The Wall Street Journal makes a very sharp point with this line from their recent editorial on the whole Henry Louis Gates Jr. dust up, a story line the President “stupidly” inserted himself into during his recent press conference.
Mr. Gates lives in a city with a black mayor, a state with a black governor and a country with a black President. The dispute was arguably about town-gown relations rather than race. If this is a teaching moment, one lesson is that it’s usually better to cooperate during encounters with law enforcement so that matters don’t escalate needlessly.
Does the Wall Street Journal doubt the president when he tells them “stupidly is as stupidly does?”
When President Obama made his now famous “police acted stupidly” remark I shuddered, not beause it was not true but because I knew that remark would become the issue. And worse yet, I knew the issue would be framed improperly to stir passions over THE issue in America that is most difficult to rationally discuss — the scars, the fears, the resents run too deep. This current controversy will never be resolved rationally now because it has become racial and political.
I am a retired police lieutenant and, for the past twenty plus years, a practicing attorney who has sued police officers for misconduct and defended them from such claims. I have also taught in the police academy.
This controversy involves two hot button issues, race and police-citizen-contacts.
Race is the white elephant in this room but it is not the primary issue here, notwithstanding that it is the accelerant splashed around to stoke this conflagration. The proper analysis here would be the same if both parties had been of the same race.
This is not racial profiling. Profiling involves using race or ethnicity as the basis for INITIATING a stop.
Police officers, the most visible repressentatives of our government, are armed with the authority to compel all citizens to submit to their lawful demands. Those demands however are not without limit.
Police officers are servants, public servants, but servants nontheless. Frequently, the men and women who wear the badge that we train to face down murders and violent criminals and that we all want to keep us safe in our ordered society, forget that basic relationship.
There appears to be no legitimate reason for the arrest that occurred here. The original call was about a break-in and the officer responded to what could have been a dangerous situation. At the initial contact an appropriately apprehensive officer encounters a weary unsuspecting professor in his own home. The officer determined that the professor lived there and that should have ended the contact, even if the adrenaline of both are running high.
Too many commentators have stated that the professor caused this problem by berating the officer. Starting from that faulty premise the opportunity to correctly analyze the situation is lost. The professor had no such duty, to the contrary, he had a right to question or critcise the officer’s performance. That right, like the officer’s authority, is not without limits. Nothing I have heard indicates that the professor exceeded those limits, whether the officer liked it or not.
Officers are trained (at least they were when I was a recruit in the academy) that citizens are typically “stressed” in such encounters and that if there is no crime or basis for intervention, gracefully extricate themselves from the situation and leave. Officers are also cautioned to monitor their own stress levels realizing that potentially dangerous situations increase the “fight or flight response” and that officers cannot flee and may tend to be more aggressive.
In this case, apparently, the officer responded, investigated and determined there was no crime. The professor could not, and has not, complained about that. The officer should have extricated himself at that point. The professor complied with the demand for identification, even if grumbling about it. The officer cannot complain about the grumbling, but it is clear (to me) that he did not like the criticism. The officer did not have to like it–the professor had a right to critcise just like the officer had a right to demand that he identify himself.
Everything that occurred after that point the officer must bear responsibility for because he should have left the scene, there was no further reason for intervention or interaction. After explaining his purpose and presence to the professor, and if the professor was still upset, the officer should have left the professor ranting on the porch (if that was the case).
The officer had no right to retaliate with an arrest because the professor exercised a right to criticise, rightly or wrongly, the officer’s performance.
The racial element, even if present, was not in my opinion the primary factor in this situation. It is disheartening that it is the ONLY factor in the current discourse. The president did not accused the officer of racism, the president said the officer’s actions were stupid. In hindsight the officer should agree but he will not because he has forgotten that he is a public servant and that his exercise of that awesome coercive power of government with which he is empowered was, even if correctly, exercised against an innocent citizen who resented it and lawfully expressed that resentment.
We should analyze this incident without a racial component and then use this opportunity to explore how race exascerbated every facit of the story.
Should the president have commented upon the situation? Why not? The media asked the question and the president responded with his gut, realizing and acknowledging that he did not have all the facts. Even the president has the right to free speech.
Excellently put!!!!
barrack “nifong” obama.
lol!
President Obama racially profiled the police before knowing all the facts, the police are now calling him on it, and we now have a slightly better picture of Obama’s own racial attitudes.
Amos,
Very interesting “Arm Chair Quarterbacking” and issue deflection. The issue is Obama’s statement, not the occurance he was commentating on. Obama claimed to not have all the facts then proceded to present a judgement upon the police department and officer involved. A pretty stupid move on anyone’s part, wouldn’t you agree?
Also if you or I were in Gates position and were (presumably) following the officers out of the house continuously harranging and harrassing them we would have been arrested. We would not have had the charges dropped.
As for what actually transpired that day, we may never know, only Gates and the three officers present. (I’ld be more inclined to believe the officers account, all of which have given the same testimony). No video of the encounter – to bad.