Even if you take every word of the police report at face value (which you have no reason in the world to do, but go ahead), they still allege nothing that would justify an arrest. Even the pigs said they knew all along he was in his own house.
The fact that the chargese were DROPPED also exonerates Dr. Gates and proves the cops acted stupidly. Kudos to President Obama for telling it like it is instead of reflexively smooching LEO ass like all other presidents do.
I knew as soon as Obama said this last night that it would be today’s right wing outrage de jour, and that we’d be seeing that selectively truncated quote all over the place. Watch Hannity tonight. I guarantee he will show the clip of Obama saying “the police acted stupidly…,” and then jump cut to Obama saying “…there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact,” completely cutting out the end of the first sentence, and the “separate and apart” bit from the second.
We’ll have a day or two of rich white men on TV snivelling about their persecution at the hands of Barack Obama, then one of the kids will put Russian dressing on a salad or something, and we’ll be on to the next fake outrage.
Maybe you missed the part where he prefaced that by saying "Separate and apart from this incident is a long history…etc." So there was no connection the “stuod” remark, which was explained clearly in context.
Glad to know you agree with everything he said, but if that’s the case, what are you complaining about?
I think they were certainly within their rights to do so. I don’t think they had to, but very often this comes down to the officer’s judgement. And here’s the thing, when you’re being a complete dick, people, cops included, aren’t apt to give you the benefit of the doubt or more wiggle room than they have to.
Oops…it’s um…“police officers,” right? Sometimes my old DFH vocabularly still slips in there during emotional moments, like when my Sicilian grandmother used to lapse into Italian.
But if you’re own house, we have these things called search and seizure laws which do indeed allow you to be dicks to people so long as you’re not breaking the law. He was not breaking the law, he presented the information needed and they had no legal reason to arrest him. So no. They were not within their rights to do so.
He was directly asked about it, and he started by admitting that Gates was a friend of his and that he was biased. I also think that if he’d refused to comment at all, he’d have been bludgeoned for “avoiding the question,” so I don’t see his answer as a problem, particularly since it was so honest. The only people taht are going to act upset about it are those in the same echo chamber who already hate him anyway.
That’s not the impression I get. But I am not a lawyer. As I asked way earlier, at what point does being abusive to a cop, or being loud and attracting a crowd, go from just being obnoxious behavior to turning into breaking the law? In reading the police report, I assume the officer thought the charges were supportable.
No. Even if we don’t have the whole story right now and Gates did some other things that would convince even you that the cop was in the right, the PR nightmare is still going to happen. As long as their are people like Gates and Sharpton round, they will make sure that is the case.
I would agree. OTOH, the fact that the charges were dropped so quickly speaks rather loudly as to just how much his superiors agreed with that assumption.
Rather than just link them, he made an explicit effort to not link this incident, in which he admitted ignorance of the role race played, to the big picture.
That’s right, it was. That’s all it was. He was light on substance (as he’s always been), simplistic (red pill / blue pill), and condescending (“doctors remove tonsils for money” <paraphrase>).
And all this about a topic that absolutely, positively has to be pushed through (rammed down our throats) before congress takes their summer break?
:rolleyes:
As for interjecting himself into the Gates/police matter, there were any number of ways to artfully dodge the question. The fact that he didn’t, the fact that he did wade in and take sides (“stupid”, very classy), means that yes, he did interject himself.
He brought it up to make the point that, while he did not know if race played any part in this case, the fact that minorities are so often hassled by the cops for no reason leads to an atmosphere where they start to suspect racist motives even where they don’t exist.
Again, RTFQ:
“The fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and oftentime for no cause casts suspicion even when there is good cause.”
He was trying to explain why a black man might feel like he was being harrassed for racial reasons even if he isn’t. I think what a lot of white people think black people are intentionally making false accusations, when the truth is that they are often just paranoid, and honestly mistaken, not deviously playing “the race card.”