Last night, President Barack Obama answered a question about the arrest of Professor Gates during a press conference about health care. The President said that police acted “stupidly” and despite racial progress blacks and Hispanics are still singled out unfairly for arrest. Here’s the short clip (2:10) in case you missed it:
While it’s hard to imagine any of the previous presidents speaking out in this way about a “police matter,” the fact that President Obama would speak out should not, in fact, be that surprising. For Obama, racial profiling was a major issue for him as legislator in Illinois. He was the chief sponsor of a bill, which became law, that requires police to record the race, age and gender of all drivers they stop for traffic violations and for those records to be analyzed for evidence of racial profiling.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell provides an excellent analysis in The Nation both about Gates’ place among black intellectuals in the U.S. prior to this and about the significance of Gates’ arrest for what she calls “the post-racial project.”
Yet, for all this outrage (I believe I referred to it as a ‘tsunami of outrage’ originally, and it is certainly turning into that), James Crowley, the cop who arrested Gates, says he won’t apologize. And, lots of other white folks are lining up to defend him (starting with comment #8 at that link). This could get even more interesting.
Lawrence Bobo’s take:
http://www.theroot.com/views/what-do-you-call-black-man-phd
“Even before the charge were dropped Tuesday, I knew in my bones that this officer was wrong. I knew in my bones that this situation was about the level of deference from a black male that a white cop expects. I say this even though I did not see the events themselves unfold. What I do know with certainty is that the officer, even by his own written report, understood that he was dealing with a lawful resident of the house when he made the arrest. That same report makes it clear that at the time of the arrest, the officer was no longer concerned about the report of a “burglary in progress” involving “two black males.” No, by this point we’re talking about something else entirely.”
I think the cop was Black, Dave Paul.
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Gates has cause to be upset (I’d be), although he’s behaving like an ass. There’s been lots of commentary about how cops are supposed to act in these situations (control the situation, etc.) for their own safety; I won’t bother repeating. However, Steve Sailer had an interesting point. The cops might have been asking themselves, Might this guy be locked out of his house by Mrs. Gates? Where is she and is this situation really over?
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That would be true whether Gates was Black, White, or some other color we haven’t thought about yet. Does anybody have a comment about that possibility?
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President Obama’s comments about breaking into the house were funny. His comment about the cops acting stupidly were stupid. Why on earth does this guy presume to know more about every line of work than the people who do it? Auto manufacturing, banking, now police. (I remember Bill Clinton couldn’t refrain from commenting on cooking hamburgers, although he may actually have had some expertise.) I wish he’d stuck to the script — “Let the facts come out, we don’t know all the details, glad no one was hurt, blah, blah, blah.” If I were running the TelePrompTer, that’s what I’d have put on it.
Darin Johnson Says, “I think the cop was Black, Dave Paul.”
I think the cop was white, Darin Johnson.
James Crowley is credibly identified here as a “white police sergeant,” in a link provided in Jessie’s post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/23/cop-obamas-gates-response_n_243517.html
Yep, you’re right.
I’m glad Obama said something.
Perhaps it wasn’t what Obama was hoping for (the press conference was supposed to be focused on health care reform), but the line of the night was when he used the analogy of getting shot trying to jimmy the door open at the White House. Perhaps I read too much into it, but I thought that was a truly amazing thing to see; i.e., that OUR Prez understands what it’s like to be profiled, and how even he could be targeted if the individual (white or otherwise) targeting him was unaware of his identity (that is, other than being a black man). The immediate laughter and then quick silence was deafening to me…I’m surprised no one (at least on msnbc) mentioned it.
i think we can expect people to be on both sides of this. i’m more so excited that the discussion is happening. for years, blacks, the poor, and poor blacks have been exploited by the CJ system. and for years, we’ve all been, at least, slightly aware of this. now, for the first time, because we have a “good victim” (Goff), a national learning moment is at hand.
Anyone see Rachel Maddow’s very good piece on this issue and how Republicans are once again trying to use race as a wedge issue to make gains with whites? This tactic of theirs, as Maddow points out, has been used since Nixon’s day.
The cop (who is white) was on a Boston talk radio show this morning still not apologizing: http://audio.weei.com/m/25432556/sgt-james-crowley-cambridge-police.htm.
JDF, you don’t seriously think Gates was “profiled,” do you? And you can’t POSSIBLY think Obama thinks he was. Can you? I mean, come clean: you guys are just using this event to make political hay, right? Well, and Obama could be using it to settle his beef with the Cambridge police, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s all just politics.
@ JDF – I noticed that moment during the press conference, too.
It belongs to racial profiling incidents. As no crime was being committed and as Gates was clearly no danger to anyone, the police officer could have just walked away.
It amuses me that in a country that celebrates itself as the ‘land of the free’, that someone says the number one rule is ‘Do not antagonize the cops’.
To Darin Johnson, the problem with terms like ‘profiling’ and ‘racism’ is that most times they are aggregate outcomes of small biases in behaviour, hence Obama’s label of ‘stupid’ is appropriate. It becomes ‘profiling’ only when compared with the outcomes achieved. The officer was not explicitly ‘profiling’, but he would most likely have behaved differently with a white person.
Darin, it’s pretty clear that you’re the one who needs to come clean. I mean, your first comment was an attempt to was to try to say the cop was Black. Obviously, there was a truth-be-damned agenda there (i.e. you really didn’t have to do much research to find out for sure but you didn’t).
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Then you had the nerve to cite Steve Sailer, a person even John McWhorter calls a “professional racist.”
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Come clean, indeed.
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As for Sailer’s “interesting point”… where is the information that says police officers investigated whether there was a domestic incident occurring or a second burglar lurking somewhere in the residence?
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Again, come clean.
With all due respect, Thabo, that’s a bunch of crap. It’s “profiling” because has a high “profile,” not for any other reason. Yours is an ex post definition, depending on whether the police’s actions resulted in something bad happening to a Black man.
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I have exactly the same problem with this as I do with all of the disparate impact questions that seem to be mother’s milk around here. Maybe the police would “most likely” have behaved differently with a White person. I don’t know. But maybe a White person would have behaved differently than Gates did. You can’t establish one without the other.
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I think there’s a pretty high incidence of a certain personality type among cops that probably leads them to overreact in situations like this. Part of it is probably training, part of it is prudence, but part of it is just how they are. I don’t like it, either. And I’m sure that if cop is a jerk and a racist, that personality is going to manifest itself more often to the detriment of Blacks. There’s a lot of ground between that statement and a systematic bias always and everywhere against minorities, however. As a matter of fact, in this case at least one of the cops was Black! You can see him in the pictures, leading Gates out of the house while the White cop tries to calm him down. Doesn’t that mitigate the likelihood that this is a racial incident? Or is he an Uncle Tom.
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I’d like to hear somebody suggest some rational reasons the cops may have acted as they did. Anyone? Let’s imagine everybody involved was the same race. Is there a reasonable sequence of events that could have led to Gates’s arrest? Come on, people, lets do this in good faith; give the cops the benefit of the doubt for a minute.
@Darin Johnson, I think this case shows how whites as a group have a hand in this. The attention has been on the indiv cop, but he wouldn’t have been there had it not been for the call to the police in the first place. Still, the cop’s handling of the situation on the scene was indeed “stupid.” This was a joint effort in the defense of whiteness and white privilege (specifically the defense of a predominantly white neighborhood). Do any whites out there seriously think something like this could happen to them?
@Nquest: Thank you. For a second there I thought this was Fox News reporting Republicans Mark Sanford and Mark Foley as (D-South Carolina) and (D-Florida) respectively…
To be clear, this is a white police officer we are discussing… and one, apparently, who thinks it’s important to claim he’s “not racist”…
I feel that this is yet again one of those issues that will always hang on “racial intent”… the fact of the matter is that the damage has been done.
If he had an ounce of empathy, I would have expected him by now to apologize…
@JDF, I thought about this last night was someone pounding on my door at 1 AM last night. Needless to say, I was petrified but my partner and I managed to peek out the door to see that it was the police. I don’t think it crossed either of our minds that we could potentially be in danger with the police at our door. I know this is not a reality for all folks, and provides another dip in the sea of white privilege.
Still scared, we opened the door and the police said they received a domestic call about a woman. Seeing both my (male, white) partner and myself (white), they quickly decided that we were not involved in the call and assumed they had the wrong address. They then asked about our neighbors (we’re probably the only white people on our street).
They then APOLOGIZED immediately for waking us up and went on their way.
We know that the Secret Service will step in front of a bullet to protect the president, but with these comments by Dear Leader does anyone expect a cop to do the same thing. These comments has made the Secret Service’s job that much harder because no cop will back them up now.
runescape money
Wow!! I never thought that this will be such a big news. It went from Gates arrest to Obama apalogy. This has become more interesting than what I thought. So, I collected all the sites or articles (more than 250 sites or articles) related to this hot topic “Cambridge Police Unit Demands Apology from Obama”. If you are interested take a look at news, video coverage, people views and reviews on this topic at the below link.
http://markthispage.blogspot.com/2009/07/all-about-cambridge-police-unit-demands.html
Obama regretted his choice of words, and he said that Crowley was an “outstanding police officer and a good man” and that Gates “probably overreacted”. Later, he emphasized that both were “good people” and “decent people”.
Wait a second, JDF, you’re not seriously saying that even the call to the police itself was racially motivated, are you? Wow, that’s incredible. What should the woman who called it in have done? Nothing? You think she knew it was Gates but she wanted to screw with him? This isn’t Mobile, for crying out loud, it’s a college town in the Northeast.
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I should make one thing more clear about where I’m coming from. I think the cop was probably in the wrong to arrest Gates. Gates acted like an ass, but if the cops want deference then they need to exercise restraint. My issue with you guys is that is seems unlikely that this is racially motivated. And my problem with Obama is that he spoke entirely out of school. The cop acted like a jerk. Cops do that sometimes. They shouldn’t.
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However, as James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal points out, although the cop had the upper hand and should have exercised restraint during their confrontation, Gates has the upper hand and the responsibility during the public debate. He’s now behaving in a completely analogous way.
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So I’m basically disgusted with the both of them. Just so I’m clear.
Hmmm… Let’s see… Darin wants to know if whether people other than White people *can* be racist. First, I’ll just translate that *can* be to whether people who are not White have been or are racist. Helps to eliminate the fantasies of possibility. Second, the only people who are relevant to this conversation are so-called Americans. That helps to eliminate other distractions…
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Okay, take this topic for instance. It touches on quite a few things: namely, the presence and reality forged perceptions of racial profiling, unequal sentencing and overall racial inequality in the criminal justice system. In my mind, I’m scanning over U.S. history and, for some reason, I can’t think of any other people beside White people who perpetrated acts like racial profiling or unequal sentencing (in schools and jails) either by force of widespread, “isolated”, individual or small group acts or by the force of momentary or sustained government or socially sanctioned power.
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Here’s you chance Darin to establish a basis for your question. Please tell me what I missed in terms of the facts of U.S. history that shows how people other than Whites have been and are racist in ways relevant to the discussions here on this blog.
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Another recent topic here was on Pat Buchanan’s take on American History. Darin, please tell us what people other than White Americans have been as adamant, forceful and persistent in not including their fellow Americans in (as central characters) or writing their fellow Americans out of the American history books as White Americans?
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My contention is you can look over the vast majority of the topics here and come up with blanks when you ask have/are people who are not White racist in those contexts.
I must be pretty stupid, Nquest. I read you whole post twice looking for a “yes” or a “no,” since you said you were going to answer my question, but I didn’t find either. I must be awfully stupid.
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Let’s try it this way: Nation of Islam. Are they racist?
Sorry, no do-overs here, Darin. That you didn’t get the kind of answer you wanted is none of my concern.
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But let’s see… The Nation of Islam…
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Has the Nation of Islam perpetrated what is called “racial profiling” subjecting certain group(s) to more suspicion, detention, arrest, etc. than others? The clear answer is: NO. The Nation of Islam has no such thing as a national police force or even regional or local police force with the power to detain or arrest any non-black groups.
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Is the Nation of Islam responsible for unequal sentencing in the U.S. criminal justice system? The clear answer is: NO.
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Is the Nation of Islam responsible for racial inequality in American society be it in housing, employment, education, wealth, etc.? The clear answer is: NO.
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I’ll reiterate: “…scanning over U.S. history and, for some reason, I can’t think of any other people beside White people who perpetrated acts like racial profiling or unequal sentencing (in schools and jails) either by force of widespread, “isolated”, individual or small group acts or by the force of momentary or sustained government or socially sanctioned power.”
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I’ll also reiterate this: Darin, here is your chance to establish the basis of your question by telling me what parts of U.S. history I’ve missed were people other than Whites have been and are racist in ways relevant to the discussions here on this blog.
…… that means you explain your position which mostly means forgoing questions which hardly explain why you think your original question is relevant here on this blog. ………
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Continuing… Has the Nation of Islam done what Pat Buchanan did…? Oh, wait, it’s obvious the NOI does not because Darin could have easily told us that the NOI has been adamant, forceful and persistent in not including their fellow Americans in (as central characters) or writing their fellow Americans out of the American history books. Darin could have also easily told us how the NOI has the kind of media access Pat Buchanan does but Darin didn’t.
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The bottom line is: Darin keeps asking a question he knows is nowhere near relevant to what is discussed here on Racism Review.
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But here’s another chance for you Darin, find a topic here on Racism Review then answer your own question either version of it and see if, in the context of the topics discussed here… if there are people other than White people who are racist in, again, the relevant contexts.
So racism is not an attitude, it’s an action. And only people with “power” can do anything, so only people with “power” can be racist. Is that it? I just want to be sure I understand fully. What about local power? When Black gangs murder White kids for being in the wrong neighborhood, is that racism? If a Korean kills an Irishman in in Seoul he’s a racist, but if he does it in Harlem its because the Irish guy was? Or does “Whites’ power” in America mean that Whites are the bad guys everywhere? I just want to understand.
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Do you have any idea how indefensible your definition is? I mean, if you had a bit of intellectual integrity and some foresight you’d abandon it now because of the stupid places it is sure to take you. I don’t expect you to, of course.
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Yet here you are, talking to me like I’m an idiot. My questions are relevant to me, genius. If you don’t see the relevance it’s not because of me.
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PS Did Pat Buchanan write a history book? I must have missed that. Should I add it to my ever-expanding reading list? A little held, if you don’t mind.
Since Darin mentions the Nation of Islam, I think it’s important to note Mike Wallace’s and Louis Lomax’s special “The Hate That Hate Produced” meaning that the Nation of Islam doesn’t exist in a vacuum and, in some fashion, the NOI is, itself, an outgrowth, if only a response to, White racism.
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With that said, exactly why people try to claim there is some kind of moral equivalence boggles the mind. Even more mind boggling is why Darin, instead of considering other explanations for the White racism that’s discussed here on Racism Review other than Whites=Evil, would ask about the NOI which, in its response to White racism, came up with the same kind of equation Darin did.
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That is, Darin and the NOI (at least in some of its earlier philosophies/proclamation) both share the same kind of narrow frame of mind when it comes to explaining White racism. Both Darin and the NOI think/thought that only Whites=Evil explains the well documented history/present racial discrimination and racial inequality. At least that’s the strawman Darin wants to make out of the position other people here whose views don’t align with his.
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When Dr. Feagin explains how “the white racial frame” combines “racial stereotypes (the verbal-cognitive aspect), metaphors and interpretive concepts (the deeper cognitive aspect), images (the strong visual aspect), emotions (feelings), and narratives (historical myths like “manifest destiny of whites to spread across the country”), and routine inclinations to discriminatory action” [something Darin’s opponents here have implicitly agreed with if not openly so], it’s clear that reducing that down to and pretending its equivalent to saying Whites=Evil completely misses the point and is, entirely, incompetent as a point made in a debate what to say about [White] racism.
So racism is not an attitude, it’s an action. And only people with “power” can do anything, so only people with “power” can be racist. Is that it?
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I did not stutter.
“…scanning over U.S. history and, for some reason, I can’t think of any other people beside White people who perpetrated acts like racial profiling or unequal sentencing (in schools and jails) either by force of widespread, “isolated”, individual or small group acts or by the force of momentary or sustained government or socially sanctioned power.”
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I didn’t stutter then and I didn’t stutter when I encouraged you to make your comments/questions relevant. Nor did I stutter when I asked you if the Nation of Islam — the group you asked me to consider, mind you — was (1) responsible for perpetrating what is called problematic “racial profiling” by the criminal justice system, (2) responsible for unequal sentencing in the U.S. criminal justice system, (3) responsible for racial inequality (in housing, employment, education, wealth, etc.) in American society or (4) responsible for adamant, forceful and persistent opposition to including their fellow Americans in (as central characters) or writing their fellow Americans out of the American history books.
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I related all that to topics discussed here on Racism Review. And it helps if you pay attention instead of running to talking points and strawmen.
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When Black gangs murder White kids for being in the wrong neighborhood, is that racism?
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It must not be since you have to ask. Obviously, you’re convinced of the weakness of your own position which is way you want rhetorical questions to make your argument for you instead of stating your position and explaining why Black gangs murdering White kids is something you think is relevant especially since there are clearly other things that explain the phenomenon of Black gangs who happen to murder White kids other than racism.
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Once again, your rank hypocrisy comes back to haunt you.
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“…does “Whites’ power” in America mean that Whites are the bad guys everywhere? I just want to understand.”
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No, you desperately want some kind of moral equivalence that doesn’t exists because of your Whites=Evil, White=BAD guys mentality. Again…
“…scanning over U.S. history and, for some reason, I can’t think of any other people beside White people who perpetrated acts like racial profiling or unequal sentencing (in schools and jails) either by force of widespread, “isolated”, individual or small group acts or by the force of momentary or sustained government or socially sanctioned power.”
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You asked the question and that’s the answer you got. If you want to contend with what I said, if you can show how what I’ve said is not true or is otherwise inaccurate… do it. Emotional and disingenuous rants about what you want to “understand” don’t do it.
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Do you have any idea how indefensible your definition is?
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I have the clearest of ideas how you just aren’t capable of disputing what I’ve said. I just happen to believe that you would have done it if you could. So I’m thinking you can’t which, for all intents and purposes, makes “my” definition very defensible.
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I mean, if you had a bit of intellectual integrity and some foresight you’d abandon it now because of the stupid places it is sure to take you…
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I’d expect you to come with more intellectual force and an argument compelling enough to forces me to abandon my insistence that you make your questions relevant and stop trying to find a moral equivalency I feel and, basically, have proven doesn’t exist.
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Yet here you are, talking to me like I’m an idiot.
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I have no control over how the argument I make — which you have no substantive counter for — makes you feel. That’s internal to your psychological make-up.
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PS Did Pat Buchanan write a history book?
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It was a figure of speech, Buchanan being an example of what literally has happen and continues to happen in these U.S. See the thread on “Banning César Chavez: Whites “Sanitizing” US History Again”… see all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over multiculturalism, Afrocentrism, etc., etc., etc.
My questions are relevant to me, genius.
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Well, that solves it. Don’t ask anybody else but yourself questions that you keep repeating and repeating and repeating. It’s like you don’t understand how a lot of people don’t dignify with a response questions they view as irrelevant. It’s also like you don’t think other people have the foresight to see the stupid places addressing your question was sure to take you…
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I mean, look at you… getting all emotional because your little “give me a yes or no answer” game (which was preceded by your faulty, off-topic, moral equivalence game) blew up in your face.
This is what we know… or should know.
After many, many years of institutionalized racism and other forms of bigotry, this country has many issues. For the most part, the American people have traditionally tried to ignore bigotry when it has not affected them on an individual and personal level. That probably will not change anytime soon. People are stuck in a first person singular mode, evidenced by the need for the entire financial system to crash and unemployment to run rampant before the average person began to even consider what off-shoring and outsourcing of jobs meant to the ability of other Americans to purchase the goods and services that they, themselves produced. Same with police misconduct, as long as it is perceived to be something that happens to someone else, most people will not care enough to get involved. Tolerating police misconduct in your community does nothing to make you safer from crime. You are still just as likely to have your car stolen when you are in a restaurant having dinner, just as likely to have someone stick a gun in your face and rob you in the supermarket parking lot, just as likely to have your home burglarized while you are at work. There are many other good measures that can be taken to minimize the likelihood of becoming a victim of any of the aforementioned crimes, but accepting police misconduct is not one of them.
When people look the other way when something that seems inappropriate happens or automatically presume that the police are right and the member of the public is wrong when there is an incident, the public gives away rights that most non-minority people take for granted today, but were actually hard won by everyone, over many years of this country’s history.
It is unlawful, (a felony criminal act in most States and at the Federal level), for a Police Officer to arrest a person for an offense that they do not believe the person has committed or even detain a person for investigation, just to hassle them, if they believe the person has not actually committed any offense. What we call “Contempt of Cop” in police work, is not a real crime and arresting a person for disorderly conduct or anything else, just to punish them for the way they spoke to us, (what they said or how they said it), is a criminal act, regardless or not, if racism is the motive.
We have a problem with the police in this country and we (the public) are at fault. Over the last several years there have been an alarming number of shooting that involved a suspect with no weapon, the shooting of a person that is not a criminal suspect at all, the shooting of Police Officers by other Officers, police rapes, police burglaries, police caught on tape telling people that they will “think of something” to arrest they for and on and on.
If you protested the election results in Florida in 2000, the police probably shot your picture, but they did not shoot you. Flash back to the woman’s suffrage movement, (the movement that won women the right to vote) and the police did shoot women protesters in this country…just as they still do in Iran. We, (police) shot labor protesters, Civil Rights protesters, people rioting for food, you name it and we police shot you down in the streets for it, right here in this country.
Keep ignoring police misconduct or finding a reason that the police were never at fault and should never end up in prison for “Manslaughter”, “Reckless Endangerment”, “Negligent Homicide”, “Official Oppression” or any of the laws that cover these sorts of police misconduct and you will be amazed at how bad this problem gets…for all of us.
It is unlawful, (a felony criminal act in most States and at the Federal level), for a Police Officer to arrest a person for an offense that they do not believe the person has committed or even detain a person for investigation, just to hassle them, if they believe the person has not actually committed any offense. What we call “Contempt of Cop” in police work, is not a real crime and arresting a person for disorderly conduct or anything else, just to punish them for the way they spoke to us, (what they said or how they said it), is a criminal act, regardless or not, if racism is the motive.
…that’s right, I already said that, didn’t I?
Frank