list of my responses to your shotgun spray of ideasstrawmen and red herrings:

* The police listed her in their redacted report, not me.
* She wasn't a neighbor, she is/was an employee of nearby Harvard Magazine.
* Other neighbor?
* I don't have a blog.
* What do the Red Sox have to do with police misconduct?

So, back to your original post...you wrote, "Sorry, but Gates's (sic) apparent embellishment of this key fact throws other aspects of his account into question". Considering that I have demonstrated that it wasn't embellishment but a fact of the police report, do you retract the rest of your ill-conceived diatribe above?

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