Obama does Biden

jimpeel

Well-Known Member
In the truest Bidenesque parlance possible, Obama steps on his own dick. He shoulda waited for the TotUS to tell him what to say.

He wasn't there. He didn't know the facts. He makes a stupid comment that demeans White cops and he can't figure out what the controversy is all about.

Maybe the controversy is that you are a racist bastard who immediately took the side of "one of us" without delving into the facts first.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/23/obama-surprised-controversy-remark-arrest-black-scholar/?

Obama Surprised by Controversy Over Remark About Arrest of Black Scholar
President Obama said Thursday he was surprised by all the hubbub over his comments that a white police officer had acted "stupidly" in arresting a prominent black scholar for disorderly conduct.

AP

Thursday, July 23, 2009

President Obama said Thursday he was surprised by all the hubbub over his comments that a white police officer had acted "stupidly" in arresting a prominent black scholar for disorderly conduct. The president didn't take back his words, but he allowed that he understood the sergeant who made the arrest is an "outstanding police officer."

"I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement," Obama said in an interview with ABC News, "because I think it was a pretty straightforward comment that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home."

It is the policy of every police department in the nation to handcuff all suspects -- 8-80, male, female, deaf, dumb, or blind -- when they are arrested. -- j)

A day earlier, Obama had been asked at a prime-time news conference whether race played a role in the arrest of Harvard's Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week.

A neighbor had reported a possible burglary when Gates and a friend were seen trying to force open his front door, which was jammed. By the time police arrived, Gates was inside and showed proof of his residency. But he did not obey the officer's order to step outside, and after words were exchanged, he was arrested.

Obama said he didn't know all the facts but that the police "acted stupidly" by citing Gates for disorderly conduct. The charge was quickly dropped. The president did not fault the actions of Gates, who he said is a friend.

In Thursday's interview with ABC, Obama said he had "extraordinary respect for the difficulties of the job that police officers do."

"And my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed," he said.

Obama added that with all the problems facing the nation, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, questioned about the flap as the president headed for two health care events in Cleveland, stressed that Obama "was not calling the officer stupid." He said Obama felt that "at a certain point the situation got far out of hand." Gibbs said Obama has not spoken with Gates since the incident.
 

jimpeel

Well-Known Member
Remember when the cops shot a Black guy in -- I believe-- Baltimore and the Black "leaders" took out after the cops for racial profiling?

The cops started simply not arresting or even stopping any Blacks and the murder rate went nuts, crime skyrocketed, and the Black "leaders" started imploring the cops to go back to the old way.

The cops would walk up to a traffic stop, say "Oh, you're Black, you can go." They started not going into the Black side of town because they weren't welcome.

That all changed pretty quickly.

Maybe these cops should do the same thing.
 

spike

New Member
"it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

Hell yeah, those cops were dumb. The guy had already proved it was house.

The cops stepped on their own dick.
 

jimpeel

Well-Known Member
SOURCE

Cambridge Cops: Officer's Arrest of Harvard Professor Not Motivated by Racism

Thursday, July 23, 2009

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The white police sergeant accused of racial profiling after he arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his home was hand-picked by a black police commissioner to teach recruits about avoiding racial profiling.

Click here for photos.

Gates accused the 11-year department veteran Sgt. James Crowley of being an unyielding, race-baiting authoritarian after Crowley arrested and charged him with disorderly conduct last week.

Crowley confronted Gates in his home after a woman passing by summoned police for a possible burglary. The sergeant said he arrested Gates after the scholar repeatedly accused him of racism and made derogatory remarks about his mother, allegations the professor challenges.

Gates has labeled Crowley a "rogue cop," demanded an apology and said he may sue the police department.

VIDEO: MyFOX Boston interviews Bill Cosby on incident

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas, in his first public comments on the arrest, said Thursday that Crowley was a decorated officer who followed procedure. The department is putting together an independent panel to review the arrest, but Haas said he did not think the whole story had been told.

"Sgt. Crowley is a stellar member of this department. I rely on his judgment every day. ... I don't consider him a rogue cop in any way," Haas said. "I think he basically did the best in the situation that was presented to him."

Haas said Crowley's actions were in no way motivated by racism.

On Wednesday, President Obama elevated the dispute, when he said Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" during the encounter.

PDF: Henry Louis Gates' Arrest Report

Obama stepped back on Thursday, telling ABC News, "From what I can tell, the sergeant who was involved is an outstanding police officer, but my suspicion is probably that it would have been better if cooler heads had prevailed."

Crowley didn't immediately return a phone message left by The Associated Press on Thursday.

He has said he has no reason to apologize and, on Thursday, told a radio station Obama went too far.

"I support the president of the United States 110 percent," he told WBZ-AM. "I think he was way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts, as he himself stated before he made that comment."

The sergeant added: "I guess a friend of mine would support my position, too."

Friends and fellow officers — black and white — say Crowley is a principled police officer and family man who is being unfairly described as racist.

"If people are looking for a guy who's abusive or arrogant, they got the wrong guy," said Andy Meyer, of Natick, who has vacationed with Crowley, coached youth sports with him and is his teammate on a men's softball team. "This is not a racist, rogue cop. This is a fine, upstanding man. And if every cop in the world were like him, it would be a better place."

But Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, once the top civil rights official in the Clinton administration and now, like Obama, the first black to hold his job, labeled the arrest "every black man's nightmare."

The governor told reporters: "You ought to be able to raise your voice in your own house without risk of arrest."

Those who know the 42-year-old Crowley say he is calm, reliable and committed to everyday interests like playing softball and coaching his children's youth teams.

"He's a guy that you hope shows up for the game because he adds some levity. He's a team guy and he hangs out after the game," said Joe Ranieri, who plays softball with Crowley in suburban Natick.

Dan Keefe, a town parks official who knows Crowley from his work coaching youth swim, softball, basketball and baseball teams, said: "I would give him my daughter to coach in a blink of an eye, and I can't say any stronger opinion than that."

Crowley grew up in Cambridge's Fresh Pond neighborhood and attended the city's racially diverse public schools, including Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. His brothers Jack and Joseph also work for the police department. His third sibling, Daniel, is a Middlesex County deputy sheriff.

Now married with three children of his own, Crowley lives about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the city where he works.

He joined the Cambridge Police Department about 11 years ago and oversees the evidence room, records unit and paid police details.

For five of the past six years, Crowley also has volunteered alongside a black colleague in teaching 60 cadets per year about how to avoid targeting suspects merely because of their race, and how to respond to an array of scenarios they might encounter on the beat. Thomas Fleming, director of the Lowell Police Academy, said Crowley was asked by former Cambridge police Commissioner Ronnie Watson, who is black, to be an instructor.

"I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy," Fleming said.

David Holway, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, lives in Cambridge, had a brother on the force there and said Crowley is from a "tremendous family."

"Everybody in the community loves this guy. All his peers love him," Holway said. "Everyone speaks highly of him."

Crowley's encounter with Gates was not his first with a high-profile black man, although on the prior occasion he was lauded for his response.

He was a campus cop at Brandeis University in suburban Waltham when was summoned to the school gymnasium in July 1993 after Boston Celtics player Reggie Lewis collapsed of an apparent heart attack. Crowley, also a trained emergency medical technician, not only pumped the local legend's chest, but put his mouth to Lewis' own and attempted to breathe life back into the fallen athlete.

(So this "racist" gave mouth-to-mouth to a Black man in an effort to save his life. -- j)

"Looking back on it, he was probably already gone," Crowley said Thursday during an interview with WEEI-AM in Boston. "But I did to him what I would do to anything else in that situation."
 

jimpeel

Well-Known Member
Hell yeah, those cops were dumb. The guy had already proved it was house.

The cops stepped on their own dick.

You need to read the police report. The corroborative statement by the second police officer substantiates Crowley's account.

The fact that he was shouting "This is what happens to Black men in America!" to people who were assembling appears that he was trying to incite them against the officers.
 

jimpeel

Well-Known Member
If any of these are unavailable due to archiving, the text of most are available at other boards.

National Review article on police toning down arrests after riots.

http://www.nationalreview.com/dunphy/dunphy070301.shtml

USA Today article on "de-policing".

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/jleo.htm

"De-policing" occurs after riots and demonstrations against police behavior. Shell-shocked or resentful, police overlook a lot of suspicious behavior. They stop trying to prevent low-level crime and simply react to 911 calls. Crime soars.

This happened in some New York City neighborhoods after the 1999 Amadou Diallo shooting, and in Seattle after last year's World Trade Organization riots and this February's Mardi Gras riots. In fact, it happened during the Mardi Gras chaos. Many officers became bystanders as the rioting spread. A Seattle cop explained de-policing: "Parking under a shady tree to work on a crossword puzzle is a great alternative to being labeled a racist and being dragged through an inquest, a review board, an FBI and U.S. attorney
investigation and a lawsuit."

Now de-policing has hit Cincinnati. Since the April riots, set off by the police's fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, arrests have dropped 50 percent compared with the same three months last year and shootings are way up -- 59 incidents and 77 gunshot victims, compared with nine incidents and 11 victims. Traffic stops are down 55 percent, presumably because almost any stop of a black driver by a white cop might be cited as racial profiling. Crime is up partly because criminals are less fearful of cops. They know all about de-policing.

The riots hit the city hard. Convention business is down. The white exodus from the city has spread to cops. Large numbers of officers have applied for jobs in the suburbs. But the city's biggest problem is that some powerful voices have defined the city as hopelessly racist. (Cincinnati is "the belly of the beast" of police violence against blacks, said Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP. It is "a model of racial injustice," said Time magazine.)

Newsmax article on police retreat.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/7/19/161142.shtml

Crime wave hits Cincinnati. "officers had retreated from black neighborhoods because of fears of charges of racism, lack of political support and low morale."
 

spike

New Member
Seems your claim "The cops started simply not arresting or even stopping any Blacks" was greatly exaggerated. Even by the standards of the opinion pieces you posted as proof.

Here's an opinion piece for ya.

The point about the arrest Monday by a Cambridge Police sergeant of Harvard Distinguished Professor Henry “Skip” Gates is not that the police initially thought the celebrated public intellectual, PBS host and MacArthur Award winner might have been a crook who had broken into Gates’ rented home. Anyone capable of seeing a 58-year-old man with a cane accompanied by a man in a tux as a potential burglar might make the same mistake, given that a neighbor had allegedly called 911 to report seeing two black men she thought were breaking into the house.

But after Prof. Gates had shown the cops his faculty ID and his drivers’ license, and had thus verified his identity, and after he had explained that he had just returned home on a flight from China and had been getting help from his limo driver in opening a stuck door, the cops should have been extremely polite and apologetic for having suspected him and for having insisted on checking him out.

After all, a man’s home is supposed to be his castle. When you violate that sanctity, you should, as a police officer, appreciate that the owner might be upset.

But where it really goes wrong is what happened next.

Prof. Gates, who was understandably outraged at the whole situation, properly told the sergeant that he wanted his name and his badge number, because he intended to file a complaint. Whether or not the officer had done anything wrong by that point is not the issue. It was Gates’ right as a citizen to file a complaint. The officer’s alleged refusal to provide his name and badge number was improper and, if Gates’ claim is correct, was a violation of the rules that are in force in every police department in the country.

But whatever the real story is regarding the showing of identification information by Gates and the officer, police misconduct in this incident went further. Gates reportedly got understandably angry and frustrated at the officer for refusing to provide him with this identifying information and/or for refusing to accept his own identification documents, and at that point the officer abused his power by arresting Gates and charging him with disorderly conduct.

There’s nothing unusual about this, sadly. It is common practice for police in America to abuse their authority and to arrest people on a charge of “disorderly conduct” when those people simply exercise their free speech rights and object strenuously to how they are being treated by an officer. Try it out sometime. If you are given a ticket for going five miles an hour over the posted speed limit, tell the traffic officer he or she is a stupid moron, and see if you are left alone. My bet is that you will find yourself either ticketed on another more serious charge, or even arrested for “disorderly conduct.” If you happen to be black or some other race than white, I’ll even put money on that bet. (If you’re stupid enough to go out and test this hypothesis, please don’t expect me to post your bail!)

There is no suggestion by police that Gates physically threatened the arresting officer. His “crime” at the time was simply speaking out.

What is unusual is not that the officer arrested Gates for exercising his rights. That kind of thing happens all the time. What’s unusual is that this time the police levied their false charge against a man who is among the best known academics in the country, who knows his rights, and who has access to the best legal talent in the nation to make his case (his colleagues at the Harvard Law School).

Very little of the mainstream reporting I’ve seen on this event makes the crucial point that it is not illegal to tell a police officer that he is a jerk, or that he has done something wrong, or that you are going to file charges against him. And yet too many commentators, journalists and ordinary people seem to accept that if a citizen “mouths off” to a cop, or criticizes a cop, or threatens legal action against a cop, it’s okay for that cop to cuff the person and charge him with “disorderly conduct.” Worse yet, if a cop makes such a bogus arrest, and the person gets upset, he’s liable to get an added charge of “resisting arrest” or worse.

We have, as a nation, sunk to the level of a police state, when we grant our police the unfettered power to arrest honest, law-abiding citizens for simply stating their minds. And it’s no consolation that someone like Gates can count on having such charges tossed out. It’s the arrest, the cuffing, and the humiliating ride in the back of a cop squad car to be booked and held until bailed out that is the outrage.

I’m sure police take a lot of verbal abuse on the job, but given their inherent power—armed and with a license to arrest, to handcuff, and even to shoot and kill—they must be told by their superiors that they have no right to arrest people for simply expressing their views, even about those officers.

Insulting an officer of the law is not a crime. Telling an officer he or she is breaking the law is not a crime. Demanding that an officer identify him or herself is not a crime. And saying you are going to file a complaint against the officer is not a crime.

As someone who, although white, spent his youth in the 1960s and early 1970s with long hair and a scraggly beard–both red flags to police back in the day–and who had his share of run-ins with police for that reason alone, I can understand to some extent what African-Americans, and especially African-American men, go through in dealing with white police officers. I used to be “profiled” as a druggie/lefty/hippy and was stopped regularly for no reason when I lived in Los Angeles and drove an 20-year-old pick-up truck. I’d be pushed up against the vehicle, frisked, shouted at, talked to threateningly. I’d have my vehicle searched (without a warrant). And if I objected, I’d be threatened with arrest, though I had done nothing. Under those circumstances, you quickly learn to be very deferential around police.

Prof. Gates was simply experiencing the frustration that young black men feel routinely, and that I used to feel back when I had hair and chose to grow it long—the feeling of being at the mercy of lawless, power-tripping cops.

In a free country, we should not allow the police, who after all are supposed to be public servants, not centurions, to behave in this manner. When we do, we do not have a free society. We have a police state.

http://blog.populistamerica.com/2009/07/living-in-a-police-state/
 

Professur

Well-Known Member
Just like how you can't even comment on how good a female co-worker looks today without wondering if it's going to land you in hot water, you don't dare approach a black person without being accused of racism.

How did we ever let the world get like this?
 

Cerise

Well-Known Member
The police did not single out Gates because of his race, they responded to a call from a citizen. What happened later was a response to Gates' behavior.

How can a professor at a top university not know better than to act like an idiot to the police when they're trying to protect his house?

Once it was adequately established he lived there, he should have expressed gratitude to the nice police officers for their service and their protection of his premises. Instead, he followed the officer outside and continued his disruptive behavior in public.

0723092gates1.gif

0723092gates2.gif

0723092gates3.gif



henry_gates.jpg


"No, I didn't say 'yo mamma' I said 'I want my mommy!'"
 

Cerise

Well-Known Member
If Gates would've shut the door of his house after the cop walked out, he never would've gotten arrested.

Oh, yeah, and 0bama's a doofus for even addressing this. He said he doesn’t know all the facts but the cops acted stupidly. Of course, he was talking off-ToTUS when he answered the reporter's question.
 

spike

New Member
It's got a little weird when you're defending arresting people in their own home who haven't done anything wrong.

Probably kills you inside I would think.

He should have expressed gratitude?
 

Cerise

Well-Known Member
He wasn't arrested in his home. He was outside his home.

And according to the document, he was arrested because he was becoming disorderly, in public view, alarming the citizens who were gathered on the sidewalk. When the cop attempted to put on the handcuffs, Gates initially resisted, and he was lucky he didn't get that charge as well.

Not too hard to figure out that the police were just doing their job. :shrug:
 

Cerise

Well-Known Member
The police were called by a neighbor who saw 2 men trying to force open the door of a house on the block.

When Gates was being hauled off the cop asked him if he wanted the door to his house locked. Gates replied that the door couldn't be locked because of a previous break in.

In light of that fact Gates should thank the person who was looking out for the neighborhood that called the police in the first place as well as the police for their timely response.

He should've said: "Good evening, Sgt. Crowley. This is my house, I live here, as my ID will prove. You see, my house was recently broken into and the door has not been repaired yet and requires a little force to get it open. Thank you sir for coming out." Instead he chose to be hostile and belligerent.
 

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
He wasn't arrested in his home. He was outside his home.

And according to the document, he was arrested because he was becoming disorderly, in public view, alarming the citizens who were gathered on the sidewalk. When the cop attempted to put on the handcuffs, Gates initially resisted, and he was lucky he didn't get that charge as well.

Not too hard to figure out that the police were just doing their job. :shrug:

Outside his house...your front porch is outside your house..your lawns are outside your house etc etc... BUT, they are still on your PROPERTY.

The cops were responding to a call and doing their job. The moment they realized that there was no crime being committed, they should've been the one's with 'Yes, sir, no, sir, have a good night, sir'

... not, the rightful owner of the house.
 
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