^pretty much.

7/25/2009 8:16:02 PM

Quote :

"Did angry black harvard professor with a chip on his shoulder antagonize or give the police a hard time? Possibly... Did a cop go on a power trip from a citizen who was not respecting his authority or over-react when a citizen failed to fully cooperate with him. Likely.... Did a racist bigot cop profile Mr. Gates because he was black? Very Doubtful."

best summary yet.

[Edited on July 25, 2009 at 8:33 PM. Reason : yep]

7/25/2009 8:32:30 PM

I've never understood why people don't cooperate with cops. If you're not doing anything wrong, nothing to worry about. If the cop explained that he was investigating a breakin, gates should have provided ID and proof of residence (if address is not on license, it was a rental) and that should have been the end of it. I doubt the cop just walked up into his house and said, "yo jigger, show me your papers".

7/25/2009 9:20:30 PM

jesus christ

[Edited on July 25, 2009 at 9:59 PM. Reason : he did provide id]

7/25/2009 9:58:53 PM

After taking the "why? Cause I'm a black man?" stance.

7/25/2009 10:17:49 PM

Quote :

"i don't know why obama should listen to an actor for advice"

Agreed.

7/25/2009 10:31:38 PM

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is going to have a beer with Gates and the officer. wow


Because you cant photograph a phone call?

7/25/2009 10:45:52 PM

Because a phone call isn't quite the same as a face-to-face conversation over a beer.

Sorry your guy was a teetotaler.

7/26/2009 12:21:47 AM

I thought it was crowley that suggested the beer in the phonecall?

And considering how upset people thought they were about this, this should go some way to reversing that. Especially when you have people like TKEShultz http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=556098&page=33#13107628 that think it's very important for Obama to "appease" Americans too.

7/26/2009 12:47:30 AM

Quote :

"I've never understood why people don't cooperate with cops. If you're not doing anything wrong, nothing to worry about."

Ha.

I totally understand and advocate non-cooperation with cops.

But that's a whole different beast than berating and harassing them, especially in one of the very few cases where the cop was doing the right thing.

7/26/2009 1:23:55 AM

Quote :

"it's very important for Obama to "appease" Americans too. "

Well he can do that by focusing on something important. imo.

Quote :

"I totally understand and advocate non-cooperation with cops."

Future taser victim. haha

7/26/2009 9:28:30 AM

^Wrong. Americans only care about shiny, noisy, superficial BS

^^That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard.

7/26/2009 11:48:01 AM

also agreed

7/26/2009 10:37:15 PM

Quote :

"Well he can do that by focusing on something important. imo. "

Which he tried to do several times by (unsuccessfully) getting the media to turn its attention back to healthcare.

...

Interesting stats from LA though:

Quote :

"The evidence regarding over-stopping, over-frisking, and over-searching is particularly compelling. Although stopped blacks were 127 percent more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3 percent less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25 percent less likely to be found with drugs, and 33 percent less likely to be found with other contraband. "

It is great to be white in America, isn't it?



- http://blog.econtech.selfip.org/2008/10/ian-ayres-on-racial-profiling/

[Edited on July 26, 2009 at 10:40 PM. Reason : ]

7/26/2009 10:39:21 PM

Quote :

"It is great to be white in America, isn't it?"

hell yeah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

7/26/2009 10:58:13 PM

^ lol

7/26/2009 11:04:55 PM

Quote :

"The evidence regarding over-stopping, over-frisking, and over-searching is particularly compelling. Although stopped blacks were 127 percent more likely to be frisked than stopped whites,"

I don't see why this is shocking, wrong, or a big deal.

If Purple alien people kept repeatedly for their proportion of the population causing issues and committing criminal acts then police will automatically get more defensive and more likely to frisk/pull-over the purple alien people.

While the liberal democrats whiny hippies may have argue and possibly have a case taht the criminal activity is the result of some kind of injustice/neglect by society this still does not change or excuse the high proportion of relevant criminal activity.

At work if F-shift keeps forgetting to clean Y machine properly which cause us to lose ware; then I will be more likely to inspect or watch F-shift and look over an F-shift employees shoulder even if they never once forgot to clean Y machine.

In my lounge thread apparently it is acceptable to pull a young white male (even if he's graduated out of college and has a full time job) b.c as one person stated 95% of college white males drive drunk at night at some point. Muslims are profiled all the fucking time i'm sure in airports since 9/11.

^^^ The only thing the above statistics proved was that the officers had greater justification when they actually did pull a white person.

[Edited on July 27, 2009 at 12:06 AM. Reason : l]

7/27/2009 12:05:24 AM

Quote :

" If Purple alien people kept repeatedly for their proportion of the population causing issues and committing criminal acts then police will automatically get more defensive and more likely to frisk/pull-over the purple alien people. ... The only thing the above statistics proved was that the officers had greater justification when they actually did pull a white person. "

The statistics show that there is no benefit to hassling the non-whites more than the whites, and for this thread at least, hint at why minorities may be more hostile towards the police than whites.

They also imply that white criminals are slipping through the cracks at the expense of innocent minorities.

And in your work example, you narrowed down the "problem" group by time period. For crimes, the "problem" group more closely narrows down by socioeconomic background, not skin color. Poor whites/blacks/browns/purples are going to commit crimes more than their rich counterparts. In the absence of being able to ascertain this quality, you're either just spinning your wheels trying to focus on color, or you're going to be ignoring crimes from the dominant color group (in this case whites).

7/27/2009 12:32:32 AM

^I read that article and though it defends itself well, the author never accounts for the difference in crime rates between white and black neighborhoods. You can't generalize police discretion. In certain conditions, behavior 'A' may warrant a search, but if you take away those conditions, A does not justify a search. Race isn't proven as the condition.

e.g.
In a high-rate-of-crime neighborhood, police are going to be less tolerant of suspicious activity, and thus have a higher percentage of searches that do not produce evidence. Typically, these are minority neighborhoods.

[Edited on July 27, 2009 at 12:34 AM. Reason : ^]

7/27/2009 12:34:10 AM

^ that is a potential expalantory factor, but they also looked at the race of the officer to the suspects, and saw a lower "false-positive" rate when the investigating officer was of the same race as the suspect.

7/27/2009 12:44:22 AM

Quote :

"I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake. The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?"

north carolina represent.

7/27/2009 7:52:18 AM

Ahaha. Apparently Gates and Crowley are distantly related. Very distantly: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8195564&page=1

7/29/2009 12:28:57 PM

Colin Powell weighs in.

7/29/2009 7:15:49 PM

The lady that made the call says she has received threats. Are people really that stupid, to threaten her for being a good steward of the neighborhood?

7/29/2009 11:07:03 PM

Can't we all just get along?

7/30/2009 12:31:26 AM

nice recovery obama, credit where credit is due

7/30/2009 1:17:12 AM

Quote :

""I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake. The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?""

1) There are two sides to every story.

2) A person like Gates NEEDS these dramas or else he not a "scholar". He either fabricates the stories or does things that intentionally create the situation artifically so that he can be offended and offer up proof how all whites are racist.

One time I was in Target wearing khakis and a red polo and someone asked where to find something thinking I worked there. They were black. By Gates' logic they were racist (although not really because black cannot be racist) and I should have been offended. I didn't perform a "Gates" display. I intentionally pointed them in the wrong direction.

7/30/2009 9:33:31 AM

Quote :

"nice recovery obama, credit where credit is due"

Yeah, because this is important. Up next I guess would be the economic recovery or is that the change that he talked about. I guess we can only hope.

7/30/2009 9:34:58 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/29/disorderly-conduct-conver_n_246794.html

white lawyer gets arrested for disorderly conduct for saying he hates the police to a cop

7/30/2009 3:00:01 PM

does he get to go to the whitehouse? I assume they arrested him bc he was white while being a dick.

7/30/2009 3:03:44 PM

Eh lay off it Laser we all know what's going on. Ignore the man's fiscal policy for 2 seconds and look at this situation.

7/30/2009 3:08:05 PM

^^my whole point all along has been that police were abusing their authority, not that there was much (if any) racial motivation. my link supports that theory. some police feel that disrespecting them is against the law. and people thinking that is justifiable is how a police state is born.

7/30/2009 3:14:19 PM

Quote :

"Long before his acclaim as a scholar of black history, Gates had faced the prejudice of a white man. Gates was just 14, and had suffered a hairline fracture in his hip. "The white doctor who examined Gates shortly afterward questioned the boy about his injury as well as his career plans. When the young Gates replied that he wanted to be a doctor and then correctly answered many questions about science, the doctor made his diagnosis," according to a biography of Gates posted on Gale, an online research tool. "He told Gates to stand and walk, and the young boy fell to the floor in intense pain. The doctor then turned to Gates's mother and explained that her son's problem was psychosomatic -- a black boy from Appalachia who wanted to be a doctor in the mid-1960s was an overachiever." Gates, now 58, walks with a cane as a result. "The most subtle and pernicious form of racism against blacks [is] doubt about our intellectual capacities," he once said."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/30/gates.arrest.recap/index.html

In all honesty, I have a hard time seeing that as a race issue either.

7/30/2009 3:18:47 PM

"I embarrassed you on national TV, let me buy you a beer when I could just as easily buy you a nice steak dinner"

7/30/2009 3:27:56 PM

http://www.duggback.com/odd_stuff/Crooked_Cops_Caught_on_Dash_Cam/

Quote :

"Throughout the tape, the cops acknowledged what they are doing is illegal, but when you are the law, there is nothing wrong with bending it for a fellow cop"

Stunning.

7/30/2009 4:10:10 PM

Quote :

"my whole point all along has been that police were abusing their authority"

By what?

Showing up at a potential break-in?
Asking a guy for his ID?
Leaving the house?
Arresting a guy who followed him out of the house, shouting "I am not someone to mess with?"

I'm really miffed how the cops fucked up here.

7/31/2009 7:44:27 PM

Quote :

"Arresting a guy who followed him out of the house, shouting "I am not someone to mess with?" "

that

7/31/2009 7:59:10 PM

so, in trying to leave, this guy follows them out, issuing what amounts to a threat, albeit not a physical one, and keeps them from leaving. They tell him to chill out and try to leave, and he still won't shut up long enough for the cops to be able to leave, all the while he is causing a commotion IN PUBLIC. And the COPS are in the wrong here? What kind of fucked up world do you live in?

7/31/2009 9:04:06 PM

^ so in your world, cops have justification to arrest someone for being upset on their own property?

What other non-violent, non-threatening verbal statements should be arrest-able offenses in aaronburro's conservative wonderland?

7/31/2009 9:30:09 PM

upset over what, exactly, again? The cops showing up, doing their job? I like how you ignore that the cops did nothing wrong before Gates started acting like a complete dickhead.

But hey, I guess yelling loudly in your yard at cops, not allowing them to, you know, LEAVE, shouldn't be considered disorderly at all. It's not like he was arrested for disorderly conduct or anything... oh, wait...

7/31/2009 9:35:12 PM

^ gates might have been a dick, but guess what, we as Americans have the freedom, and right given to us by the constitution, to be a dick to a certain extent. Or do you now hate the constitution when it involves a black person, and no guns?

7/31/2009 10:15:44 PM

yes, you have the right to be a dick. But, you don't have the right to be a dick by getting in the way of cops while they are trying to leave. You also don't have the right to be a dick by causing a huge commotion in your yard, disturbing your neighbors. No matter what your race

8/1/2009 12:10:58 AM

Haha, he was BEHIND the cop demanding his badge info in an obnoxious manner. He was not "in the way" of the cops.

I do like though how you've finally come out and admitted it's okay for cops to arrest people for acting obnoxious on their own property. Next thing you know, you'll be supporting eminent domain for land to be given to private developers.

8/1/2009 2:32:43 PM

^What part of IN PUBLIC do you not understand? And how in the world can you possibly relate this issue to eminent domain.

By your thought, I could sit in my New York apartment and scream profanity and people walking the streets below.

The caller was doing the right thing, the cop was DOING HIS JOB, the only problem was Gates. If all three of these were one race, GATES STILL WOULD HAVE BEEN ARRESTED. The fact that Gates was black gave him, and people like you, the ability to shift attention away from the truth of the matter.

Powell is completey right in that video above.

Obama showed his true "color" by siding with Gates and saying the cops made a stupid move. Given the senario and no facts, he immediately drew the conclusion that the cops were wrong. Would you care to defend this, Moron?

[Edited on August 1, 2009 at 3:28 PM. Reason : .]

8/1/2009 3:22:50 PM

Quote :

"Obama showed his true "color" by siding with Gates and saying the cops made a stupid move. Given the senario and no facts, he immediately drew the conclusion that the cops were wrong. Would you care to defend this, Moron? "

This is not at all what happened, how do you defend your ignorance on this matter? Is it that you can't see how a white cop could have lost control of his emotions?

A reporter asked OBama how the Gates arrest reflects on "race in America" (the REPORTER asked this mind you), and OBama repeated multiple times that he didn't have the facts, but IF the situation as he knew of it was as he said THEN this is what he thinks. Regardless, the police DID act "stupidly" by arresting someone for a charge that was immediately dropped, once they realized there was no break-in happening.

Quote :

"What part of IN PUBLIC do you not understand? And how in the world can you possibly relate this issue to eminent domain. By your thought, I could sit in my New York apartment and scream profanity and people walking the streets below."

This is not at all like what Gates was doing, nice try though. And he wasn't "in public" in the sense you seem to be trying to portray. People had gathered because police had line up outside of Harvard housing properties, they were gawking. The "scene" being made was the same as any scene where there are multiple cop cars, not because of anything Gates was doing. This was part of the cops' trumped up description to try and justify the initial arrest.

Or are you saying that cops can always arrest someone for "disorderly conduct" when bystanders gather? How do you propose to stop rubber-necking?

Quote :

"The caller was doing the right thing, the cop was DOING HIS JOB, the only problem was Gates. If all three of these were one race, GATES STILL WOULD HAVE BEEN ARRESTED. The fact that Gates was black gave him, and people like you, the ability to shift attention away from the truth of the matter. "

Haha, how do you know gates would have still be arrested? The fact that Gates is black is irrelevant to the fact that Gates should NOT have been arrested. No matter the race, Gates should NOT have been arrested in this situation, from what is known; a fact corroborated by the charges against Gates being immediately dropped (before the media picked up on the story).

Crowley overreacted to Gates badgering for his badge information, and arrested someone for a nebulous and verifiably unfounded charge, when he was there to deal with a report of a break-in.

8/1/2009 3:50:08 PM

Quote :

"Haha, he was BEHIND the cop demanding his badge info in an obnoxious manner. He was not "in the way" of the cops."

He was preventing them from leaving by being a dick.

Quote :

"I do like though how you've finally come out and admitted it's okay for cops to arrest people for acting obnoxious on their own property."

So, you think you can go out with an air horn at 3am and blast it all you want? Oh wait, that's considered "disturbing the peace." Kind of what Gates was arrested for. Shit... But yeah, it was clearly a racial thing. That's why the BLACK POLICE OFFICER at the scene has backed Crowley's version of events

Quote :

"A reporter asked OBama how the Gates arrest reflects on "race in America" (the REPORTER asked this mind you), and OBama repeated multiple times that he didn't have the facts, but IF the situation as he knew of it was as he said THEN this is what he thinks."

So, Obama went off half-cocked, not knowing shit about what happened and made a pronouncement, as the PRESIDENT, that the cops were acting stupidly. And you support this how? Should Obama next come out and start giving random opinions on other shit he doesn't know anything about? What's that? THis mayor over here might have gotten a parking ticket? Oh, shit, now let's call the mayor an idiot for not following the traffic laws of his own city. Nevermind that the meter might have been broken...

Quote :

"Regardless, the police DID act "stupidly" by arresting someone for a charge that was immediately dropped, once they realized there was no break-in happening."

No, they arrested him for a valid charge: DISTURBING THE PEACE, dipshit. THey didn't arrest him for breaking in. They arrested him for

DISTURBING THE FUCKING PEACE

8/1/2009 6:07:10 PM

Situations like this occur everyday ... black cop/white suspect , black cop/black suspect , white/white , white/latino , latino / white, ect ect

the only reason this made news is because it was between a white cop and a black suspect who hob nobs with the president

you take that factor out, and you got local headlines

i dont blame obama for making this bigger than it should be, i blame the media. however, that whole beer party was insane and a pathetic photo op .. obama should have kept his subconscious quiet from question 1.

notably,

if a black cop arrested a white suspect who was cronies with Bush, under the same situation, and he tried to raise hell about it, a response by Bush saying the cop acted stupidly would be completely turned around against bush and further a media induced racist stereotype ..

dont kid yourselves

8/1/2009 6:49:44 PM

^^ The charges were dropped the next day. It couldn't have been that a pissed off cop decided to flex some muscles and trump up some charges...? No, that never happens, and wouldn't happen in aaronburro's super-happy whites-only conservative fantasy land.

8/1/2009 9:59:02 PM

c'mon guys, the issue is dead now. they had a BEER together!

8/1/2009 10:02:10 PM

Quote :

"Cambridge Cop Accidentally Arrests Henry Louis Gates Again During White House Meeting WASHINGTON—Upon arriving late to his meeting with President Barack Obama and famed African-American intellectual Henry Louis Gates, Cambridge police officer James Crowley once again detained the distinguished Harvard scholar after failing to recognize the man he had arrested just two weeks earlier, White House sources reported Thursday. "When I entered the Oval Office, I observed an unidentified black male sitting near Mr. Obama, and in the interest of the president's safety, I attempted to ascertain the individual's business at the White House," Crowley said in a sworn statement following the arrest. “The suspect then became uncooperative and verbally abusive. I had no choice but to apprehend him at the scene for disorderly conduct.” Witnesses said that Sgt. Crowley, failing to recognize Gates on their flight to Logan Airport, arrested the tenured professor in midair, once again at the baggage claim, and twice during their shared cab ride back to Cambridge."

8/1/2009 11:29:52 PM