The interesting feature about this meeting is why was it held at all? “The Divine One” is a busy man; healing the sick, walking on the water in the Mall etc. and yet he has time to bring in a cop for a meeting with his black buddy. Could it be that his own Whit House tracking polls demonstrated he really “blew it?”
Yes, I think he felt the need to perform a magnanimous gesture as a way of making an unspoken apology. I think he was hoping that Gates and Crowley would agree that “this was all a big mistake” and leave it at that.