Posted on 07/25/2009 8:37:19 AM PDT by AJKauf
I am in a sense fortunate in that I work in an area where I’m as likely to encounter an extraterrestrial as an Ivy League professor, but like most police officers I can nonetheless sympathize with Cambridge Police Department sergeant James Crowley, for whom there will be no waking from the nightmare for some time to come. But, except for the notoriety and lofty position of the reported “burglar” (one of America’s preeminent black scholars, and all that), the scenario presented to Sgt. Crowley is fairly typical, one that every cop has experienced many times. A well-meaning neighbor has seen something she perceives as out of the ordinary and has asked the police to investigate. If more people were disposed to act this way, America’s crime rate would plummet overnight.
The first question to be asked about Sgt. Crowley’s initial response is, was it lawful and reasonable? Clearly it was both. A cornerstone U.S. Supreme Court decision, Terry v. Ohio, held that an officer may stop and detain a person he reasonably believes to be involved in criminal activity. Here, Sgt. Crowley answered a citizen’s report of a possible burglary. Such reports are granted a presumption of reliability under the law, so Sgt. Crowley was on solid ground in approaching the home and, upon seeing a man inside who matched the description provided by the witness, asking him for his identification. A police officer responding to such a report must, for his own safety, assume the report to be accurate until he can satisfy himself that it isn’t. The cop who blithely handles every call assuming it to be a false alarm will likely not survive to handle many of them. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
“Don’t you know who I am? You don’t know who you’re dealing with”.
[Doesn’t that tell you a lot?]
I’m no cop fan.
But two points:
(1) That 58 yr old PhD “Professor” was acting like an a**hole and deserved what he got.
(2) W.E.B. Du Bois was a Stalinist, hard line Communist and the “Professor” for that organization was likely deliberately inflaming the issue because he himself was a hard core Communist, just seizing the opportunity to make trouble.
(3) Doesn’t Obama have ANY friends who aren’t extremists or crooks?
Ping
It sort of puzzles me that the “neighbor” didn’t recognize Gates considering he’s such a big shot professor as well as a neighbor.
Life must be different there than it is in my small Southern town. We all look out for each other but we all recognize each other too.
You can bet your bottom dollar you're being "vetted" by every media outlet there is.
Gates was soooo defensive, I’m wondering what was in that backpack.
“Gates insists Crowley needed a warrant to enter the home but he is mistaken, as even the most liberal judge would find that Crowley was faced with sufficiently exigent circumstances, viz. a possible burglar who may have attempted to arm himself or flee, to justify a warrantless entry.”
Gates is wholly incorrect. As long as a crime is perceived or suspected, the police have full jurisdiction to enter a home. If a police officer comes to your door to deliver a subpeona, and sees a big bag of weed on your coffee table in full view of the front door, he can enter without a warrant.
He cannot plunder through your underwear drawer for no reason, but there is an assumption of a crime if a crime is seen.
Gates entering the home to obtain ID, the officer following him to make sure he was the occupant of the home (or accompanying him until he was PROVEN to be the legal occupant) is fully in the officers right. Matter of fact, it’s the duty because if he had just waited on the porch for a burglar to go in the home, how is that protecting the community?
I read that Gates hadn’t lived there for very long, and he was actually just returning from a month-long trip to China, so nobody had seen him for awhile. The neighbor actually saw a young black man (his driver, supposedly) with a backpack trying to shove the front door open, while she said there was an older black man with a backpack standing behind him under the overhang or porch.
The younger man didn’t live there, of course, and Gates probably wasn’t very visible and wasn’t very well known there in the first place.
Obama’s reaction was entirely consistent for someone who attended a Black Liberation Theology ‘church’ for 20 years.
Actually, I wonder about that, too. I also wonder about his companion. Had the other guy already left by the time the police got there? When asked if there was anyone else in the house (a routine question), Gates told them it was none of their business.
Personally, I think this was intended as a distraction to make the cop overlook something else.
If his neighbors are white, I doubt if he has much to do with them.
This whole fiasco ultimately hurts the neighborhood. What neighbor is going to call the police now when they see something suspicious? Personally, I’d be overjoyed to have such neighbors and would thank the police officer for actually showing up at all! If I was Gates’ neighbors I’d be really pissed right now.
Also, and I don’t know if this question has been fully answered, but what was Gates doing in China?
The arrest allowed Crowley to make a full report and document everything that happened. I think Crowley may have a tape recording of everything that occurred. He seems like he's the kind of cop that would want everything recorded, just in case he ran into a race baiting @$$#0!E like Gates.
Ans what about all of the witnesses that were standing outside?
Now that you mention it, it sure does seem that there was something going on in his mind that he wanted the police to go away. maybe he had an illegal substance on him, maybe something else. But he sure was irritated and wanted the police to go away.
I wonder who the second man was.....
"skippie" Gates is the WEB DuBois Black studies professor.WEB DuBois was a life long committed Marxist racist agitator.
WEB DuBois was a card carrying member of the Communist Party.
My take on Gates is that he is a Marxist racist agitator
looking for some street "Creds" to continue the lie with authority.
"skippie" wanted to add being busted by a racist honky to his CV.The house is owned by Harvard not "skippie"
I'll bet "skippie" does not have any ID linking him to the house.also see WEB DuBois CV
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