Missed the edit window:
If neighbors of Gates come out on his side or even the by-standers speak up, then the face of this case changes drastically and heads down the road many assume it already has. Until then though, I’m standing behind Crowley and the arrest.
We have, through her attorney, statements from the reporting witness that directly contradict statements in Crowley’s after-the-fact report.
ETA: I’m in the “they were both overreacting in dick-measuring” camp, myself, and understand why police have to be wary even in seemingly innocent situations, but this outright contradiction it seems to me undermines Crowley’s version of events.
It certianly does.
Actually at my workplace, we follow your ethics - if you shout at us, we will lock you in a supply closet overnight. After bludgeoning you a few dozen times with a nightstick. You know, because it’s quite right to make sure you uppity folks respect our authoritay!
On topic, does anybody still buy the cop’s story over, well, the stories of all the other parties and the recording of the 911 call?
No, it’s not the same thing that Gates did. First of all, she was pulled over for speeding: she was interacting with a cop because she broke the law; Gates was not. Second, he asked her to put her hands behind her back, presumably for an arrest, and she insisted that she was going to get back in the car. He had to physically stop her from doing that, while she continued to refuse. If he had let her get past him, they would have been in a lane of oncoming traffic.
I think this analogy doesn’t do you or anyone any credit. Yes, the cop was rough with her, and probably could have physically restrained her without the taser, but that might have hurt her even more. Also, you’re ignoring the baseline fact that she was involved with a cop because she committed a crime, and they were on the side of the highway. Gates was not doing anything wrong when Crowley arrived, and was at his own home the whole time. Don’t you think that makes a difference?
The race issue here is irrelevant, as it probably is in the Gates situation, though the fact that the cop lied about Lucia Whalen claiming “two black men with backpacks” were entering the house raises some questions.
Did the officer indicate that at any point he felt Gates was threatening him with violence?
Presumption is the “teaching moment”, the number of people here who assumed, reflexively, that the cop was telling the truth, that those were the plain facts and anyone who questioned them must be prejudiced against cops.
That’s not an indictment, that’s just human, but…we need to examine those things in ourselves. Myself, I tend to distrust cops somewhat. But I’ve met some good ones, men who I would trust with my life in a heartbeat. Trouble is, I’ve met some bad ones too. Oh, Lordy!
I am satisfied that the people herein who started with the ground assumption that Gates had to be guilty of something are not malicious or racists, they simply made the most ordinary of human mistakes, the assumption. And the baseless assumption is one of the hardest human errors to root out, because to the victim it masquerades as “common sense”, something “everybody knows” to be true.
Its taking a lot longer than we thought.
Good points. Excellent post 'luci.
You did actually uh read my post which reports the 911 tape in which she states she did not see the color the people entering the house but maybe Hispanic, and her representative stating clearly that Whalen NEVER spoke to the officer at the scene, let alone told him something other than what she was recorded saying on the 911 call? As repeated in the post below yours?
One reason for them is professional. They have to justify arrests. If he said Gates was yelling at me, it would not be enough in Mass. He has to justify what he did, otherwise a false arrest charge was possible. The cop had a lot of reasons to lie ,once he decided to teach Gates a lesson.
I don’t think it was about racism at all.
The situation is not the same. But more importantly, that cop was wrong too.
First, this was national news. I heard about it on CNN and MSNBC soon after it happened. In fact, I linked to the story in the first thread we had about Gates. It was a fairly big story, which undermines your laughable conclusion that no one cares about middle-class white women. Particularly compared to the average black person. The only reason Gates’ story gained traction is because he is famous, not because he is black.
If a cop can’t relax enough around an elderly person to not reflexively want to tazer, or arrest them when they get yelled at, then they shouldn’t be a cop. He’s a coward who doesn’t deserve a gun and badge. Those fears are not justified statistically, or even anecdotally.
I disagree.
No, the reason it gained traction is because he’s a black academic and therefore he seems an unlikely candidate for arrest due to abuse of a white policeman. If a white professor of equal renown had acted the same way and been arrested no one would have blinked an eye.
Not so. As was said above, elderly women can come up with a knife or gun just as easily as a young one, and besides, misbehavior during a traffic stop endangers other motorists.
Once upon a time the officer would have just twisted her arm behind her and put her in cuffs, but that would be considered brutality in today’s bizarro world, and so tasing, which was originally intended to take the place of deadly force, has become the allegedly more civilized way to deal with out of control citizens.
Nonsense. If Larry Summers or, alternatively, Steve Harvey had been treated the same way, it would have been national news too. The race angle just upped the ante.
And what is the likelihood of a 72-year old woman doing any of that? I’d bet it on par with the officer being struck by lightening. There will always be risks when you’re doing a job like that. It doesn’t mean you can use that fact to act recklessly.
While I agree that tasing is looked as that way by many people, it doesn’t mean it’s an innocuous thing to do. Either way, I think anyone who tases a 72-year old, unarmed woman is a coward.
For whatever it’s worth, Colin Powell would appear to agree with me:
Asked whether he’d been subjected to racial profiling, Powell noted:
For what it’s worth, though I’m a white woman, I was once profiled as a potential shoplifter by a store clerk who followed me around the store without particularly trying to hide the fact she was suspicious of me, a less than elegant figure in a store selling women’s clothing of notably higher quality than what I was wearing. It’s an unsettling feeling.
No way. There is no way when I was growing up that a cop would have twisted an old womans arm. But then, it was not so adversarial. The police actually acted like they worked for the people. Now they work for each other and all get together to protect a cop that steps over the line. It does not have to be this way.
Cops were much better before 1968.
How convenient to simply toss silly asides in an attempt to discredit a post one disagrees with rather than to argue substance.
Perhaps in the future I should just refer to your druggie past (or present) lifestyle as a way of blowing off or marginalizing whatever you say.
At the very least it would explain a lot.
You’re saying that in the 1950s, police were trustworthy, and there were no civilian complaints of police abuse?
It’s not like the officers would exhibit ‘excess zeal’, enough to demand civilian review, is it?
But it only happened in one or two cities. It wasn’t like it was worldwide, was it? Nothing like it would happen in Toronto. Or in England. The English Bobby wouldn’t abuse people!
Wait… they would. Seriously, SA, do you know anything about… well, history?
The Blue Wall of Silence is something new. Clearly, post '68.
… well, it wasn’t new in '71, was it?
It’s okay! Before the 50s, then. Back in the old days, cops weren’t corrupt.
… okay?
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/28/fox-legal-analyst-gates-arrest-was-improper/
Legal opinion .the cop was wrong and Gates would have a law suit against the department.
Pssst…I never said anything about cops pre-1968. 
luci merely pretended I did and you fell for it.
He’s a devious one, that luci. He knows the readership here all too well.