Over at Faculty Lounge, Calvin Massey somehow manages to conclude (1) that Gates acted stupidly and (2) that the police officer did not act stupidly. How? By twisting the facts — beyond even those stated in the official police report.
open the front door of a house. She calls 911 to report what appears
to be a burglary in progress. A cop responds to the broadcast of an
apparent burglary. He finds two men inside the front door of the
house. The cop asks for their identification. One of the men refuses
and hurls abuse at the cop. The cop persists in his request. Finally
the man produces ID from his university employer. The man continues
the abuse and, after delivering various threats to the officer, demands
the officer's name and badge number. The cop gives it to him. The
cop, apparently satisfied that the man does in fact live in the house,
exits the house to the front porch. The man pursues him to the front
porch, heaping more abuse upon the cop and repeatedly demanding the
cop's name and badge. The cop tells him he has already provided that
information. A small crowd gathers. The man remains in high dudgeon.
The cop then tells him to cool down and warns him that he is engaging
in public disorderly conduct. The man continues his tirade. The cop
arrests him. The man has a friend, who happens to be President of the
United States, who then says that while he "doesn't know all the
facts," the cops "acted stupidly." Oh, the man is black; the cop is
white. The man says this is a case of racial profiling. Racial
profiling? The man was arrested for his abusive behavior towards a cop
performing a service for the man in question. After all, the man was
jimmying his front door because, by his own admission, his house had
been the subject of a recent burglary attempt.
Nice. We don't know why, or at what point, Gates got pissed off at the cop. But we do know that the officer asked Gates to step outside and join him on the porch; Gates did not "pursue[] him to the front porch." Again, this is by the version of facts as presented in the police report. Massey makes it sound like the officer just decided to leave ("thank you, have a nice day") when he saw identification proving that Gates was who he said he was and that it was in fact his own house — but that's just not the case or he would have, you know, left. It's pretty clear that the only possible basis for asking Gates to join him outside was to create the basis for an arrest for disorderly conduct.
Incidentally, that's a great implicit potshot at Obama: why is he making a judgment about who acted stupidly, when he doesn't know all the facts? Of course, Massey's understanding of the facts is apparently even worse, yet he's willing to defend the cop against this unfounded charge while at the same time leveling the same charge at the black professor who didn't enjoy being wrongly treated like a criminal. Proving, once again, that law professors often comment stupidly on things they apparently don't know enough to comment on. [UPDATE: I apparently misread the last part of the post — there's nothing implicit about it, he actually says it was stupid of Obama to call the cop stupid while admitting he didn't know all of the facts.]
Speaking of Obama, shouldn't it also be mentioned that his "stupid" comment was his way of defusing the situation? Read as: "I don't know what role race played in this situation, so I'm not going to call the cop a racist. But drumming up a disorderly conduct charge in order to arrest a man who broke into his own house, because he annoys the police officer and isn't subservient during their interaction, is police behavior that should be discouraged."
(I really also want to comment on police character attributes, too. It seems to me that people become cops — also, soldiers — because they want to be put in the societally accepted role of dominance as a part of their job, which gives them license to frequently beat the crap out of people. But I don't have time for that post at the moment.)
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