Are you really not beyond giving up the arguments that have been proven wrong over and over? Gates was in his house. Show how that was disturbing the peace. Then Crowley asked him to step outside. Why do you think that was? I will make it easy for you. So he could use a trumped up disturbing the peace excuse to teach him a lesson. Of course once he had his fun, the charges were dismissed. Why was that? If he committed an arrestable offense he should have been punished. Crowley and you have something in common, you are way off base,wrong ,wrong,wrong.
What report are you referring to? The one posted at Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Police Report | The Smoking Gun states that it was written by Crowley. Figueroa is mentioned by name.
It means absolutely nothing that the cops back each other up. That’s SOP.
It’s impossible to have any sort of meaningful debate with someone who sees the situations in terms of anyone being “completely” anything. That’s why this thread got dragged into the Pit when magellan01 showed up. He is both unwilling to see anything but one side of it, and becomes verbally abusive very quickly when contradicted. Thank god we’re in the Pit now, so he can call his opponents shitheads! Is anything we say going to persuade him to see any nuance or complexity? I doubt it. Nothing sort of “Crowley behaved perfectly; Gates was a racist asshole who got everything he deserved b/c he’s 100% wrong” will be tolerated.
And so it goes.
There is a supplement there, Page 3, written by Figueroa.
Oh, really? I was contradicted for quite some time before the comic wannabebutain’tandneverwillbe posted some of his stupidity. I had engaged with numerous posters who disagreed with me, with no name calling—you included. In fact, we had quite a bit of back and forth. Yet you feel the need to post this lie. And unlike a lot of people on this board, I do not use that word often.
Seriously, review the thread exchanges I had with you. Were we both not civil, while we disagreed? I’ll save you the trouble, we were. Yet, you take the time to post this pure ad hominem. And a lie at that.
Interesting.
It’s a lie? We didn’t have a ton of exchanges before this wound up in the Pit, and they were civil. However, you seem to have arrived 2-3 pages ago, after the thread was going along for a number of pages, just fine, in GD. Then I looked at the last page or two, right before tomndebb moved it, and it really looked to me like you were heating things up: insulting people’s reading comprehension, accusing them of being mind readers, calling begbert2 “beggy,” calling people who defended Obama “groupies” and Obama their “demigod,” and lots of really rude stuff to Snowboarder_Bo. So that’s the impression I got-- that it was your harsh, provocative tone and people’s responses to it that caused the thread to get moved. That’s my opinion, and I don’t think you can call that a lie.
And you get all up in arms about ad hominem, after you just called elucidator a shithead? This is the Pit, I realize that, but he didn’t swear at you to provoke that response. You do enjoy insulting those who disagree with you and it lowers the tone of the debate, 5 forums down, as tomndebb put it.
Anyway, I see you haven’t rebutted my actual point, which is that you are completely uninterested in seeing this issue in anything other than the starkest terms of who’s 100% right and who’s 100% wrong, so what’s the point of further discussion? It’s just going to end in insults. It’s pretty much already there.
No, here is the lie: “He is both unwilling to see anything but one side of it, and becomes verbally abusive very quickly when contradicted.”
I have evaluated this issue from every side that I can find or has been presented. I see the other arguments, I just come to a different conclusion. So that’s a lie you’ve spewed right there. I have been in long and prolonged discussions with people who disagree with me and have not become abusive. Take Revenant Threshold, and Miller, for example (thought both Miller and I have had a few extremely heated exchanges). Even you in this very thread. My default is to not get ugly. But if someone wants to do so, I will step up to the plate. Honestly, I do so 99% of the time to stop them from doing it. If you’d like to be fair, I’d ask you to review the exchanges in this very thread and see if there was something said to me first that might justify my response. Also, “beggy”, “demigod”, “groupies”, please. If this is the support you must amass to justify your point I suggest you reevaluate your premise. and the lie it led you to.
As I’ve said before, I reply in kind. You were civil with me, I was civil with you. We simply disagree. Others have that option, as well.
That’s a simple off-handed insult, which i followed up with substance. I felt his post to me merited the slap. I wasn’t using an ad hominem to prove a point. You did. Your whole post was 100% ad hominem. It was a single effort to discredit my posts in this thread (and elsewhere) based on what you don’t like about me or my style.
I’m interested in evaluating the entire scenario. Which I have done. I’ve read everything I think pertains, even stuff from leftist blogs. My net takeaway is what I’ve stated. Crowley was just going about his day doing his job. He gets a call about a break-in. Gates immediately is uncooperative and abusive. Crowley starts to leave. Gates continues, even past the warning. Figueroa’s report backs that up. Lashley backs that up. Crowley made a judgement call, one that is made a hundred times a day.
Warning of what? Disrespect of cop? Are you sure you want that to be an arrestable offense?
The problem is that Crowley lied and wrote his lies in the report. That is shameful. He said the witness said it was 2 blacks with back packs. She said that she did not say that. The 911 tapes show she did not. But he kept saying it. So why do we believe the rest of the report? He was covering his ass . He was writing the report to try and make Gates guilty of something, after all he arrested him. He had to justify what he did. This is the kind of police actions that make people distrust cops.
That’s not a lie, that’s my opinion, based on my experience with you overall and in this thread particularly. I encourage you to notice the difference. You can feel free to disagree with it, but it’s my opinion.
I love it! It’s OK to gratuitously call someone a shithead because you feel they deserved it. I state my opinion, that you are unable to see nuance and enjoy insulting people, and I’m a liar, another ad hominem. Wow. No double standard there.
Yeah, I’d say this conversation is pretty much done.
Hey luci, you realize that one of the functions of the police is to investigate possible crimes, right? So what should cops do about people that hinder and obstruct such investigations? Nothing? Just say, “Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to leave and not fully determine whether there is something going on here that we need to be involved in. If someone is tied up in the closet, they’ll just have to figure out a way to untie themselves.”
Hinder and obstruct equivalent to disrespecting a cop. And you are a lawyer?
I could not investigate that crime because one of the bystanders called me a name, forcing me to arrest him and leave the scene. Oh the horror of it.
Thank you for the accurate and nuanced description of the facts. Oh wait, no, you actually did the opposite of that.
Yeah, really, Gonzo, there are all kinds of ways it could be done!
For instance, suppose Crowley suffers from really, really low self-esteem issues! Gate’s brutal and vicious “yo mamma!” rendered him helpless, incapable of fulfilling his sworn duty to investigate theoretical crimes which may or may not be committed, conspired, or even contemplated! We already know that Mr. Gates was capable of committing non-existent crimes, why should we think he wasn’t committing theoretical crimes?
That may be why he called for back-up, so that other officers less vulnerable to the severe paralysis of verbal assault might be at hand. Gates had already dropped the “yo mamma!” bomb, why would he scruple at “jive turkey!”
Or maybe Officer Crowley suspected that members of an ancient Celtic cult were hiding in the closets, conspiring to atrocities! And Gates did the finger-waggy thing and said “These are not the Druids you are looking for”.
Or maybe he had command of the dreaded Samuel L. Jackson “lethal eyeball” technique! The back-up cops probably found poor Officer Crowley rolled up on the floor in a fetal position, sucking his thumb and sobbing from the brutality of Mr. Gates snark attack! Boating accident, my ass!
Of course, this is just off the top of my head, I’ve no doubt that **Rand Rover **has much more sensible and practical scenarios for how Mr Gates verbally paralyzed his victim to prevent any further investigations of possible crimes. And don’t forget! Imaginary crimes are not subject to probable cause limitations, since no actual physical evidence is likely, or even possible!
But he could, you betcha! He could easily explain how this is done! But now you’ve been so snarky, he’s offended and will not deign to explain. And its all your fault!
Bad Gonzo! Bad! Go lay down by your water dish!
Personally, I think Gates should be reprimanded for dropping the YM bomb. He played the Yo Mama card!
Clearly, the police should pepper spray anyone in the vicinity, then break down the door and taser whoever they find inside. If they didn’t want to get tased, they wouldn’t have been in there in the first place, right? I mean, it’s like Prof. Gates was asking to be arrested, isn’t it?
No sir. it was you. You pulled obstruction out of your ass. I never seen anyone but you suggest Gates was preventing the police from gathering evidence. Nobody eise has been that stupid. If the cops could have squeezed such a lame idea out of their asses they would have offered it. Even they as they grasped for ways to make it appear they were blameless did not run that one up the flagpole. There is no nuance. You should be ashamed . What lawyer would come up with that?
I don’t blame him. You can’t be too careful with ass obstructions.
So, gonzomax and Snowboarder Bo, when Gates started getting loud and not simply cooperating, should the cops simply have left? You do realize that the caller said there were two men but only one man (Gates) was there when the cops showed up, right? And maybe Gates was saying he was OK becase there was a gun to his head?
The point is that the cops were there and you are not. The whole idea of having a police force in the first place is that these people are supposed to arrive on a situation where the law could be being broken, take control of it, and figure out what’s going on. Gates decided to poop in the pool, and the cops decided to remove the element of the situation that was not allowing them to take control and then charge him for it (which charges were later dropped, probably because of political pressure).