In the officer’s own police report, he states that he told Gates to come outside if he wanted to talk to him. Gates complied, and then he was arrested for doing the exact same thing he was doing inside his house. That is not the same thing as “following” the officer out of the house in order to continue haranguing him. That, to me, is where the officer went over the edge into being wrong. “Warning him that he was becoming disorderly” was probably like throwing gasoline on the fire, and I can’t imagine that the cop was totally ignorant of what the outcome of the whole thing would be.
Just… leave. Ignore the angry old man yelling at you and go home.
I’m sure Gates thought it was true. You weren’t there, you don’t know how the officer spoke to him. I’m pretty sure I can construct a scenario wherein a white police officer goes to Henry Gates’ door for the same reason, but does not get called a racist. It takes two to tango, and the cop had on his dancing shoes. The difference here, which seems to escape you, is that it’s not illegal to call someone a racist, and that the officer abused his power in arresting Gates for saying so. If he wanted to show that Gates was full of shit for making that accusation, boy did he go about it the exact wrong way.
No, this is not a matter for opinion. You are making statements about the law, and the law here is quite clear. Even stipulating that Gates followed the cops while they were leaving his home and yelled all manner of degrading and demeaning things at them, this conduct does not constitute disorderly conduct. The main reason for this is because he was in his home. Disorderly conduct is an offense against the public order. Actions on your own private property are no threat to public order.
Commonwealth v. Mulvey, 57 Mass. App. Ct. 579 (2003).
Deeg, I think I understand what you’re trying to say. Public asshattery may or may not be a crime. In this instance, it crossed the line and Gates should be punished.
That is, say there was no media attention pushing the incident into the surreal over-publicized limelight and that Gates was on trial for misdemeanor disturbing the peace (or a disturbing the peace-like charge). You seem to be saying that if you were on his jury and the facts and statements we’ve seen in this thread (i.e., both Gates’ and the officer’s testimony and the police report), you would vote to convict. Forget about crossed wires and back-and-forths regarding the legal elements and definitions of harassments, disturbing the peace, and grand or petty asshattery — you are saying that Gates should be punished.
Note that this is different from merely recognizing that Gates acted inappropriately or that the officer was subjected to some form of upset; let’s assume for the moment that Gates was in the wrong about his charge of racism. This is a question of whether Gates deserves *punishment *for his conduct.
Am I close to what you’ve been saying?
A schism seems to be in where on the spectrum someone’s conduct goes from innocuous criminal. Consider a (generic) man on his front porch in the middle of the afternoon. He is extremely agitated about something, and is loudly complaining about it.
Is this man committing a crime?
[ul]
[li]If there were no policeman present at the time, would you call one?[/li][li]If the police arrived shortly after the man went back inside, should they still arrest him?[/li][li]Does the content or subject of his complaints make a difference?[/li][li]Would it make a difference if he was using profanity?[/li][li]Would it make a difference if someone mowing their lawn a house away made it difficult to hear what he was complaining about?[/li][li]Would it make a difference if he was visibly intoxicated?[/li][li]What if the person he was haranguing could not leave the area (e.g., a meter reader)?[/li][li]What if the person he was haranguing had the option of leaving (e.g., a kid whose Frisbee landed in the man’s roses)?[/li][li]What if he had a portable television on his porch and he was yelling at an umpire who made a bad call?[/li][li]What if it was a politician who was going door-to-door soliciting donations?[/li][li]What if it was Jehovah’s Witness?[/li][li]Would it make a difference if the man were in the mall parking lot instead of his house?[/li][li]What about if the man was at a properly permitted public protest?[/li] [/ul]
… and so on. What are the key differences for you (or anyone) in which, as a juror, you would vote to acquit? Or, starting from the innocuous, what is it that would make you side with the prosecution? In any of this, is there some role for the Constitution to play?
Your quote does not prove the point you are attempting to make. According to your quote, the significant fact in that case is that there were no members of the public present to witness (and be “impacted” by) the conduct save the police, not that the man was on his own property.
Presumably a man standing on his own front porch yelling at passers-by could be dinged for “disorderly conduct”; similarly a man standing on the porch yelling at the cops when others are around to hear it. This presumption may or may not be true, but your quote does not provide support for the proposition that one can, in perfect legal safety, yell as one pleases from one’s property.
Myself, I think this is definiely a case of an arrest for dissing a cop, which should be a no-no; though if the cop’s account is believed, it is at least somewhat understandable.
It’s not the most crude or creative thing he will be called, but it is certainly the most damaging to his career. If he had arrested a white person for publicly berating him, the worst he would get is a reprimand or simply advised by his superiors to walk away next time. Instead, since he arrested a black man with a big megaphone he is now nationally known as that racist that arrested Gates, even with the fact that there is scant proof of him actually being a racist.
I hadn’t seen that, as the report was removed by the time I clicked the link. My argument was based on the fact that they arrested him for conduct in his home, since I had thought all sides seemed to agree that they arrested him as soon as he was on the porch.
In any case, the presence of the public was only one missing element from a charge of disorderly conduct. It also requires that Gates had the “purpose to cause public [e.g. not the cop’s] inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof.” The court in the case I cited previously adds, “”[n]othing less than conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of public nuisance will suffice for liability."
I’ve seen nothing to indicate those facts were present. Though if there’s a working police report, I’d be interested to see it.
Obama acted stupidly in commenting about what will likely be a future court case. He needs to learn when to just STFU. I was very disappointed to hear him weigh in with such a lengthy a judgemental comment at this stage in the game.
Aren’t police officers trained and expected to have a higher level of having their personal buttons pushed? It seems like so many of these incidents occur because cops aren’t able to walk away when someone calls them a name.
Okay, Gates called the guy a racist, and that’s supposedly a big friggin’ deal? I’ve never understood why that’s such a big deal… are you a racist? If you are secure in the fact that you are not a racist and that your behavior is not racist, then you shouldn’t fly off the damn handle. Especially not if you are a police officer trained not to fly off the handle!
The accusation that a public official is acting out of racism has potentially big consequences for that official - unlike (say) the accusation he’s a motherfucker. Because, unlike the case of most verbal abuse, some will believe the charge is true whether it is or not.
That’s exactly what lead me to say it. Sometimes, if you are dealing with a person who is flying off the handle, you have to disengage and walk away even if you are technically in the right because otherwise you will only enflame the situation.
I’ve been trying to think of something comparable, and the only thing I came up with is if a female had started screaming Rapist!
That doesn’t really work though because Rapist! would be easy to disprove, while Racist! is impossible to disprove and will be immediately believed by many people.
But as you say, even if Racist! is the strongest and most potentially dangerous verbal attack the officer could face, he still needs to be able to walk away.
Sure, but the way to defang that claim, is not by arresting the person who made the charge on IMO a very weak charge.
Also we don’t know what happened in the house, all we have is one person saying he was called a racist and the other one saying he didn’t say that.
I would be more inclined to believe the Officer if he hadn’t arrested Prof. Gates, once he was out of the protection of his home. That IMO was pre-meditated, spiteful and goes against the Officer’s character.
Though I’ve said above I’m inclined to believe that the charge was made, it isn’t really a significant issue for this purpose.
My impression is that this was an arrest for disrespecting the cop. Admittedly not proper and not smart, but I so far haven’t seen any evidence that the cop, prior to the arrest, was acting in a racist manner - though not being there I obviously can’t judge his demeanor etc. Like others, I’ve always been of the opinion the cop should just have walked away, no matter what the Prof was saying.
The issue though is why “racist!” would sting more than (say) “motherfucker!”. The reason is evidenced by your reaction among others - that, the charge being made, there is something to “defang”; the onus is on the person at the receiving end to somehow disprove the label that’s been pasted on him, however justly or unjustly.
Compare that with “motherfucker!”. If some fellow yelled that at a cop and got arrested for disturbing the peace, does that put the onus on the cop to demonstrate that the cop was not having carnal relations with his mother? Would the cop have to “defang” the charge of maternal incest by treating the person yelling the epithet properly from there on in? [Never mind that the cop ought to treat the person properly no matter what he says]. Would the very fact that the cop arrested the fellow improperly be evidence that the term was not yelled at him, since we should tend not to believe anything a motherfucker has to say?
Well, obviously not: as we all know, the term “motherfucker!” isn’t to be taken literally - it is a mere term of abuse, interchangeble with any number of others. Not so with “racist”.
I don’t know if this has already been supplied, but here is the actual police report. There were other officers present, both from the town and Harvard, so it should be pretty easy to confirm most of the report. It appears that Gates was, in fact, being a dick.
