A President, A Professor And A Cop Walk Into A Bar...

Drinks At The White House

July 25. 2009

Video: Black Scholar Accepts White House Meeting Offer - The Associated Press

President Barack Obama has invited friend and Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge Police officer, James Crowley, to meet with him for a drink at the White House.

The meeting centers on an incident of racial profiling that occurred recently, regarding Officer Crowley, arresting Professor Gates, for allegedly disturbing the peace.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Crowley, responded to a call regarding what looked like a break-in at the Professor's residence, when in actuality, Gates was trying to unjam his front door, after returning home from overseas.

The two men argued in the professor's kitchen. Gates took offense at Crowley's attitude and allegations, especially his resistance in furnishing him with his name and badge number. Crowley decided he was going to get even.

Based on what I read today regarding the police report, I get the impression, in order to make the highly questionable arrest, Crowley engaged in entrapment, demanding an upset and offended Gates come outside to the porch to speak with him.

The minute Gates stepped out on his own porch, Crowley, slapped handcuffs on him, stating he was disturbing the peace, also known as entrapment. Crowley lured him onto the porch with the sole intent of a vengeful arrest on his own property.

James Crowley

I have respect for the police, but I do not respect what Officer Crowley did in arresting a 58-year-old professor that walks with a cane, on his own porch, for daring to exercise his right to free speech.

Such conduct fosters mistrust among the public regarding law enforcement. When millions of young minorities read such stories, it does not encourage them to trust the police.

Gates' Liberal College Town No Stranger to Racial Dust-Ups

Racism Allegations in Recent Past at Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, Mass.

ATLANTA, July 25, 2009 - The arrest of an African-American professor at his home near Harvard University gives a rare view into racial tensions in a seemingly unlikely place: America's ivory tower and its liberal environs...

At least in the popular mind, flare-ups between police and minorities tend to occur in the 'hoods and barrios of poverty-ridden American cities. But the liberal bastion of Cambridge, Mass. (per capita income: $31,156; black population: 12 percent), the home of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has its own complex encounters with racial attitudes.

Five years ago, Harvard's S. Allen Counter, a black professor of neuroscience, was stopped by Harvard campus police in what many saw as a racial-profiling incident.

About three years later, an assistant professor at MIT, James Sherley, raised a ruckus over his failure to get tenure, a decision that he claimed was race-based.

Those claims were never proved, but MIT has embarked on what it calls the Initiative on Faculty Race and Diversity to address the university's problems in hiring black faculty.

And last week, Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested after one of his neighbors called police saying that two black men were trying to break into Gates' house. The scholar, who had a tense encounter with the police, was charged with disorderly conduct...

http://abcnews.go.com

Arrest of Gates also shines a light on 'disorderly conduct' laws

July 25, 2009 - In Massachusetts and other states, such laws give police wide power to arrest someone acting abusively toward them in public.

Reporting from Washington -- For some defense lawyers, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was less about racial profiling than about how persons can be arrested simply for speaking angry words to a police officer.

The laws against "disorderly conduct" give police wide power to arrest people who are said to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the neighborhood.

In Massachusetts and elsewhere, courts have said the "disorderly acts or language" must take place in public where others can be disturbed.

It is probably not a crime of disorderly conduct for a homeowner, standing in his own kitchen, to speak abusively to a police officer.

According to his police report, Sgt. James Crowley said the professor was "yelling very loud" and "accusing me of being a racist."

Complaining that the "acoustics of the kitchen" made it difficult to communicate, the officer said he "told Gates that I would speak with him outside."

Once on the front porch, the officer arrested Gates for being loud and abusive in the presence of several neighbors who had gathered on the sidewalk.

"You might think that in the United States, you have a right to state an opinion, even an offensive opinion. But prosecutors like to say you don't have a right to mouth off to the police," said Boston defense lawyer Samuel Goldberg.

"Gates was saying, 'You are hassling me because I'm black.' I understand how that's offensive to a police officer.

"It's astounding to me to call it criminal."

Police officers can arrest people in their own homes for accosting police, interfering with an investigation or resisting a lawful arrest. But Gates was not accused of interfering with an investigation.

"I would say it is not constitutional to arrest someone in his home just for being loud and abusive to a police officer," said Boston University law professor Tracey Maclin. "That's why the cop asked him to come outside, where he could be arrested for being disorderly in public."...

http://www.latimes.com

Black scholar accepts White House meeting offer

BOSTON — Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. says he will accept President Barack Obama's invitation to visit him at the White House along with the white police officer who arrested the Harvard professor.

Gates told the Boston Globe in an e-mail late Friday that he spoke to Obama and said he would meet with Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley. Gates said he hoped his arrest by Crowley leads to greater sensitivity on racial profiling and that it was time to "move on."

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