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 Posted: Fri, Jul 31 2009, 4:29 pm EDT Post subject: Re: "Teaching Moment" or just a reason to drink beer at the whitehouse |
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| Guest wrote: | | Guest wrote: |
Being an ASS in your own home is not against the law, nor is showing respect for the authority of the police a legal requirement in this country, especially in your home where you legally have dominion. |
yup but being respectful of a policeman who is just doing his job to protect your home and your rights is just common sense to me (do we have to make laws for every idiot who get's himself into trouble like Gates did.
| Quote: | | If you really believe that any cop would have arrested him you have a very low opinion of law enforcement. I'm not saying it was racist. I'm saying MOST police officers wouldn't have over-reacted to the situation and abused their power by making a bogus arrest no matter how big of an ASS he was being. Once his identity was established, they would have just left as Crowley should have done. |
Its not a low opinion of law enforcement, but rather my issue with misplaced blame for creating this situation in the first place still is with Prof Gates - who could have made this who situation turn out different had he used common sense and respect for authority. What happened afterwards became emotional not legal or racist. The spin in the news was unpalatable for me long ago on TV and I have stop watching the news about it. And will get back to commenting on the National HealthCare discussion after this last post. |
Everything you said would make sense if this was just an argument that got out of hand. But you say what happened was just emotion and not about what's "legal" but that's where I strongly disagree. Officer Crowley made it about the law when he arrested Gates. Everything prior to that is just an argument and neither of us know what happened. Gates says he was respectful, showed ID early then continued to be harassed by the officer and threatened with jail if he didn’t leave his premises to be questioned after showing his ID. I have no idea if that happened or if he was belligerent, angry and disrespectful from the first moment. But the idea that he unilaterally escalated it is just one of two possible versions of events, neither of which (based on available evidence) has any more proof than the other. But either way, Officer Crowley has a responsibility to adhere to the law not his emotion. When he arrested Gates he was not doing that, regardless of how belligerent Gates may have been. So even if you go with Crowley’s version and assume that Gates did initiate the confrontation, that doesn’t change Crowley’s responsibility to his duty or indemnify him from the consequences of his actions, which were to arrest the man who had been properly ID’ed in his own home. Gates may be an ass and may need anger management, but that doesn’t make Officer Crowley’s actions okay. |
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