{"id":2155,"date":"2009-07-24T17:26:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T00:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.candlelightstories.com\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2009-07-25T11:37:38","modified_gmt":"2009-07-25T18:37:38","slug":"cambridge-police-arrest-famous-black-professor-for-breaking-no-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/2009\/07\/24\/cambridge-police-arrest-famous-black-professor-for-breaking-no-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Cambridge Police Arrest Famous Black Professor for Breaking No Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"APTOPIXWell-known black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.<\/em><\/a> was returning home from a trip when he and his driver found that the front door to Gate’s home was jammed. The professor went into his home through the back door and and helped the driver push the front door open. Meanwhile, a neighbor, suspecting a burglary, called the police. Of course, you might wonder why the neighbor didn’t spend a bit more time figuring out that the homeowner was simply opening his own door. But that’s not the real story.<\/p>\n

The real story is that when the Cambridge, Massachusetts police showed up, professor Gates didn’t like the way the officer treated him and he did not cooperate fully with the officer.\u00a0 Remember that in United States we are under no legal obligation whatsoever to cooperate with a police officer who is asking questions.\u00a0 We don’t have to say anything.\u00a0 Professor Gates decided that since he was inside his own home the cop had no business asking him to prove that he was in fact in his own home.\u00a0 This is a perfectly justifiable attitude to have inside one’s own home.\u00a0 A police officer must be extremely cautious in dealing with a situation like this, especially when it becomes quite clear to anyone of average intelligence that it really is the homeowner the officer is dealing with.\u00a0 So professor Gates decided to give the officer a good piece of his mind.\u00a0 He apparently refused to show ID then changed his mind and did.\u00a0 He apparently told the officer that he was being racially profiled and that he was suffering under the treatment given to blacks by law enforcement.\u00a0 He may have insulted the officer and yelled at him.\u00a0 He may have insulted the officer’s mother.<\/p>\n

The officer says that there are radio call recordings that will prove professor Gates was yelling in the background.\u00a0 So, this Cambridge police officer arrested professor Gates<\/a> for ‘disorderly conduct’<\/em> – in his own home.\u00a0 Disorderly conduct for being angry at a police officer in his own home.\u00a0 Disorderly conduct is a very vague statute in most states, used primarily to give officers the ability to round people up for simply being uncooperative<\/a>.\u00a0 Basically, if a cop doesn’t like you, he or she can arrest you for ‘disorderly conduct.’<\/p>\n

I post about this episode at length because it goes straight to the heart of free speech in this country.\u00a0 Law enforcement versus free speech is the subject.\u00a0 We are living during a time when law enforcement seems to think it can record the phone calls of American citizens without a search warrant, physically assault journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions, and harass photographers in public places while attempting to confiscate their equipment.\u00a0 Police in Minneapolis, Minnesota staged an armed assault on a young peaceful protest group just prior to the Republican Presidential Convention in 2008.\u00a0 They burst into their house with weapons drawn and made these young people lie on the floor while illegally searching the house because they wanted to prevent the group from protesting near the convention.\u00a0 Much of this was caught on video and witnessed by onlookers. \u00a0 Many police officers around the nation seem to have very little understanding of what constitutes protected free speech and what constitutes a real threat.\u00a0 Some officers actually do understand the difference but choose to ignore the law.<\/p>\n

If professor Gates insulted the officer in his home, it’s protected free speech.\u00a0 If he insulted the officer’s mother, it’s protected free speech.\u00a0 I he called the officer a racist, it’s protected free speech.\u00a0 None of it matters in the slightest.\u00a0 The correct response from a police officer in such a situation is to shrug it off and say, ‘Have a nice day.’\u00a0 To arrest someone for behaving the way professor Gates did is outrageous and stupid.\u00a0 Just like president Obama says: the Cambridge police acted stupidly.<\/p>\n

Now the Cambridge police department is furious that Obama has insulted them and they demand an apology<\/a>.\u00a0 Obama owes them no such apology.\u00a0 He called them stupid and they most certainly are.\u00a0 All you need to know about this arrest is that prosecutors refused to press charges and all charges were dropped<\/a>.\u00a0 That means it was a bad arrest.\u00a0 That means the police behaved stupidly and made an arrest that was not supported by law.\u00a0 They arrested someone for breaking no law.\u00a0 I cannot think of a better word for it than ‘stupid.’<\/em><\/p>\n

To arrest a prominent black scholar for expressing his outrage inside his own home to police officers is stupid and might possibly be an act of racism.\u00a0 The police are now parading a black officer around who was at the scene of the stupidity and says he supports the arrest because ‘Mr. Gates was acting strange.’<\/em> Acting strange.\u00a0 Obviously, being a black Cambridge cop has not prevented this guy from being stupid.\u00a0 We are not supposed to be arresting people in the United States for ‘acting strange.’<\/em> If there’s a cop on a force who thinks that acting strange<\/em> qualifies for an arrest, he or she should be let go pronto.<\/p>\n

So we join president Obama in calling the Cambridge police who arrested professor Gates stupid. They also seem to be poorly trained, insensitive, unaware of legal protections for free speech, and perhaps somewhat racially biased.\u00a0 The race part really isn’t the important part because we don’t know if anyone on the scene really is racist.\u00a0 But we do know beyond any doubt whatsoever that the police on the scene arrested someone for exercising his right to free speech.<\/p>\n

Officer Friendly sure isn’t working up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well-known black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was returning home from a trip when he and his driver found that the front door to Gate’s home was jammed. The professor went into his home through the back door and and helped the driver push the front door open. Meanwhile, a neighbor, suspecting a burglary, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163],"tags":[458,336,545,407,380,544],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cambridge","tag-free-speech","tag-gates","tag-obama","tag-police","tag-racism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}