A Very Short Poll

[snurri]

The Henry Louis Gates arrest:

[Poll #1432831]

Comments

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

*sob* I just spent most of yesterday evening have this exact discussion via twitter with a friend of mine.

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

I've repeated this everywhere, but I'm so unfit for this world that my first thought was that any person with authority in the Boston area should be able to recognize Gates on sight because he really is that prominent and this incident is as stupid as if they had confronted the mayor in front of his house.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

You mean, like this?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I recall seeing that comment, yeah. I often feel like I live in a different reality, too.

[rnb.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of torn halfway between the two. It would have taken a one man riot to convince me that the guy deserved to be arrested, which obviously didn't happen and yeah, was probably racially motivated. On the other hand, if someone was forcing entry into my apartment, I would hope to God that the cops would come and require that person to ID themself, whether it was me, my mom or Kimbo Slice.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

But the arrest happened after he provided ID. In fact from Gates' account it sounds like the handcuffs went on the moment he accused the cop of racism.

[rnb.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was under the impression people were also upset that he was asked to show ID. And like I said, the arrest doesn't make sense unless he was a one man wrecking ball, which certainly was not the case.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that he was asked to show ID is exasperating, and probably far less likely to happen to a white person, but understandable given the circumstances. The arrest is completely unjustified.

The charges have apparently been dropped now. But I've been enraged by some of the comments on the links I posted above.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was asked to show ID by the police when I was napping on my own couch. (I am a white woman, as the picture shows.)

My then-roomate, who was not home, had just phoned her shrink with a suicide threat, so he sent the cops over. They burst into my living room and were quite visibly taken aback by me not being dead, but they did ask for my ID.

That said, once that happened and the cop satisfied himself to the identity of the person in the house, he bloody well should have apologized (as the officer and EMTs in my case apologized to me) and started taking his statement about the damage to the front door, no?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

As I say, it's not so much the demand for ID that bothers me. I think, though, that it's understandable that Gates was irritated by it, and the cop's statement that he was "surprised" by his reaction seems disingenuous at best.

It just wears me out, all this. There are days I would like to secede from the human race, I swear.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And contempt of cop is still not ACTUALLY an arrestable offense.

Oh, my fellow monkeys, why must you suck so much?

[msbelle.livejournal.com]

SO MUCH THIS! even if Gates was rude or god forbid, mean? NOT AN ACTUAL CRIME YOU DOOFUS! Not that I would be rude to a cop, was scared to death to say anything at all when they were in my home, but really. really!

[songwind.livejournal.com]

This was more or less my train of thought.

Racism, and the fact that some people are sensitive to/about it, are facts in this country. Cops should be prepared to deal with it.

Should Gates have realized that being seen forcing a door might worry someone, and not jumped straight to "it's because I'm black?" I think so. I haven't had the same experiences as other people. But on the other hand, the cop should have known that sometimes people DO get hassled because they are black and just told him, "No, sir. Someone reported seeing an unknown party trying to force your door. I just want to make sure everything's okay. Wouldn't you want me to demand ID if it really was a burglar?"

Hard to say if it was racially motivated on-the-spot (i.e. cop hates black people - he might just be a petty junior official who likes to throw his weight around and feel important) but it's hard to see how it wasn't exacerbated by racism in this country, at the very least.

[kingrat]

My first thought is it had less to do with racism (though that element is possibly there), than with "contempt of cop." Given just a bit of authority, it felt like someone who hates to have it questioned. "Don't respect me? Well, I'll show you what I can do with my authority." Gates didn't show the deference the guy thought he deserved.

Kind of like the video of the ambulance that got pulled over in May (I think), where it was pretty obvious the cop didn't take well to getting flipped the bird (or thinking he got flipped), or having someone tell him he wasn't in charge and so got all bent out of shape and escalated things.

But then, I wasn't there and I don't know the cop. But I've known enough cops to have seen that pattern and I tend to assume that's the case whenever small matters escalate with cops. And yes, race does play in to that mentality.

2 sides to every story

[unnamed-horror.livejournal.com]

The arrest report is on TMZ. It seems that maybe the arresting officer is Hispanic. The neighbor who made the call to the cops about a possible break-in did not recognize Gates.

If there is any credence to the cop's side of the story, he was anticipating dealing with a B&E scenario. I imagine things escalated quickly, but any time a person starts name dropping or "you don't know who you're messing with" and "step outside with your mama" rather than just saying "there's seems to be a misunderstanding" is a participant, not a victim.

My husband is an attorney (who did civil rights work), I work for the City of Boston and try to follow the local politics, etc., I didn't know what Gates looked like.

Re: 2 sides to every story

[snurri.livejournal.com]

he was anticipating dealing with a B&E scenario

And yet, after he found out that wasn't the case, AFTER Gates had produced identification, that's when the arrest took place. Sorry, not buying it.

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

Is there an option for Rich White People Are Nosy and Call the Cops Too Fast?

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

The story I got on the news was that Mr. Gates got all huffy and belligerent after providing ID. Disorderly conduct was the charge, not breaking and entering.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I guess I'd be a bit "huffy" in that situation, too. Based on both sides of the story, disorderly conduct seems like quite a stretch.

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

One lesson I learned early in life (have a bit of a temper, I do) is, a soft answer turns away wrath. The cop is on edge, Mr. Gates is on edge. Things can escalate to the point where stuff happens. Mr. Gates gets hurt. The cop gets hurt. Mr. Gates gets killed. The cop gets killed. None of these are acceptable outcomes, and it's the cop's job to see that they do not come about. Remember, neither of us were there.

Properly trained the police have the job of getting matters in hand, and getting upset civilians calmed down. Again, I wasn't there, so I don't know how matters proceeded once Gates' ID was established. I can understand his getting upset and acting out. I can also understand the cop getting riled himself and cutting short a possible violent incident by taking preemptive action. Could the officer have been conciliatory? Yes. Could Henry Louis Gates have chilled a bit himself? Of course. But, it could have been worse.

We tend to treat people the way they treat us. When someone smiles and acts nice we reciprocate. When someone is snarly and mean, we get snarly and mean. It's the way we are. It takes a good deal of self-control to respond differently, to act in a manner opposite to how the other is behaving. Here you had a civilian on edge, and a cop on edge. It could've ended up a lot worse than it did.

Now, you and I weren't there when the incident occurred. Can you be sure that Henry Gates wasn't the one who greeted a reasonable request to establish his bonafides with some misplaced rage, because he was pissed at the trouble he was having getting in his own house? Don't be surprised at what is relevant to an incident.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

You make some cogent points about the responsibility of police officers in keeping their own emotions out of these situations, and de-escalating those of the civilians involved. I don't think you go far enough, however--the officer and his colleagues entirely failed to live up to this part of their job. Gates was upset, by his own admission; however, the officer failed to give him any space to cool down, and according to Gates's account there were about half a dozen officers on hand by the time the actual arrest occurred. There can't have been any reason to believe that any of the officers were in danger. Sure, I wasn't there, but I can read between the lines; they had decided that this guy didn't belong there, so they removed him.

I also think your response doesn't take into account the fact that the incident was race-based before the officer was even on site; the 911 caller reported that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on. I don't know what the caller's vantage point was, but both men were wearing suits and neither was wearing a backpack. She saw what she was afraid of--big black men committing a crime in her neighborhood. The police responded in kind--two black criminals are in this nice upscale neighborhood. Assumptions were made before Gates and the officer exchanged a single word. For that reason alone, the incident went forward with the taint of racism at work.

[kathi430.livejournal.com]

What I find most disheartening is that SO MANY people fail to give the racial aspect any credence.

It's an unfortunate reality. And the more people say, "Oh, it wasn't because he was Black," the longer this reality will continue, fostered in an environment of denial.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

This, exactly. It was the dismissive comments that I kept reading attached to the news articles about this that spurred me to post this.