Six minutes: That's all it took!

I read an article in this morning's New York Times by Dan Van Natta Jr. and Abby Goodnough in which it was stated that the call to police about someone breaking into Henry Louis Gate's house was made at 12:45 p.m. the day of the incident. Gates was arrested at 12:51 p.m.

That's six minutes. Six minutes to go from a voice on the end of a telephone line to a cop slapping the cuffs on a 58-year-old, 5-foot seven-inch black man who needs a cane to walk.

Let's break that down if we can. The article didn't provide a timeline for the events, but lets say the call came in at 12:45. It still requires, let's say 30 seconds for the dispatcher to get the necessary information and get that relayed to police in the vicinity. Sergeant Crowley was nearby and responded. OK, let's say it took him about a minute to get there. That puts the time at 14:46:30 or there abouts. Let's say further that it took Crowley about 30 seconds to park his car, get his whatever in order as he walked from the car to the house and knocked. That takes us to 12:47. That leaves four minutes for this situation to deteriorate to the point that Dr. Gates was arrested, and, if you remember, Gates at some point provided Sgt. Crowley with his driver's license and Harvard ID, clearly establishing the residence as his. So it really wasn't four minutes.

And, when Crowley didn't respond to a follow up call after he called in his response, the Cambridge police dispatched six other units to that quiet residential street.

This just further convinces me the police were out of line on this one. Four minutes or less for a cop who wasn't getting the deference he wanted from an uppity black man to slap the cuffs on a senior citizen.

I'm more convinced than ever that too many cops strap on their self-importance when they put on their uniform and that gets in the way of good community policing. Bottom line, I'm more convinced than ever that race was at the heart of this encounter and while Dr. Gates may very well have been confrontational with the policeman, that isn't a crime as long as it remained verbal. Come on, give the man a chance to vent then cool off. Unfortunately that's not the image of police one sees on the cop shows and the reality shows. The image one sees then is of heavily armed Darth Vaders shouting and threatening violence if the suspect doesn't comply. And, at what point does a suspect become a suspect. In this case Dr. Gates should never have been the suspect.

And one always hears that Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the Union. Really?