Procedure and state power are at issue

One doesn't have to spend much time reading the news to come across another example of how stupid we as social creatures have become.

I'm referring to the flap surrounding President Obama and his comments about the arrest and detention of Henry Louis Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.

Anyone who remotely follows the news in this country is probably familiar with the events recently when Dr. Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, found his front door stuck and as he and his driver, another black man, were pushing against the door to open it were sighted by a neighbor who called the police.

That's where Sgt. James Crowley came into this picture. Crowley is a white police officer and it is the controversy swirling around the interactions between these two men that has the nation buzzing. Was it racism? Was it an over-agitated senior citizen refusing to back down? What really happen?

Let me state my position on this. First, I don't know if racism was overtly at the heart of this situation, but I bet it was there covertly, buried so deep in the psychi of both men that neither could respond in any other way than for Dr. Gates to become angry at being confronted in his own home by an agent of the state, and the policeman seeing an out-of-control citizen confronting him in anger and disbelief. Second, I believe that President Obama did nail it when he made the observation that arresting a man who had demonstrated he was in his own home, wasn't confronting his neighbors with illegal or inappropriate behavior, and who was confronted by what he perceived to be the jackbooted authority of the state was stupid on the part of the police.

Why do I feel that way? Easy. While many don't see the modern American policeman as some Darth Vader figure dressed in black and armed to the teeth with expression stern and eyes masked behind dark glasses, I want you to look at the photograph that went across the country. There is Dr. Gates, a slight man as compared to the giants who have cufffed him and are leading him off his own front porch. There were three of them in the photo, three of them. You have to wonder where these men parked their compassion and understanding. Instead they choose the stern "make and example" position that cops usually take. Their immediate response was to follow procedure to the letter and that's what they did. That's what initial investigations have found, anyway. But that is my point. Perhaps the "procedure" is at fault. Obviously these men, all adults with years under their belts as police, found it too difficult to step back in a situation not going to their liking and choosing instead to not use their mind, compassion, and understanding of a tense, but certainly not life-threatening or bodily-harm threatening situation. Instead they choose to humiliate Dr. Gates.

Perhaps it is time the Cambridge Police review their procedures for cases like this. I certainly feel that once Dr. Gates established his identity and that he was in his own residence, the police, without a duly sworn warrant, were wrong. While many might disagree, it is my opinion that at the point Dr. Gates established that it was his residence, that no crime was in progress, his IV Amendment rights came into play and the police were then at fault.

It seems that on a regular basis we hear of police overstepping the bounds of their authority. Whether it's the tazing of a student who refuses to leave a library, or the killing of a senior citizen who refuses to leave his humble home when confronted by the local SWAT brigade ready to haul him to a rest home, or the simple arresting of a distinguished citizen who happens to be black for becoming angry at being confronted in his own home by one of the state's dark knight, it shouldn't happen. Procedure is always cited as the reason no one is held responsible. My contention is procedure is at fault and should be changed.