Critical Success - Skip Gates Sgt Crowley and a Glass of Beer

[voyeurdug]

How about academic ego?

Small (college) town cop.

World class Harvard scholar.

Harvard graduate, professor of Constitutional Law, POTUS.

Maybe they'll need two or three beers, each... perhaps put Crowley's beer in a sippy-cup.

[jonathanlisto]

Lol, another good post as always. I can always count on good post from you man. You should run for politicial office. We need more criticial thinkers in our governing body. You got my vote.

[sherelynn]

Well spoken! I believe this is an "Male Ego" trip. I truly believe the officer came to the residence to investigate a break-in! My opinion based on listening to the 911 and dispatch tapes, Ofc. Crowley confirmed that Prof. Gates was the legal occupant, but he continues to request additional unit to the location, creating the scene. The police report differs from the 911 and dispatch tapes, and from the statement Mrs. Whelan gave on 7/29/09.

[ChulaKirby]

Say it all you want but it doesn't matter. It was a racial incident. Gates judged a police officer's motive and intent solely by the color of his skin.

[dsbrown3000]

You know what, I and so many others are used to application of racism from majority to minority from white to black, that the reverse is often overlooked. Your statement is accurate and one hundred percent valid. Still, it buys us nothing. To make an event out of how Skip Gates pre-judged Sgt. Crowleys intent only serves to heighten divisiveness and escalate this dialogue. We can all be better.

[ChulaKirby]

It buys a lot. When racism was institutionalized in this country who stood beside the black man to help end a lot of it? white people And when the table turns, who stands beside the white man? My point is this, racism is the enemy. That is what we fought against. You have no idea HOW FAR AND HOW MUCH IT meant to have the black police officers speak up for Crowley. There are those on both sides who try to divide us for votes and political power. How can you expect whites.....

[ChulaKirby]

to continue to speak out against racism when we see it when we are starting to see that it means just racism against black people. We are not traitors to our race. If we spoke out for blacks why would we not speak out for whites. Racism is racism. It is judging anyone differently because of the color of his skin and not the content of his character. Do you get it? We need a little help here. I am referring to support. If we watch your back we need for you to watch ours.

[ChulaKirby]

A lot of us didn't support Obama because of his ardent support for PLanned Parenthood. We know their eugenics background and we know their main target are blacks. We also know that many of the black leaders today once fought against them. But what did CNN tell us? It the back of our brains, unaware to us, is racism because Obama is black. NO, it is because planned parenthood is attempting racial genocide. So we get called racist because we care about someone else's children.

[ChulaKirby]

Then Bush starts to bail out the banks and we scream out to him and McCain and to congressman and senators. And they send us into debt anyway. Then Obama gets elected and continues the multi billion dollar bailouts and we protests, and MSNBC says the same thing, we are racist and unaware of it.

[ChulaKirby]

That is fine, but the reason is we care about our children and their children and the debt they will bear. We speak out against Planned Parenthood and do not vote Democrat solely because of PLanned Parenthood and we get put on the National Homeland Security watch list of possible terrorist cause we support a single issue such as prolife. Even though it isn't an issue for us but a qualification. Our leaders must respect the life of their followers. The pressure on us is to just say "F-ck it"!

[ChulaKirby]

Look this up on You Tube "Barrett booed at Greenville Tea Party"---- The media tried to portray protestors as Republicans against Obama because they were racist. No, we are against the government taxing us and our children to death. It doesn't matter if they are white or black or democrat or republican. But then who are we to question the media.

[socialistperson]

I think there a lot of African-American people who like to take advantage of their terrible history in the here and now to put every problem in their lives down to racism. I think this man had a more sinister motive, he knew that he could play the race card because he was black, so he did. The fact is, people need to take individual responsibilty for themeselves as people, whether you are white, black, or green. Continuing to play up race in America gives people an excuse to be irresponsible.

[ddpl365]

I usually agree with what you have to say but I must disagree. It is not within the police officers right to arrest someone just because they have offended you. As an officer of the law he should have had more dignity and shown more self restraint when dealing with an irate individual. He could have just shook his head, laughed and said have a nice day sir, because chances are, as a cop, he's going to hear shit like that more often then less.

[Socomnick]

He did not get arrested for offending crowley, he got arrested for disorderly conduct, he caused a public scene and began to mouth off putting on a show for the crowd.

[dsbrown3000]

ddpl365, Socomnick has critically clarified what I was attempting to convey. Perhaps because I was being too flip with my half-attempt at comedy I missed detailing that correctly. Skip Gate's loud-talking and remonstrating could have been dismissed by Crowley, but as I said Crowley was well within his police powers, which he used subjectively, to quiet-down Prof. Gates. And again, as you say, they face the issues everyday. Who are we to ask for restraint? The line is blue and thin.

[dsbrown3000]

We know that the best cops do show restraint. They are incredibly good at their jobs, but sometimes its the cop that decides to not exercise their powers when faced with an irate person, that catches a bullet or knife in the belly, and dies because they gave the person the benefit of the doubt. Perspective, ddpl, always about the perspective.

[ddpl365]

Skip Gates was in his house when he was shouting at the cop, which is not a crime. He was arrested for disorderly conduct when the officer enticed him to come outside. The officer tricked to step out of his house so he could put the cuffs on him. There was no crowd, There was Gates, albeit acting like an idiot but being an idiot inside your house is not against the law.

I understand that Gates was in the wrong, but the cop could have left it at that and go back to doing important work...

[ddpl365]

When you are public servant, like a cop, you deal with irate people all the time. There are procedures to handle them. It's called letting the baby have it's bottle. Who gives a shit if the cop was called names. I've been called slut, fucker, bitch, cunt, bastard, shit head, you name it in my job; my mother, a former immigration officer, has been accused of being racist, and again called every name; but you don't let it get to you. And you do not act in the way this officer did.

[ddpl365]

It's called self-discipline, dsbrown, and if this officer of the law cannot show it when faced with a situation of an angry old man in his own house, then he should get off the force.

[dsbrown3000]

Again, the Sgt. Crowley could have let it go, should have let it go, but he chose not to. All this in my opinion was part of the n-moment. Now, I don't mean to anger, but in the following sentence you mention self-discipline. That's fair to state, but I don't think this situation meets your criteria. We admit they both got out of hand. However, do you ever watch TRU network? Do you remember a few weeks ago when the cop tasered that 70 year old irate old white woman?

[dsbrown3000]

The only point I was attempting to make to you regarding perspective is that in any given situation we know there multiple points of view. The cop view and the alleged suspect view are critical. However, in many a situation, if the cop does not err on the side of harm to his own person, he runs the risk of injury, or even death, hence getting tasered or arrested. That's all I'm trying to point out in this regard.

[onlywhenprovoked]

The Gates incident is a 4th amendment issue. Cops should not be able to waltz into your home without a warrant prior to the Bush administration and his bogus War On Terror.

[onlywhenprovoked]

I worded that poorly, but you get my typo.

[dsbrown3000]

Not accurate my friend. You're talking about search and seizure. This is not at debate here. There was no search and seizure issue. And remember, an officer has the authority to enter your home on probable cause. But that didn't happen here either. Officer Crowley was defacto invited in for reasons of clarification and Prof. Gates did not specifically instruct him to NOT come in. This has nothing to do with the Bush admin.