Gatesgate and beers with my homie (From Guest Blogger Jim)

Note from MojoSteve: Guest Blogger Jim has over 21 years experience in law enforcement


I actually wrote this a couple of days ago and goofed up posting it and getting it to Steve. S’okay; works out better this way.

The internet, and now TV, brought news of the arrest of Henry Gates Jr., in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for disorderly conduct after police responded to a 911 call advising of a burglary in progress. There are some facts and truths surrounding this incident, and here is my take.

Gates, a professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard, returned home and was unable to gain access to his residence by the front door, even with the assistance of his driver. A citizen saw this and placed a 911 call. Prior to police arrival, Gates unlocked a rear door, disabled an alarm and then, curiously, forced the front door anyway. Upon arrival, officers discovered the damaged door and, according to close friend Lawrence Bobo and police reports, a pissed-off Gates.

Gates refused to initially ID himself, and taking umbrage to the officer asking him to step out to speak with him, showed ID and asked," Is this because I’m a black man in America?” Gates then called the officer a racist and offered to speak to the officers mama(!) outside. Gates ended up being arrested for disorderly conduct although those charges were later dropped.

In reading the Boston Globe’s reporting on this, I noted that Gates was defended by Lawrence Bobo, a sociologist from Harvard, and S. Allen Counter, a neuroscientist, also from Harvard. Bobo bailed Gates out on the disorderly charge and drove him home, offering insight to the incident prior to Gates hitting the talk show circuit. Bobo stated that Gates asked pointed questions of the officer, like; "Is this because you're a white cop and I’m a black man in America?". He said that Gates was angry, and opined that the situation didn't end as he felt it should, when Gates presented ID, (we have no way at this time of knowing if the ID shows the residence in question to be on Gates’ ID), and felt it continued because," the officer (felt he) had not been deferred to sufficiently."

Counter, who has an axe to grind with police over a 2004 traffic stop, (not arrest or cuff-and-release), stated to the Globe that he had spoken to Gates and they feel that the incident would not have occurred if the professor in question had been white. Notice a trend or pattern emerging here?

Gates later stated that if the officer apologized sincerely and admitted his error he would forgive him and, as a bonus, educate him about the history of racism and racial profiling. NO SHIT. That is what Gates does for a living. Gates, during the exchange, also told the officer that this would not be the last he heard for him and that he did not know who he was messing with.(The old "Do you know who I am?" routine)

I'll say. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama stated on national TV that Gates is a friend and thinks that, “The Cambridge police acted stupidly." He made that remark after saying he did not have all the facts. He also stated that racial profiling is a problem in America, as it causes blacks and Latinos to be stopped, (more often than whites).

For his part, the officer involved stated that there would be no apology.

Good job, as it deprives them of a real live evil white racist cop to parade in front of the media. Gates continues to sling the shit, saying he now has a prison record, and that the cop is a rogue, disturbed, and has a broad imagination. Gates further stated that he could not have yelled at the cops as he was/is suffering from a bronchial infection. Guess that was before the pic made its debut in the Globe, showing Gates with mouth agape, and a cop off to the side giving the universal "keep it down" hand signal. The Lincoln of our Times™ went on to state on Thursday that he really wasn't calling the cops stupid, even if that's how it looked Wednesday night.

Still with me? Here’s where the truths kick in. This cop did nothing wrong, as apparently Massachusetts law allows for arrest in just such an incident. Oh yeah, the officer in question is a hand-picked trainer for (how not to do) racial profiling. The guy who hand-picked him is a black police commissioner.

This guy, Gates, has been waiting his whole life for just such an opportunity. Guys like him and his defenders appear to walk around with a chip on their shoulder, praying for the day a white nudges it off, or even walks by fast enough to stir a breeze and make it fall. Gates teaches about racial profiling. Counter can't move on about a contact 5 years ago. Bobo thinks the cop arrested Gates because he didn't defer to him sufficiently. And as a community organizer, Obama cried foul whenever whites got jobs or loans or drew breath from what I can tell. As a senator in Illinois, he sponsored legislation in regards to racial profiling. Let’s not forget Mr. Obama’s connection to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of “U.S. of K.K.K.-A.” fame.

Guys, I hate to tell you, but you got to give this up if you really expect the rest of America to move on. You can't scream racism every time something does not go your way, and expect that no one will feel or act out with resentment. Grow up. You’re showing your own bias, and in danger of falling on your own sword.


---------------------Additional input from The Lightning Man------------------------

Well, now that the dust has cleared a bit (not necessarily even settled), we have Obama getting blasted from all sides for sticking his dick into the blender, so to speak. He really should have kept out of it because now we’ll have every grievance for alleged profiling brought to the White House. This was a civil matter best handled quietly, by which I mean that if the President was to have been involved at all (and I sure as hell don’t think he should have) then a quiet phone call should have been enough.

Instead, we now have the President of the United States getting involved in something only slightly above the level of a Traffic Stop.

I think both guys escalated the situation, Gates more so than Sergeant Crowley. Gates makes his living, and a VERY substantial one, teaching about racial profiling and as Jim stated above has been waiting for this moment his whole life. His classrooms will be booked solid for the next 10 years. Talk shows, book deals…hell, in a week we’ll see his face on giant oversized 5XL tee shirts in airbrushed red/white/blue with “HERO” under it like these asstard Obama shirts. He’s a friend of Obama’s and of Oprah’s…

The cop asked you outside so he could A: ascertain your identity for his own safety, and B: clear you out of the house for your safety as well. The 911 call mentioned two people breaking in; if all we see is one guy, then where is the other? Let’s step outside so we can both be safe in case there’s two guys in your house, or in case you ain't who you say you are. As a former cop, trust me when I say that NO CALL IS ROUTINE, no matter how simple it first appears.

Sergeant Jim Crowley is a good cop by all accounts. You don’t get hand-picked to be your department’s go-to guy on how to prevent racial profiling unless you’re good at what you do. Personally, Jim and I both agreed on the phone yesterday that we both would have just radioed it in as “Homeowner’s being a belligerent ass and refuses to cooperate” and cleared the scene, leaving the homeowner to his fate had their been anyone inside his house. He should have just dropped it and left instead of escalating it, so yeah, I’ll hold him partially accountable, and NOT because I am a white former law-enforcement professional or that Jim is a white, current law-enforcement professional, but because we both think that the situation escalated on both ends.

So what does Obama do next? Invites the boys over for a beer. If Crowley declines, he gets bashed forever as a racist evil white cop and local Klan representative. He more or less is forced to accept, and some will say he’s being brought there to force him to apologize. So here you are, a hated & reviled white cop accused of racism by an upstanding member of the black community, a Harvard professor no less, and he calls up his buddy the PRESIDENT, who then calls you and “invites you over for a beer”. Yeah, this has escalated way too far. Of course, Obama just wants to get everyone off his back for his remarks, too.

First of all, you should have refused to comment. Then, you admitted you didn’t know the facts and STILL said they acted stupidly. This is what we get when Obama says what he thinks instead of reading it off a TelePrompter. Then instead of apologizing for making a bad situation worse, you simply say you should have recalibrated? WTF does that even mean? Dude, you’ve flown around the globe, tens of thousands of miles, to apologize to every tinpot dictator and oil-rich sheik that you could find, yet you can’t say “Ooops, my bad.”?

And, since no one else wants to say it, I’ll risk personal attacks and just address the other thing Obama said. He mentioned that blacks and Lah-tee-noze get targeted more than whites. Maybe that’s because they’re committing more crimes than whites?

There, I said it.

And now I’ll back it up with a 2007 report from the New Century Foundation in Oakton, Virginia titled “Race, Crime and Justice in America: The Color of Crime”, Second, Expanded Edition

Major Findings:
• Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.

Crime Rates:
• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder,
and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
• When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely
than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.
• Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and
Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.
• The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of
the population that is black and Hispanic.

Interracial Crime:
• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving
blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.
• Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Fortyfive
percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are
Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are
black.
• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against
a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.
• Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes
against whites than vice versa.

Gangs:
• Only 10 percent of youth gang members are white.
• Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs.
Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.

And the US Department of Justice stated that in 2005, offender rates for homicide in the USA for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites.


And for once, Al Sharpton seems to be keeping his mouth shut. Go figure.

Maybe I wanted a beer too?