Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates arrested after police mistake him for a burglar

[cdz512]

<p>Okay, I see that your response have been going off topic because your response are not responding to what I said (you bring in information that I was not talking about).

The main problem with your argument is that you already assume that the cop knows (or should know): 1. who Gates is 2. his ownership of the house 3. the nonexistence of a robber (not Gates). Policeman have to keep in mind all the possible scenarios when investigating a reported robbery. The cop is not responsible to know anything about Gates, even if he is a , so-called, Harvard scholar.

I really don’t exactly understand why you stated this. For your first statement “who Gates is”: I have to say that I really didn’t talk about the police having to know who Gates is. The four topics I was talking about are: a restraining order, obtaining a warrant, Crowley concern about himself, and the reason why Gates decided to resist stepping outside his house. For you second and third statement, I would like you to read the next few responses because then you will understand.

"and for Harvard to place a restraining order, they must legally remove Gates as the current resident and then file a order. "
Again, how is the policeman supposed to know if Gates is the current resident or not? (before Gates proved his ownership of the house)

I was replying to this statement by you “Maybe there is a restraining order in place. Maybe Harvard University, who owns the house, changed the locks for some reason.” And I think you didn’t see that. When a restraining order is filed, the court and police would know who lives in the house through the file. And in a restraining order, the court and the police looks through the file of the property and sees who the owner is. In this situation (if the restraining order was filed) then the court would see that Gates is the owner. So I don’t understand why you brought the subject of a police into this when I was talking about the process of a restraining order. In the process of making a restraining order, the court looks through the files of the property and the person who they want to restrain. It’s quite simple the court and police have the file of the house and who lives there. They would know, without asking Gates. The file of the home is reviewed when the restraining order if file, they would know if Gates is the home owner. They wouldn’t need Gates to prove that he is the resident when they have the file of him if Harvard did file a restraining order.

“You can’t kick a person from their home.”
Like I said above, Crowley did not verify, yet, the ownership of Gates. Anyways, he did not force Gates to do anything! It is completely legal to ask a person to leave their house or provide identity. The charges are mainly based off of Gates’ uncalled for behavior: such as talking about Crowley’s mom.

Again I see that you have mistaken my statement. I was replying to the restraining order, not Crowley. I suggest you go back and reread that paragraph. My topic sentence was about the restraining order and my whole response was about the restraining order being filed. I see that your response was off topic of what I was trying to say: you can’t file a restraining order when the person you are restraining is the legal resident. I wasn’t responding to the arrest nor did I mention Crowley in the paragraph. And I don’t understand why you brought Gate’s words into this when we were talking about maybe Harvard filed a restraining order and I never mentioned it.</p>

<p>

“And somehow a restraining order can be placed without the alert of police and Gates?”</p>

<p>Like I said, this is about what the police knows, not what Gates knows. Gates does not have the authority to deal with robberies, the police does. I highly doubt Sgt. Crowley is responsible to memorize all 1000000 (exaggeration) restraining orders in Cambridge, nor are they required to carry around all files concerning restraining orders while addressing a robbery!! And you have to keep in mind that police cannot go through all that complex reasoning you mentioning below when addressing a situation. If policeman assess a situation like you and I are assessing this situation, they wouldn’t last very long! It is reasonable for Crowley to ask for hard evidence of Gates’ identity and ownership of the house in order to end the confrantation in a quick and simple manner. He shouldn’t just automatically assume Gates is innocent (or that their is no robber currently in the house) because the security system turned off, or because he has a key of the house (which he could have gotten after breaking in). Plus, I don’t think the policeman was there to see Gates go through his back door.

Again I don’t understand you topic sentence when you responded. My statement was quite clear. When a restraining order is place, the police WOULD know and so would Gates. The police would know. I don’t know how much you understand property restraining order (I too don’t understand a lot about it) but I do know that when a property is restrained there is police monitoring. A police car would be in the near vicinity of the home. It is just like trying to protect the home and home owner when the home owner is threatened by somebody. I don’t think the police would not be monitoring the home if the home owner is not safe. They would be near to immediately respond. If Gates was restrained from the home, there would be a police near the home to make sure that they can immediately respond. They would also know who they are restraining. If a restraining order was place, they would immediately recognize Gates because they are trying to restrain him. So I’m not clear why you said this is about the police knowing when I stated in the next sentence “If a restraining order was placed on a home, then there would be police monitoring”. The police would know. It doesn’t have to be Crowley who knows, it’s the police who is monitoring the area. A police that is monitoring the house would know so a memorization of all the restraining order is not needed. If a restraining order was filed and it was passed (which it would not have been if it was against Gates), the police who would be monitoring the home would know who to look for. Again Gates can’t be restrained because the court and the police would find out that Gates live there and they can’t restrain him when he legally lives there and Harvard agrees to let him live there.

“This is quite usual, police are trained to be concerned about the safety of other, not about themselves”</p>

<p>If Gates’ was not talking bad things about my mother and bothering me as I am ftrying to ensure his safety, I think I would care more about my own safety too! I think Crowley’s rank and time on the force proves that he is capable of placing himself before others.

I think you have misread this line too. You stated “For some reason, they just omitted a section about how he was mainly concerned about his own safety as he was **encountering **the house (and rightly so in my opinion).” He was walking up to the house, not talking to Gates. I don’t know why you brought up the situation of Gates talking to him when I responded to Crowley walking up to the house and before he was talking to Gates. I’m not sure why you brought up anything about Gates talking when I never mentioned it in my response and I wasn’t making an argument about it.</p>

<p>

“However, you have to know that he fully knows that there was no robbery”
Like I said many many times, it does not matter what Gates knows! It is the police’s job to respond to a robbery call, not him! Many many people get accused for things they didn’t do (like murder) and cooperate with police because they know that is the lawful and reasonable thing to do. He is not above the law, even though he is a “renowned” Harvard scholar. Just because you “have a reason to refuse” does not mean that you can verbally assault the people who put their lives on the line to make sure the community is safe.

Yes I know that the police have to take things seriously. But I was responding to this statement by you: “it is in for the safety of Gates to step outside of his own house and let police handle the situation in the case of an actual robbery”. I’m not sure why you brought up the case of Gates talking to the police when I actually stated "However, you have to know that he fully knows that there was no robbery, so that’s why he felt reserve about stepping out. " My whole paragraph was on the response that Gates did not need to step out and there was a legit reason why he could have refused to step out. My argument was not about using verbal words. So I don’t understand why you brought up “verbal assault” when I never mentioned Gates verbally assaulting the police in my response.</p>

<p>

“Actually you can’t search a home unless you made a lawful arrest.”</p>

<p>First of all, I would like to point out that this topic has nothing to do with the case, because Crowley did not enter the house illegally. I should not have brought up this topic. I think you are wrong though, a policeman can search files inside a house in complex cases: such as when a hostage is being held at gunpoint in an undisclosed location (and is said to be shot in 30 minutes or so if…) , and the information on a document within a house gives the police the information needed to save the hostage’s life; Furthermore, filing for a search warrant would take too much time.

Yes I was wondering why this was brought up (but I don’t mind). They don’t need to get a warrant; they would ask the family if they can enter the house. If a hostage was held, most of the time it is for ransom and most of the time there are other family members that are not held hostage. And I don’t think they would threaten to kill a hostage in 30 minutes when kidnapper knows that it will take more than 30 minutes. I don’t know how an undisclosed location would work because the police would track him/her down easily by seeing where they would mail what the kidnapper wants, if they were going to make a face to face exchange. Most hostage crisis takes place inside the kidnapper’s home or the hostage’s home. In those situations, if the police want to search the hostage’s home, the hostage would give consent search of the house. In other words, the hostage, or his/her family member would give the permission to search the home. However, I don’t know a lot about warrants. The statements I said were a result of a law cases. These exceptions were the result of people filling a lawsuit against police. And there are only two exceptions that apply to home search (car searches have more exceptions): consent and incident to arrest. (By the way, lets drop this because this is off topic)</p>

<p>I will teach you how to do quotes
You simply type this “[ quote]” (without the space) before what you want to quote and then when you are done with what you want to quote you type "

[/quote]

Enjoy :)</p>