Say Anything Blog

Did Professor Henry Luis Gates receive special treatment from the Cambridge Massachusetts Police Department? That’s the claim being made by police officers from across Massachusetts.  According to ABC News,and numerous law-enforcement sources, the officer who showed up at Professor Gate’s home went by the book, and the incident would been over in minutes if the eminent scholar had simply showed his ID and resisted the urge to yell at the responding police officer.

The incident began when Cambridge Police Sgt. Joseph Crowley had responded to a call about someone apparently trying to break into Gates’ Cambridge, Mass., home. Crowley said Gates called him a “racist cop” after he arrived at the house and asked the Harvard professor for identification.

Gates refused after saying: “No I will not.” Gates then, according to Crowley, said he was being harassed because he is a “black man in America.” As the confrontation escalated, Crowley was then joined by a Hispanic Cambridge police officer and a black sergeant, according to two high-ranking law enforcement officials who have been briefed on the case and Cambridge police reports.

So the officer responds to call about a possible break in and the eminent scholar refused to show his ID to the officer. Should the police officer have taken the word of a beligerant man claiming to be a Harvard professor and simply left?

 

“The actions of the Cambridge Police Department, and in particular, Sergeant Joseph Crowley, were one-hundred-percent correct,’’ said Hugh Cameron, president of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police. “He was responding to a report of two men breaking into a home. The police cannot just drive by the house and say, ‘looks like everything is ok.’

“Sergeant Crowley was carrying out his duty as a law enforcement officer protecting the property of Professor Gates and he was accused of being a racist,” Cameron added. “The situation would have been over in five minutes if Professor Gates cooperated with the officer. Unfortunately, the situation we are in now is the environment police work in now.”

The important point that law enforcement officials are making is that if Professor Gates had simply cooperated, the incident would have been over in minutes. 

Massachusetts cops of all races are offended by how this incident has been used by the eminent professor and others.

 

Jim Carnell, a union representative for the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, said cops are “furious at the way Crowley is being vilified.”

“The officer’s mindset when is going in there is ‘why was he breaking down the door?’ Maybe there is a restraining order in place. Maybe Harvard University, who owns the house, changed the locks for some reason. The officer’s job is to make sure everything is on the up-and-up,’’ Carnell said. “Mr. Gates should be grateful that the police responded and explained himself with some civil discourse. It would have ended there. Instead, his arrogant, combative behavior gave the cops cause to wonder that something else going on.”

Others in law enforcement are upset that Professor Gates got special treatment because of his status as an eminent Harvard professor.

A high-ranking Cambridge police official, who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity because the department is under orders “from the Mayor … not to talk,” said that Crowley followed standard operating procedure for a call of a burglary in progress.

“Let’s face it this case has nothing to do with race. This is a man who has made some phone calls and the case went away. They treated him with kid gloves. Harvard University executives rushed to the police station to monitor the entire situation,” the official said. “They let him off the hook. The mayor threw the department under the bus. She might as well open the city’s checkbook.

 

According to a former Massachusetts prosecutor, there were irregularities in the way the charges against Professor Gates were dropped.

 

But there are questions about the way the case was handled. David Frank, former prosecutor and a writer for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, said it was “unusual” for a case to be “nul-processed” [charges dropped] without a court appearance.

[…]

Frank said. “He never even stepped into a courtroom and the charges were dropped. The fact that Gates is as well-known and as prominent as he is makes this case unusual.”

The part of the narrative left out of most news reports, and also left out of President Obama’s explanation of the case in his news conference, is the ract that the incident was specifically escalated by the eminant professor following the police officers out to their vehicles screaming.

Though Gates eventually identified himself, he was arrested after he allegedly came out of the house and continued yelling at police, even after he was warned that he “was becoming disorderly,” according to the police report.

 

A reasonable person would not prolong contact with law enforcement by yelling and insulting officers. You would think a professor who spent his career writing and teaching that America is unfair to minorities would be doubly cautious.

Is it possible that Professor Gates wanted to make himself into some king of race martyr, or was he simply using race to bully a police officer who was just doing his job?