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It's easy for "us" to criticize, reading about it the next morning and not living it the night before. He was upset, scared, hurt, shocked, insulted and he went on and on, but cops MUST dominate and prevail.
Wow, this happened right in my backyard. OK, there are two things that come to mind. Harvard University, has had multiple problems with police officers harassing, Harvard students and Harvard Professor of African American decent.
I agree with most posters, if Gates provided information as the officer requested, perhaps his reaction was a bit over-zealous, however, please keep in mind, that Harvard University Police officers, have a number of racial complaints logged against them for either arresting the wrong person in question or repeatedly harassing minority students at the University.
I think there are two sides to the story. I agree under no circumstance regardless of your race or gender should you yell at a police officer. There was a situation i read in the Metro earlier this year, about a African American Harvard student being arrested after he picked the lock to get his bike out. He was arrested face down on the ground after providing information, that he was a student, and providing information, that the bike in question belonged to him. In this case the young man was held for an extended period of time, after obeying all the request of the police officers. Another Harvard Police officer attempted to arrest an African American professor at his home, after he "fit" the description of a local bank robber.
I think the Professors reaction may signal an underlying racial tone, that many in other parts of the country are unaware of, that exist on one of our Nations most coveted campuses. However, I'm not part of the Harvard Community, so i may be over extending my interpretations of what is happening and students, professors, and police officers may feel different. It is often very easy to get carried away when one reads these cases, so i'll remind everyone, that these are my opinions and my interpretation, of events, that rarely happen on a large scale, but when they do happen, they seem to happen to minorites at a disproportionate rate. Okay, let me say it again, this does not happen on a very regular basis, but anytime i hear a story like this coming from the Harvard Community it usually involves, some sort of minority -cop issue.
However, before we all jump to conclusion, either defending the Professor or the Police officers, i think the news needs to come out. If the officer in question has a high number of complaints filed against him for being aggressive, i would have to question arresting an owner at their house and charging them with disorderly conduct.
I guess if i returned home and my neighbor called the cops, once i was in my house. I probably would have followed up with a call to the police department, so there would have been a record, that I called the police on the police to avoid a situation. I think arresting a homeowner at their home for disorderly conduct is going a bit too far. Short, of threatening the police officers with violence, i think i nice written warning would have been sufficient. However, it would be better to hear the full story, before i jump to my own conclusions as well lol.
What does personal responsibility have to do with being profiled? Am I to take responsibility for the way others perceive me now? And if anything, this is nothing more than a reminder that Obama's election in no way has meant the eradication of racism, even in so-called "progressive" areas.
What I mean is that maybe it's not profiling and maybe the individual needs to stop blaming their own actions on others as an excuse. Maybe it's just you yelling insults at the cop or otherwise doing the things that will get you arrested that got you arrested and not any kind of racial profiling.
Sorry, but racial profiling in Cambridge is a bit far fetched. Especially with a famous and prominent Harvard professor.
Getting agitated with a police office is NEVER a good tactic. They have to deal with all kinds of BS all day long. I'm sure that if the professor had remained calm and not thrown insults at the officer suggesting that he was racially profiled, then the misunderstanding would have been over very quickly. Maybe the neighbor would have also stopped in to apologize for calling the police into the situation. She sounds like a well meaning neighbor, that because she was a woman, didn't want to get too close to what she thought might be a burglary in progress.
This incident remind me of the Texas pastor that got arrested for disorderly conduct earlier this month for interfering with a traffic stop.
Well there you go folks. Even a Harvard degree and a distinguished body of scholarship can't get you out of being black in this country. My concern lies less with the cop than with the so-called "neighbor" who reported him in the middle of the day.
Most break-ins occur in the middle of the day.
If it were me. I would have thanked the officer and the neighbor for the extra vigilance and sat down with my bologna sandwich and soda and enjoyed the rest of the day.
But hey, they were both just doing their jobs. The cop was looking for malfeasance and the prof was looking for racist whiteys.
If it were me. I would have thanked the officer and the neighbor for the extra vigilance and sat down with my bologna sandwich and soda and enjoyed the rest of the day.
But hey, they were both just doing their jobs. The cop was looking for malfeasance and the prof was looking for racist whiteys.
From what I've read, it appears Gates gave the Officer 2 forms of ID showing he resided at the home. If this occured, any further pursuit of investigation by the Officer was unwarranted.
It's easy for "us" to criticize, reading about it the next morning and not living it the night before. He was upset, scared, hurt, shocked, insulted and he went on and on, but cops MUST dominate and prevail.
The incident happened midday, not at night. I'm sure that he wasn't scared or feeling hurt, just mad as heck and insulted. I don't think that he was shocked either, not by the way he was hurling insults at the police officer right from the beginning.
From what I've read, it appears Gates gave the Officer 2 forms of ID showing he resided at the home. If this occured, any further pursuit of investigation by the Officer was unwarranted.
He resisted showing his id, all the while berating the police officer. Finally he showed his Harvard id and continued being argumentative and verbally abusive. He was finally arrested for disorderly conduct. It's like what happened with the Texas pastor that argued with the police over someone else getting a traffic stop and that old lady getting tasered after being pulled over for a moving violation and getting out of hand with the officer. The only moral to these stories is don't pick fights with the police as they just don't want to deal with it.
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