Professor Gates in a Parallel Universe

Black Professor’s Brush with Murder Raises Racism Fears

Cambridge, Mass., July 23, 2009 (AP) – The near-murder of renowned African-American scholar, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is a grim reminder of America’s lingering cancer of racism. The Harvard professor was shot by intruders in his Cambridge home after local police, summoned by a report of a burglary in progress, accepted the victim’s coerced assertion that all was well and left the scene. A neighbor later found Professor Gates bleeding on his kitchen floor. He underwent emergency surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital for gunshot and knife wounds and is expected to be released early next week.

According to information gathered from police reports and an interview with Professor Gates, a neighbor called 911 on the afternoon of Thursday, July 16th, to report that she had seen two African-American men breaking into the professor’s house. At about that time, Professor Gates was returning from a trip to China. He entered his home and was confronted by two armed men. They demanded his wallet and told him to “keep real quiet” while they searched the premises.

Moments later, a police car, responding to the burglary report, pulled up in front of the house. “I though I was saved,” Professor Gates said in the interview. “The cavalry had arrived.”

But the story was not to have a John Wayne finish. “Get rid of them quick,” one of the men said, brandishing his handgun and taking up a position with a clear shot at the professor’s back but out of the line of sight from the front door.

Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley asked Professor Gates to identify himself. The professor showed his Harvard ID card and driver’s license. Asked about the burglary report, he replied that he had “lost his keys” and that he and his chauffeur had forced in the door. Sgt. Crowley thanked him and departed.

“There was no cause for suspicion,” the sergeant said in a statement released by the Cambridge police department last Friday. “The professor had identified himself, was in his own home, and said there was no problem.”

But others have questioned whether the police officer’s lack of curiosity had racial undertones. “He should have asked the homeowner whether anyone else was in the house, and then had him step outside,” said an expert consulted by AP. “Those are standard procedures to ensure that someone in a situation like this isn’t under a threat. I’m sure they would have been followed if the homeowner had been white. Of course, usually there’s no threat and the owner may get upset. I’ve had some yell at me so much they had to be taken in for disorderly conduct. But it’s for their own safety.”

At his news conference yesterday evening, President Obama, a personal friend of Professor Gates, said that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly”. While disclaiming knowledge of the details of the incident, the President noted the country’s long history of unequal law enforcement protection for people of different races. He attributed Professor Gates’s survival to the success of the Administration’s stimulus and health care reform plans.

Warning: This news story is copyrighted by the Associated Press. You may not quote, link, read, discuss or think about it without AP’s express permission and the payment of royalties. THIS MEANS YOU!

Update (7/26/09): A commenter thinks that it is absurd and hilarious to believe that a police officer might be concerned about the well-being of a member of the public. That is, I think, a not untypical left-wing mindset. Perhaps the President shares it. His press secretary has now let slip that he was prepared for a question about the Gates kerfuffle. If so (and one of course should not trust Robert Gibbs implicitly), his answer – taking police malevolence for granted – was just what one would expect the considered response of a radical ideologue to be. Let me emphasize, though, that a single incident can’t rule out the alternative explanation of the Obama Administration’s strange goings-on: that the President is a well-meaning man with too small a knowledge base and too high an opinion of himself.

Comments

[pbh]

"give me a SECOND example"

Dude, give me a REAL example.

Of the infinite number of scenarios that might explain Dr. Gates presence in his own home, give me one real example of when a police officer walked away from a confrontation with the owner of the property only to discover sometime later that his inaction led to the home owner's death or injury by the hand of a homebreaker. PUHLEAZE.

And, by the way, given the officer's misrepresentation of the witness' statement in his formal report, we should not immediately trust the officer's assertion Prof. Gates offered resistance or "offense". Gates denies the allegation and his statements are more supported by the available evidence than the officer's.

pbh

[pbh]

"he was prepared for a question about the Gates kerfuffle"

Which is not, in fact, what Gibbs said:

"we went over a whole lot of topics that we thought might come up, and certainly, this was a topic that was and has been in the news." . . . . "I don't know if the president read the police report."

Since your latest comments, we now know that the caller did not mention the race of the individuals and that Officer Crowley misrepresented her statement when he included that detail in his incident report.

That is obviously evidence of a guilty mind.

Officer Crowley overreacted [behaved stupidly] and he tried to make up an excuse. He was not trying to protect Prof. Gates, he was trying to discipline him. In his own home. Which he had no right to do.

And I want to add cheap, tawdry and degenerate to my first comment that your disgusting attempt to excuse this behavior by framing it in a "Desperate Hours" scenario is despicable.

pbh

[Paul Zrimsek]

PLEASE give me a SECOND example so I can totally ignore THAT example too.

[pbh]

"it’s done so that the officer can be more certain that the person being interviewed is not being coerced to say that everything is alright".

ROTFLMMFAO

Yeah, that is really what happened. The Cop feared for Prof Gates well being. Oh Yes. Oh yes, that must be it. Oh Yes.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

pbh

[Tom Veal]

Of course Mr. Hodges, authority on police procedure, did not need to follow the link in my post, where he would have found this statement by a police officer about the reasons for asking someone inside a house to come outdoors:

It’s done so that the officer can be more certain that the person being interviewed is not being coerced to say that everything is alright. Last year in Hewitt, Texas, we went to a hostage situation. Lady would not come out of the house but kept telling us all was OK. After a couple of hours, we said if she came to the door to tell us all was OK, we would pack up and leave. She came to the door, we pulled her out, and found the hostage taker hiding in a closet with a hunting knife. Another renter had called this in, by the way.

On other occasions on domestic disturbance calls, the wife tells us she’s OK and wants to stay home. We ask her to step out of the house to talk, she gets outside and asks us not to force her to go back in.

All we want to do is make sure the person being interviewed is in a safe place to tell us whether he or she really is OK or not.

Mr. Hodges and I do agree that yelling irrationally at policemen is a good way to get arrested – even if one is, like me, a person of pallor.

[pbh]

"The Harvard professor was shot by intruders in his Cambridge home after local police . . . accepted the victim’s coerced assertion that all was well and left the scene."

What a degenerate fantasy.

If Prof. Gates had REALLY been in a "Desperate Hours" situation he would have wanted to be extremely calm in front of the police. Instead, he blew his stack at being confronted in his own home moments after arriving from a long trip.

In the real world, the police are NEVER faced with the hostage situation you assert. PLEASE give me ONE example.

It doesn't happen and it is not what the police think about when they respond to a burglary report.

But they do take offense to anyone getting Uppity. Even in their OWN HOME.

Try it sometime. Let me know how it goes for you.

pbh