From the "Black People Arrest Themselves" files

[garbon]

I suggest everyone just take a chill pill and relax.

Jesus, does it have to be so hard?

You shouldn't have taken that cialis then.

[Caliga]

I suggest everyone just take a chill pill and relax.

Jesus, does it have to be so hard?

It's harder than you think, Mr. Lily-white Wyoming boy.

African-Americans: ANGRY.

[Berkut]

I noted that also and assumed Crowley misremembered what she'd said.  Probably when he wrote the report he wasn't anticipating that the entire country was going to be reviewing it, so he didn't dwell on the minutiae of it all that much.

The only explanation is that Crowley is a racist, and Gates was right all along.

Really, just take it on faith. If you just make that assumption right from the start, then interpret every piece of data either minutely or broadly (as the need arises) to make sure it conforms to what you know as The Truth, you can be an enlightened upper middle class liberal horrified at yet another example of the black man being held down too!

[The Minsky Moment]

I noted that also and assumed Crowley misremembered what she'd said.  Probably when he wrote the report he wasn't anticipating that the entire country was going to be reviewing it, so he didn't dwell on the minutiae of it all that much.

I think the problem may be bigger than that because the witness claims never to have spoken to him at all.

[derspiess]

I suggest everyone just take a chill pill and relax.

Jesus, does it have to be so hard?

It's harder than you think, Mr. Lily-white Wyoming boy.

African-Americans: ANGRY.

Or like Cuba Gooding Jr.'s dad in Boyz in the Hood, they are Furious

[The Minsky Moment]

The only explanation is that Crowley is a racist, and Gates was right all along.

Really, just take it on faith. If you just make that assumption right from the start, then interpret every piece of data either minutely or broadly (as the need arises) to make sure it conforms to what you know as The Truth, you can be an enlightened upper middle class liberal horrified at yet another example of the black man being held down too!

The only explanation is that Gates is a racist, and Crowley was right all along.

Really, just take it on faith. If you just make that assumption right from the start, then interpret every piece of data either minutely or broadly (as the need arises) to make sure it conforms to what you know as The Truth, you can be an hard-headed post-racial realist horrified at yet another example of the race card being used to destroy the reputation of a good police officer!

[PDH]

It's harder than you think, Mr. Lily-white Wyoming boy.

African-Americans: ANGRY.

HEY! We have African-Americans here!  We even have an African-American Studies Department at the University!

I am sure that at least 1% of the state is black, or at least Garbon-colored!

[Berkut]

The only explanation is that Crowley is a racist, and Gates was right all along.

Doesn't work that way - those making the accusation have to provide the evidence to support it. If YOU want to claim that Crowley is a racist, you have to show why, which of course you cannot do.

If *I* want to show that Gates is a race baiting dickhead, then *I* have to show why - which of course is rather easy to do since he started accusing Crowley of being a racist and acting like a douchebag immediately, from all accounts, and your entire claim that Crowley is really a racist is based on what he did AFTER Gates started acting like a asshole.

Nice try though, keep up the faith, brother!

[grumbler]

That possibility is excluded by the officer's conclusion - based on whatever material was presented - that Gates was the legal resident.

He concluded that the man "appeared to be" the legal resident.

Except that neither Crowley nor the responding officers acted in way vaguley consistent with that belief.

Except that Crowley behaved precisely in a manner consisten with that belief, so long as he held it.

If Crowley thought there might be an "unknown suspect" lurking about, he either would have undertaken a protective sweep or - as you indicate - call for backup and then undertaken the search.

No, he would have attempted to get Gates outside the house (if Gates was working in conjunction with another, it would split them up, and if he wasn't, it would protect Gates from any intruders).  He wouldn't have undertaken a sweep until backups arrived, and he therefor radioed to keep the backups en route.

But of course that never happened because once Crowley realized it was the resident who was in the house -- a realization he reached before confirming that the Cambridge Police should send more cops

There is no evidence that he reached any conclusion that gates was alone in the house before telling dispatch to continue to allow the backups to procede.

-- he knew there wasn't a break-in in the first place.  So when the back-up arrives, no attempt is made to secure the residence, because no one thought there was any need.

By the time the backups had arrived, Crowley had concluded that gates was the legal resident and that there was no break-in.  That changes nothing about why he might have wanted them earlier.

Put another way, if Crowley really believed what you are creatively attempting to ascribe to him, then he and his fellow officers deliberately and knowingly left the scene of a possible break-in without making any attempt to secure the residence.  It would take even more than an "idiot" to do that.

If Crowley really believed what you are creatively attempting to ascribe to him, he would have told the backups to return to patrol.  There was no need for them, in the "he just decided to be a racist and arrest gates" scenario you have concocted, and many reasons why he would not want such witnesses.

He specifically asked for BOTH - that is the point your comment is trying to respond to.

Where did he specifically ask for backups from CPD?

That doesn't follow - if CPD policy is compliant, then Crowley didn't follow that policy.

That doesn't follow.  If CPD policy is complaint, Crowley followed that policy.  See, two can play at this game.

[grumbler]

So you are going to have to be a little more precise about what you mean by "supported the story".

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-ap-us-harvard-scholar-arresting-officer,0,4731766.story

A black police officer who was at Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s home when the black Harvard scholar was arrested says he fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation.

[grumbler]

Another very interesting aspect of this incident is the distinction between the witness' report and what Crowley recorded the witness as saying.

What the witness actually said: "Um, well, there were two larger men. One looked kind of Hispanic, but I'm not really sure"

What Crowley wrote in his incident report: "[The witness] went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males . . ."

I point this out because although I have been relying on Crowley's own report to indict his conduct, it is additionally clear that his recollection as memorialized in the report is less than 100% reliable.

I also think it is interesting that Crowley has told "two men" and one "kind of Hispanic" and yet somehow heard (or at least wrote down that he heard) "two black men."  I suppose it is theoretically possible that Whalen orally told Crowley something different from what she told everyone else, but that seems unlikely.

Two different conversations:  The 911 call, and what Whalen said to Crowley.  She could easily have told him something a bit different from what she told the 911 operators.  I think this dog don't hunt.

[Berkut]

Two different conversations:  The 911 call, and what Whalen said to Crowley.  She could easily have told him something a bit different from what she told the 911 operators.  I think this dog don't hunt.

Indeed.

Alternatively, he was wrong. Or Whalen was wrong.

People often make minor errors all the time, especially when it doesn't seem like it is really that minor anyway.

Construing this into some kind of nefarious conspiracy to racially arrest Gates just because you like to randomly arrest old black guys as part of your inherently racist attitude is rather ridiculous.

Let's pretend that the worst possible facts are behind this "discrepancy" - Whalen either never spoke to Crowley, or if she did, said nothing about the race of the people she called in.

So what? The fact that Crowley mentions the race, even that he reports that she told him their race, after the fact means nothing. It doesn't prove Crowley is a racist, or that he went out there intending to arrest Gates, or that the arrest was unlawful.

It means absolutely nothing, other than that perhaps Crowley was not as careful as he could have been when writing the report.

But JR is going to spin that into some kind of incriminating evidence for a completely unrelated conclusion - that Crowley is some kind of closet KKK member who arrested Gates because he was black? How does that follow from him saying that Whalen told him the people she saw were black, whether she actually said that or not?

[grumbler]

I suggest everyone just take a chill pill and relax.

Jesus, does it have to be so hard?

Yep.  If people want to get bent out of shape over police misconduct, they should rage on about the Cory Mayes case (in which a man has spent eight years so far of a life sentence for shooting a police officer who was conducting a no-knock raid on the wrong house).

[Berkut]

I suggest everyone just take a chill pill and relax.

Jesus, does it have to be so hard?

Yep.  If people want to get bent out of shape over police misconduct, they should rage on about the Cory Mayes case (in which a man has spent eight years so far of a life sentence for shooting a police officer who was conducting a no-knock raid on the wrong house).

That is a tough case.

And I don't think it was really the wrong house - they had a search warrant for both aprtments in the duplex.

It seems entirely possible that Mayes acted "reasonably", but will pay the price anyway - after all, anyone can say they didn't hear the police identify themselves after they shoot one. On the other hand, the entire thing seems like it was fucked up from the get-go by the cops.

[The Minsky Moment]

Doesn't work that way - those making the accusation have to provide the evidence to support it.

I've provided the evidence; you simply choose to ignore it.