My day

WHO’S THE BOSS?

A postscript to Crowley vs. Gates

February 1956: Martin Luther King, then a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, sits for a police mugshot after his arrest for directing a boycott of segregated buses.

August, 2009: Henry Lewis Gates, then a professor at Harvard University, sits mugshot after being arrested in his own home in Cambridge.

It was supposed to be “a teachable moment,” an opportunity for blacks and whites to come to a better understanding on how to improve race relations in our country. It remains unclear as to who was supposed to do the teaching and who would be willing to be taught. Certainly the media with its atrocious mishmash of facts, hearsay, misstatements, and dearth of useful information has shown that it is not capable of assisting in this task.

We whites tend to view incidents like this one between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department as an event to be judged without awareness of the way whites in this country have treated blacks for some three hundred years. The result is a plethora of blog comments from whites deriding Gates for not behaving respectfully toward an officer of the law and concluding, as did Sgt. Crowley, himself, that Gates deserved to be handcuffed and arrested. End of story.

The story begins

The story begins with a 911 call early in the afternoon of July 21, 2009, when Lucia Whalen, a white woman who works at the Harvard alumni magazine just up the street from the Gates residence was stopped by an elderly person who drew her attention to two men, who turned out to be Gates and his driver from a private cab service, pushing hard at a front door that had become sticky no doubt from the humid weather. Whalen could not identify them as “white, black or Hispanic” when asked by the dispatcher. She reported that the men had gotten into the house and that she had seen two suitcases on the porch that indicated to her that they might live there. The dispatcher asked her to remain on the scene.

After Whalen’s call and before Crowley arrived, the driver carried Gates’s luggage into the house since Gates has to use a cane, then came out and drove off. Gates immediately got on his cell phone to let Harvard know that the door needed repairs.

Now this is where things begin to get a little weird. A Boston Globe article (7/25/09) details an interview with several Cambridge police officers who believe that any situation can become treacherous when an officer is not prepared for the worst or the unexpected.

Crowley writes in his report that he talked with Whelan and she told him “she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch” and “that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry.” (Whelan through her attorney denies that she used “black” in describing the two men. This seems accurate since she could not categorize them in her 911 call. Perhaps it was what Crowley wanted to hear).

Why didn’t Crowley draw his weapon in going up onto the porch if a burglary was in process? Does he already know from what Whelan tells him, but doesn’t put in his report, that one man is already out of the picture?

He seemed confident that he just needed to finish checking out the 911 call to make sure who had the right to be on the property.

Gates, identified in the police report as weighing 150 pounds and standing at 5 feet seven, answered the door with cell phone in hand. He knows nothing about the call to report a burglary and is disconcerted to find a police officer at his door, asking for ID that shows this is his residence.

[First note: It is perfectly legal for a person in this country who is standing in his or her own home to refuse to produce an ID unless a warrant is attached. Gates refuses. He wants to see Crowley’s ID.]

Now, several years ago, an article appeared in my local paper, written by an ex-trooper, who wanted readers to understand that in interacting with police such as being pulled over by highway patrol they are dealing with two powerful emotions on the part of the officer: fear and ego.

It seems logical, then, that when Gates refuses Crowley’s request, Crowley gets his back up. With white/black interactions, there is a superiority/inferiority phenomenon at work in the white consciousness — the legacy of slavery that dictates that blacks, being inferior by way of having been slaves (!), must comply with white demands.

All whites who grow up in this country are racists to a greater or lesser degree. As Tim Wise, a well-known anti-racist activist and educator, recently pointed out on cable TV, we have to learn to check out our attitudes and perceptions about race when they pop into our consciousness. He cited a personal example that occurred when he had boarded an airplane and while waiting for take-off saw two uniformed black men head into the cockpit. His immediate reaction was, “Oh! My God! Can they really fly this plane?” For obvious reasons, he had to recognize that his reaction was racist garbage.

For Gates, he may have already had one or two encounters THAT DAY with racism in America. Returning from China where he had been filming a documentary, had he been delayed, for instance, in getting through customs because officials searched his luggage just as they routinely did whenever he returned from abroad?

Crowley teaches racial profiling at the police academy. In my town, as in too many other places, local officers routinely stop black men for the “crime” of DWB (Driving While Black). Some officers even follow these drivers to their homes.

The code in the black community warns that it is dangerous to be other than excessively polite and to use “sir” frequently when stopped by police. In other words, one must re-enforce the superiority/inferiority relationship. Because if you don’t, you may be arrested. Or end up dead. Black people do not survive in this society behaving in the same way that we whites do. The person on “shoplifting” duty at Stop & Shop does not target us, for instance, the minute we step into the store. Our integrity as to who we are and what we are doing is not being constantly questioned

Another officer, Carlos Figueroa, arrives right on Crowley’s heels. He writes in his police report, “When I arrived, I stepped into the residence and Sgt. Crowley had already entered and was speaking to a black man.”

[Second note: Unless Gates had given permission for Crowley to enter the premises, it was unlawful for him to do so.]

Figueroa continues, “As I stepped in, I heard Sgt. Crowley ask for the gentleman’s information which he stated “NO I WILL NOT!” The gentleman was shouting out to the Sgt., that the Sgt. was a racist and yelled that “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO BLACK MEN IN AMERICA!” As the Sgt. was trying to calm the gentleman, the gentleman shouted, “You don’t know who your messing with!” He writes that he went back out to gather information from Ms Whalen and notes that there were seven people gathered outside the residence.

[Third note: It is not unlawful to be disrespectful to, or to berate, a police officer even though it may violate the norms of civil behavior.]

In regard to Crowley’s claim that Gates was shouting, Gates says that he was physically unable to do so because he had contracted a bronchial infection in China and had been treated there for it.

Crowley writes in his report, “I asked Gates to provide me with photo identification so that I could verify that he resided at 17 Ware Street and so I could radio my findings to ECC. Gates initially refused, demanding that I show him identification . . .”

[Fourth note: Must Crowley comply? Yes. It is the law that an officer must show his identification card when asked for it, but Crowley doesn’t.]

Crowley goes on “ . . . but then [Gates}did supply me with a Harvard University identification card. Upon learning that Gates was affiliated with Harvard, I radioed and requested the presence of the Harvard University police. With the Harvard University identification in hand, I radioed my findings to ECC on Channel Two and prepared to leave.”

At this point, Crowley should have left, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tells Gates that he will speak with him outside in response to Gates repeatedly demanding his identification. Once outside, Crowley arrests him for Disorderly Conduct, an arrest that he could not make while inside the house because disorderly conduct has to take place in public although a front porch hardly qualifies as a public place.

Crowley writes in his police report that Gates’s actions “served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed.” While this language adheres to the wording of the statute, according to the Explainer, who answered questions on the Slate web site (7/22/09), “the courts have ruled that disorderly conduct means fighting or tumultuous behavior or creating a hazardous or physically offensive condition that would cause public annoyance or alarm.”

Who was being alarmed? The “several Cambridge and Harvard University police” that Crowley noted were “assembled on the sidewalk in front of the residence”?? With so many police present, did the seven citizens still feel threatened by this slender black man who needed a cane to get around??

From the very beginning of his arrest, the charges against Gates were slated to be dropped because prosecuting attorneys know they have no chance of a successful outcome.

The upshot is that a white cop arrested a black man on a trumped up charge of disorderly conduct, handcuffed him, ran him into the station to be fingerprinted, stand for a mug shot, and sit in a cell for four hours just to show him who was boss.