Hey, there! Log in / Register
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Self Loathing Racism perhaps?
Self Loathing Racism perhaps?
Only a snapshot but...
A snapshot can be deceptive, but this one is pretty damming for Mr. Gates. It shows him mid-scream (presumably?) and the non-Caucasian officer in the foreground is not exactly begging his colleagues to spare Mr. Gates arrest. May throw a bit of cold water on Mr. Gates' victimology.
Really?
Prof. Gates is photographed with his mouth half-open, and an African-American officer at the scene isn't on his knees begging his colleagues to set Prof. Gates free. That's "damning"?
the black officer may even be the supervisor
You can't really see anyone else's sleeves, but he's got a whole lot of chevrons on his. 2, maybe 3? The position and body language also suggests he's the supervisor/senior officer.
Wouldn't surprise me if the officer on the scene radioed that he'd had a tussle with an angry black dude who was screaming blue bloody murder about racism, and the shift supervisor put in a personal appearance.
Also, if that's "half open", damn. That's pretty much mid-scream, mouth fully open, and he looks a bit hysterical. Granted, some people get really quiet, some people get really hysterical, some people get really angry, when they're arrested. Doesn't change their guilt.
The whole thing is pretty ugly. Unfortunately, police in MA in general have such a credibility problem with the public (and now the local and federal courts) that they've opened themselves up to this.
Eventually, they (and their supervisors, and their civilian bosses) will figure out that the key to successful enforcement is a police force that holds itself to the very highest standards- not to simply stand with each other because of some self-aggrandizing notion that they are all that stands between civil society and chaos. These days it is getting so bad, we practically need civilian independent witnesses to provide testimony, because at least in Boston, the cops are repeatedly lying on the stand.
Sidenote: god DAMN that's a lot of police/cruisers. I see 6 in the photo, and at least five officers in another photo.
What's your foundation for
What's your foundation for the statement that "in Boston, police are repeatedly lying on the stand"?
Moreover, we don't "practically need" civilian independent witnesses to provide testimony in Boston and Suffolk County -- we really need it, and it's really hard to come by, especially in the investigative stages.
What's your foundation for
What's your foundation for the statement that "in Boston, police are repeatedly lying on the stand"?
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/200...
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8664537.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123319367364627211...
http://www.universalhub.com/node/15990 (initial report claimed that the woman struck the cruiser with her baby carriage, when in reality the cruiser sent the kid flying)
http://www.universalhub.com/node/26009
http://www.universalhub.com/node/26157
And on and on. Just search for "Boston police lying". Note that half the stories are about perps lying, half are about the cops lying?
One of the globe articles I read in the last few months said that BPD officers have been PROVEN to have lied on the stand in at least 6 cases this year. PROVEN!
I don't know if you're
I don't know if you're actually from around here, since you're citing HighBeam and the Wall Street Journal, but the Cox beating took place more than a dozen years ago and Humberto Guzman went to prison even before that. If by "are repeatedly" you mean "in the 1990s," then you might have something to work with, but I don't see how those cases support your argument.
The other article here refers to a Boston officer who made divergent statements to a federal prosecutor -- it was she who was disciplined (because she didn't notify defense counsel of something that might possibly be used to impeach trial testimony that hadn't been delivered yet), not the officer. There was never any finding that he lied, on the stand or off, and I don't even see a mention of what was divergent between the two accounts he gave. It was the prosecutor's failure to notify the defense attorney about the potential discrepancy that forms the basis for the article.
As to the others: without getting into the substance of the baby carriage story, I'm not aware of any court case -- or, hence, any testimony -- arising out of it. The other is a story about steroids and, again, has no court case attached to it.
If you find that cap-worthy Globe article, feel free to link to it.
Suffolk prosecutors go into court every day with cases no other DA's office would touch. Their marching orders are to try their cases fairly, ethically, and honestly. It's Suffolk County that leads the nation in eyewitness identification reform, Suffolk County that has a policy of allowing post-conviction DNA analysis whenever warranted, Suffolk County that has pioneered the use of the grand jury to test and corroborate evidence as extensively as possible prior to trial, and Suffolk County that has undertaken more work to right wrongful convictions and prevent their recurrance than almost any other jurisdiction in America.
If you want to say those cases and that effort is obtained through perjured testimony, I hope you can do a little better than this.
I wonder if this is the "Yo
I wonder if this is the "Yo Mama" moment mentioned in the arrest report that the Globe pulled down?
Police on the scene... are the officers Cambridge residents?
Police officers on the scene.
Are the officers Cambridge residents?... If not, maybe they also didn't see the professor on PBS!
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22henry%20louis...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/lookingforlincoln/about/ab...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/lookingforlincoln/about/li...
I was wondering about something similar
Does Cambridge have a residency requirement for its police force?
Dueling Princes
This incident remains amusing instead of definitive, particularly as only egos and not bodies were injured. Cops are used to being deferred to, while Harvard professors demand deference.
The calling neighbor may have been racist in assuming two black men trying to force a door were criminals. (Why didn't she recognize her abutter?) However, it looks like both Gates and the cops were both just playing privileged princes.
The police may not have screamed it, but most of them seem to always have Gates' attitude of do-you-know-whom-you're-messing-with. I call a clash of two self-important sorts.
There is plenty wrong with
There is plenty wrong with Gates and this just fits the pattern of grand-standing and mugging for the cameras that has come to characterize this man. His television programs about finding your African roots are nothing but a pseudo academic advertisement for the company he partly owns selling genetic swab kits. Faculty at Harvard no doubt have their doubts about his legitimacy at this point but are too afraid to do anything about it because they know the kind of scence he will make and the accusations he will hurl--witness the scene he orchestrated in Cambridge yesterday.
Whit
Good On Him for That
The more I see here, the more I see that the original call was probably the extent of the race issue here.
The rest is about widespread expansion and abuse of police power, to the point where somebody in his own home is not allowed to tell an unwanted guest that he has no right to enter without being arrested on bizarre trumped up charges for sassin teh offissa.
Gates isn't playing the race card here so much as he is playing the status privilege, elder privilege, connection to legal aid privilige, and wealth privilege cards against what was essentially an home invasion by somebody who refused to identify himself.
Even if you remove the racial overtones, the police are pretty clearly out of control in this situation - even by the "testalyish" data on their own police report.
Cambridge police decided to
Cambridge police decided to drop the charges... (maybe the "damning snapshot" wasn't the evidence the Cambridge police needed.)
or maybe it just wasn't worth the trouble
or maybe the mayor called and was ripshit.
or maybe the officer's supervisors decided he was in the wrong, not Gates.
or maybe the decision was made that community good will and public relations, for overall effectiveness of the force, outweighed the "justice" of pressing charges against Gates.
You're the one who called it
You're the one who called it "damning" not me. Own it.
My guess is the department
My guess is the department doesn't feel like dealing with an expensive and tiresome lawsuit.
The question remains
Whether they will anyway.
The only certainty is that Gates will have a better lawyer.
Will Gates back down now?
Cambridge cops dropping the charges--a de facto admission
they screwed up, describing the whole thing as "regrettable and unfortunate."
Is Gates gonna to do the same?
Count on it. Just about the same time that James Marzilli
voluntarily gives up his state pension.
Look at the city's statement
Here; has Gates's name on it, so looks like no further action. Guess Al Sharpton bought plane tickets for nothing.
Crow <pfflt spitting feathers effect>
I'm eating it...
Thanks for the link Adam.
Spit it out, boy
The fat lady hasn't sung on this one.
Exclusive interview with Prof. Gates at the WashPo.
Etc. Now Prof. Gates is going to "apply the scholarship that has been his life's work to the issue of race in the criminal justice system." So expect books and PBS specials.
Prof. Gates is going to
That's great. He's a scholar and not a bullshit artist. Take a shit situation and use it for good.
You mean...
In comparison to certain ex-Harvard professors?
Yeah, Gates is a real scholar. Maybe he will actually accomplish something.
I don't know who you are
I don't know who you are referring to. Skip Gates is the real deal.
went to Yale and gained his
went to Yale and gained his B.A. summa cum laude in History. The first African-American to be awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the day after his undergraduate commencement, Gates set sail on the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 for the University of Cambridge, where he studied English literature at Clare College. With the assistance of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, he worked toward his Ph.D. in English. While his work in history at Yale had trained him in archival work, Gates' studies at Clare introduced him to English literature and literary theory. Taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard.
As a literary theorist and critic, meanwhile, Gates has combined literary techniques of deconstruction with native African literary traditions; he draws on structuralism, post-structuralism, and semiotics to textual analysis and matters of identity politics.
Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes and maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. He argues, "It can't be real as a subject if you have to look like the subject to be an expert in the subject,"[1] adding, "It's as ridiculous as if someone said I couldn't appreciate Shakespeare because I'm not Anglo-Saxon. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a black mouth or a white mouth."
Gates was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and "tumultuous behavior" following an incident on July 16, 2009, when he had trouble opening the door to his house and a passer-by called police, suspecting that the "two black males" (Gates and a driver) were breaking and entering. [6] According to police reports, Gates is said to have demanded the police explain themselves, saying, "Why, because I'm a black man in America?" Gates established his identity, but demanded the name and badge number of the police officer, following him outside. [7] Gates and his attorney, Harvard colleague Charles Ogletree, issued a statement on Gates's website, theroot.com, disputing the police report.[8] The charges were later dropped by the Middlesex County district attorney's office, upon the recommendation of the city of Cambridge and the Cambridge Police Department, calling the incident "regrettable and unfortunate".[9]
Questions about racial profiling have been raised by the community, with other colleagues, such as neuroscience professor Allen Counter coming forward with similar stories of harassment by the Cambridge Police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates,_Jr.
Skip Gates is a mensch's mensch
Gates isn't one to make hay on racial discord. He is known for bringing people together, so much so that some black intellectuals think he moves too fast past conflict. I think he a mensch, a mensch's mensch (prolly another Yiddish word for that superlative). I'm sure it pains him to be associated with this dust up. He is being a mensch by moving past this regrettable incident by choosing to not pursue a civil action against the CPD.
Sorry, but If I see someone
Sorry, but If I see someone picking a lock or kicking in a door and I don't know who they are, I'm calling the cops to check it without regard to race. Especially with breakins on the rise in Boston. For all we know the neighbor isn't even from the same block and was out for a walk.
This whole episode is the result of gates over-reacting to their questioning, and the cops over-reacting to his over reaction.
It's tough to assess this
It's tough to assess this stuff without a full set of facts, but your comment seems very astute.
Not her abutter
Apparently. A later report in the Herald said that she was from Malden.
Guessing she was at work
Up until recently, she was listed as a contact for fundraising at Harvard Magazine (now her name has been replaced by the Director of Fundraising, but Whalen is still listed as the Fundraising Manager although her e-mail address has been removed from the Staff Contact page). I believe their office is also listed on Ware St near the professor's house. So it appears she called while at work/lunch.
dunno
Having lived here a few years now, I'll say this: There is so much latent and under the covers racism and defacto segregation in this area it's a little disgusting. At least in Philly people were up front about the issues. But here, like everything in New England, it's all done on the side. Have to Maintain the facade of puritanical properness. Look at the comments on the Globe site yesterday. Pure Herald-esque vomit. Whatever Gates' issues are, trying to get into his own house shouldn't be one of them.
If anybody happens to be
If anybody happens to be walking past my house and observes someone trying to force open my door I encourage them to call the cops, even if the observed party happens to be me.
Any burglars in the Cambridge area who happen to be black now know of a good place to safely ply their trade in the light of day.
...not to mention the
...not to mention the burglars who happen to be white and who may happen to be more astute regarding what a fine target Cambridge is...
Agreed
I don't think the main issue here is that it looked like someone was breaking into a house and the cops were called, although this certainly makes the case for getting to know one's neighbors in the first place to avoid such misunderstandings in the future. If I was in my own house and some cop walked in, mind you doing his job, after I produced ID stating that I lived there that officer needs to leave! To be then arrested for "disorderly conduct" is an outrage - if Gates were white do you honestly think he would have been arrested with our history in this country? If Gates were white I'm inclined to believe the officer would have walked away with a "good day, sir, sorry to have bothered you."
It's a truly sad state of affairs but the real sadness is that such events are not isolated. For example:
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/20...
Karen Zgoda
http://www.karenzgoda.org
http://www.fussy-eater.com
http://editmymanuscript.com