The highly educated and respected Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., just learned something that he apparently didn't already know...when the cops show up on scene, they are boss and the ones in control, or will quickly attempt to gain control. It works that way in Cambridge Massachusetts and everywhere else I've ever been.
I was not at the scene, the President of the U.S. was not at the scene, and you were not there, either. We can form any kind of opinion we want, but it won't be based on what we saw. Gates' neighbor, the woman who called the police, could barely see the scene herself, and didn't mention race in her call, according to the 911 tapes' transcript, which I have not seen.
What do we know? Only what we have been told. So we don't know much. Gates said that he and his driver had difficulty with the house key and had to force the door. We know the cops showed up, and we know Gates was arrested and taken to the pokey. He was later released and disorderly-type conduct charges were dropped.
On Monday, July 27, 2009, eleven days after the incident, Cambridge city officials released the tapes of the 911 call. The caller on the July 16 tape repeatedly told the 911 center that she could not see what the two men trying to get in the home looked like. "I just saw it from a distance" she said. She wasn't even sure whether she had seen a crime, or just the resident trying to get in. The caller's attorney has said, and this is a salient point, that the tape shows her client's call was not racially motivated. "The truth is she couldn't see their race, therefore she didn't know their race and she didn't call police because of their race, which is the most important point of all," the caller's attorney said. "She called because of behavior."
This is what I call a "BINGO" moment...the point where the sum is more important than one element. It says to me that Gates had a huge, stinking, and racially-motivated chip on his shoulder. A chip that had grown ever larger for years and had never been knocked off. Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, not only knocked it off, he kicked the stinking thing all the way to The White House where it landed in the office of another guy with the same kind of chip on his shoulder. So that guy, a buddy of Gates, said that the officers acted "stupidly". Of course cops certainly have that capacity - we all do, but for the Prez to say so for all the world to hear is stupid. He wasn't there, which makes his buttinski remark stupid.
Respected journalist Juan Williams said on a FOXNews program that he had a simple way of dealing with police, even to the point of teaching his children his method, a method that most of us would be wise to employ: when a police officer asks you a question, answer it respectfully, then be quiet. If an officer directs you to do something, do it, then be quiet. The police are not Gods, but they certainly have the means to really mess up your day if you prefer it that way.
Comply and then be quiet is exactly what Gates should have done. The man was seen forcing the door, and then the police showed up. Gates should have done what a reasonable person would have done. As soon as the police got there Gates should have had his smile and I.D. ready. He did neither, apparently. His pride and ethnic baggage wouldn't allow it.
And that's how Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. learned a lesson.
