<p>I just heard back to back discussions on NPR and the Glenn Beck show that both, purportedly, objectively discussed this case. The latter of which has painted Professor Gates as uncontrollable, elitist, Jeremiah Wright. Beck and staff extended their sympathies to the families of the police officers who are, apparently, going “through a tough time.”</p>
<p>@Loki, do not question the policeman in charge. </p>
<p>““Crowley is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling and has taught a class on the subject for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black””</p>
<p>I think this guy has a significant amount of experience to understand the whole sensitivity issue. Gates acted way out of the norm. Many people, who are falsely accused of more serious crimes (such as murder) cooperate with the police! No one accused him of anything! He overreacted as police where following standard operating procedure (SOPs). He could have just cooperated, and the whole ordeal would have ended in 5 minutes max. By the way, Crowley did not trespass into Gates’ home. Everything that the policeman did (asking for ID and asking him to step outside) is completely legal, and the policing norm for such situations.</p>
<p>Yes, he has more of a reason to be upset due to the history of law enforcement racism. But he is being racist toward the police by automatically assuming they are being racist!! He is just fueling the general problem of racial divide in our country, which he is supposed to be a “renowned” scholar in. How absurd.</p>
<p>@hellojan, it would suck to have your husband/father labeled by the majority of the media as the prime example of racism, whether or not, he actually is the prime example of racism.</p>
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<p>Yet, if we are stopped in our vehicles for anything, we still have to comply with the officer, don’t we? Even if we were driving within the speed limit, driving with caution and know that our vehicles don’t have a broken taillight, right? We have to comply, because otherwise we can be arrested - not for the offense that stopped us in the first place, but for the resistance while dealing with the officers.</p>
<p>If a police officer comes to your home in circumstances like these, they have to ascertain that everything is okay with the residents. What if there were a home invasion in progress? </p>
<p>Gates may have felt personally disrespected, but his behavior escalated this situation by resisting giving identification, initially, and then not in stepping outside to discuss this with the officer. If it had been a home invasion or hostage situation, this could have saved Gates’ life. In fact acting in such a way could have been a signal to the police that something was amiss, inside the home. </p>
<p>Is there a history of racism in the community? I hear that this has been a problem in the past. Reading the report, it seems like the officer handled this one by the book. </p>
<p>Hopefully, when they release the tapes, we will get a better understanding of what was said by both the officer and the professor.</p>
<p>As a Middle Easterner living in a post 9-11 America, I can honestly say that this whole racism deal is over-exaggerated. The only time I seem to feel discriminated against is when I am traveling and get pulled over for “random screening”. How do I know that this screening isn’t so random? Almost everyone undergoing random screening looks/is Middle Eastern. lol. But I really don’t care because it only takes away 5 minutes of my life. Five minutes which would have been spent doing something unproductive, such as writing this post. Anyways, I understand the need for such screening because hijackers are almost always going to be of Middle Eastern decent. I am guessing that the majority of Middle Easterners do not file lawsuits and throw fits over such trivial matters. Perhaps, this is the reason why America, as a whole, quickly overcame a racist attitude toward Middle Easterners. </p>
<p>I believe that when African Americans, especially their leaders, start trusting American society, American society will start trusting African Americans, and the country can finally ascend over any existing remnants of America’s racist past.</p>
<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).
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.
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.
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>
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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.
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>
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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>
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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>
<p>Also I would like to say that I might not be able to post again on this thread because it takes to long to respond. It is time consuming trying to respond. Waitn184, I hope you understand this because it does take a long time (and maybe you can relate).</p>
<p>waitn - when I do a long post sometimes I will type it in word and then cut and paste it over</p>
<p>To help with your edits:
@ top left click “Help & Rules”
then “General Forum Usage”
Then “Posting New Messages”
then under “how do I format my posts and messages” you will see BB code “Click here” that will lead you to <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode</a></p>
<p>@Smoda + cdz, thanks for the quotes tips. Finally…</p>
<p>@cdz, we are focusing on the legality/morality of Crowley’s actions when we are discussing the restraining orders. I know that their is no restraining order, you don’t have to convince me! This is all about whether Crowley reasonably realized the possibility of a restraining order, and contacted the Harvard Police because of a potential restraining order. All I am doing is assessing what Crowley thought at the time and whether he acted reasonably.</p>
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<p>Sorry if I did not make it clear, but I am talking about what was going through the mind of the police officer (who has not yet verified who Gates is), not the actuality of a restraining order. The actuality of the restraining order is irrelevant. Your whole paragraph deducing the fact that their was no restraining order is also irrelevant. You see, I misunderstood you, because you misunderstood me, lol. I falsely assumed that because you were responding to my quote about Crowley’s mindset, you intended your paragraph to be about just that: Crowley’s mindset concerning the possibility of a restraining order. </p>
<p>I think we are now on the same page, lol? So in your argument about search warrants and restraining orders, you are just describing the general process and not its connection with the policeman and his subsequent actions, I got it. But in that case, those paragraphs are irrelevant in determining whether the cop overstepped his boundaries and whether he is indeed racist (our main debate topic). I know I talked about search warrants on files (which also had nothing to do with this case). So lets just agree to drop those topics and focus on the the innocence/guilt of Crowley/Gates, ok? In my opinion, this debate is getting clustered with a bunch of irrelevant side-debates which overcomplicate our argument</p>
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<p>Now I am assuming you are talking about Crowley’s responsibility to know the ownership of the house, if a restraining order did exist; therefore, removing the need to contact the Harvard police? (just to be clear).</p>
<p>I agree with the process you described in your paragraph up until that quote ^^. Yes, in the case of a restraining order, the police would have a file; however, like I said earlier, policeman do not carry/review restraining order files when alerted of an emergency robbery. So, on the spot, Crowley could not verify there was a restraining order. Anyways, that was not his assumption, only a possibility. And it would just be time consuming for him to call the police office and check on the possibility of a restraining order, especially when the possibility of a robber still remains.</p>
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<p>Alright.</p>
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<p>Yea, I thought you were talking about Crowley and his specific “police” unit because during the course of this whole argument, police was synonymous to that specific unit. </p>
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<p>I don’t know much about restraining orders, but I do know that police would not waste a whole policeman/squad to monitor every restraining order. Restraining orders deal with the punishment of someone who makes contact with someone else illegally, NOT the prevention of that contact: “When the abuser does something that the court has ordered him or her not to do, or fails to do something the court has ordered him or her to do, that is a violation of the order. The victim can ask the police or the court, or both, depending on the violation, to enforce the order.” -wiki
Thats how they are enforced. So in this specific case, there could have been a restraining order and not a monitoring unit. </p>
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<p>Yea, I used the wrong word to describe the situation, my bad. What I meant to say was that CNN omitted a section of Crowley worrying about his own safety as he was assessing the situation with Gates. And just to be clear: I thought Crowley’s safety worries were “rightly so” not CNN’s omission of the article- that part of the sentence was also vague, sorry about that.</p>
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<p>Once again, I am not talking about the actuality of the situation. That quote, by me, inside the quote box is to describe Crowley’s motive for asking Gates to step outside. It does not matter whether Gates knows there is no robber (I know he knows that). What matters is that Gates has to follow Crowley’s procedures nonetheless because he is legally following the Standard Operating Procedures of such a situation, and he has the authority to diffuse the situation, not Gates. </p>
<p>I brought up the case of Gates talking to the police to explain the rationality of the arrest. It wasn’t a counter-argument to anything you said. Just an additional detail.</p>
<p>I can relate with you, this argument is time consuming, lol. For some reason, all long lasting arguments on CC tend to start out small, then become a large heap of side-arguments. I just personally like to argue about certain issues, though I am not very good at it. I agree though, after 5-10 posts, it gets old. I would understand if you can’t respond back.</p>
<p>[Black</a> officer at scholar’s home supports arrest - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_re_us/us_harvard_scholar_arresting_officer]Black”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_re_us/us_harvard_scholar_arresting_officer)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth.</p>
<p>Gates is now saying “The story is over” in the media. Public opinion is pretty much in on this and the verdict is: Gates looks like a whiney mook. </p>
<p>Speaking of whom: President Obama and Mass. Governor Patrick both will get some of the splash effect of this too for their amateurish decisions to weigh in on it. Neither one of them can afford it given their 40-something and 30-something percent approval ratings these days. </p>
<p>Al Sharpton gets it – you haven’t seen him agitating on this issue because he recognized it right away as a non-starter. The public is tired of $200K/yr elites of any color claiming oppression in light of 10% unemployment amongst blue collar workers. </p>
<p>This being CC and all, the real question is: What effect does this have on Harvard? What’s the mood on campus? Has anyone taken over a building yet? Or is racial imbroglio such a common part of the whole Harvard scene that it ends up being just another fart in the Crimson bathtub?</p>
<p>Ok since our argument has gone way off topic, I’ll just point out some errors in your argument (not that changing it really helps the central topic that we totally strayed away from)
I actually think you got confused with the type of restraining orders here. First off the wiki quote you say was referring to is the most common type of restraining order which can be easily refereed to as a “person to person restraining order” (not formally called that) but what that is, is a type of restraining order in which an individual is not to make contact with another person or stay a certain distance away from the person. The one that we were actually referring to is sometimes called a “trespassing restraining order” or a restraining order placed to restrain an individual from entering a home<a href=“underlined%20so%20you%20know%20where%20the%20definition%20is”>/U</a>. That type of restraining order can be monitored (and I’ll explain that right below). But I think you were confused with the type of restraining order because your quote came from the article that talks about the kind of restraining order that is “a legal order issued by a state court which requires one person to stop harming another person.” The one we are talking about does not involve two people. But instead a home and a person.</p>
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Actually you are wrong. In the case of a newly filed restraining order, they will monitor the area. Also if I’m not wrong, police are assigned areas to monitor, this is to prevent having 5 police in 1 block and no police in another. Each police are given an area to be in (I believe they can pick). However, the main reason why police are given an area to monitor is because they want to make sure that all the places are safe. Essentially, they won’t be wasting a police to monitor a trespassing restraining order because they can assign the police that is around the home to keep a watchful eye on the home. This doesn’t happen just with a restraining order. If a family has been receiving threats, there will be police monitoring around the area of the home (maybe not right in front of it but they will drive by every so often). When a robbery/kidnap occurs in a neighborhood, police will continue to monitor that area to prevent more robbery/kidnap to occur. So really this isn’t any different. When you place a trespassing restraining order, it is like receiving many threats (the home owner doesn’t feel safe about the person being in their home so they file it). Police are made to keep people safe. Their goal is to prevent any further crime. I mean a property restraining order is easier to protect and there is no real reason why they wouldn’t try to. Police are paid by the people to prevent crimes. If they can prevent it, then they should try. Most of the time it is easier to prevent a crime than try to find the person who performed the crime. Because who knows, what happens if the person who is restrained can set a home on fire and then run away and there isn’t a police close by to monitor the home. Then what? The home owner who filed it would be made. The police could have prevented it by stopping the restrained person from getting close but instead there was not police around to monitor it and when they get there, it could have been too late and it would have done hundreds to thousands of dollars in damage because fire spreads really fast in a home and it becomes really hard to contain after it has been fueled. If a police was monitoring the home, he/she could have seen the break in and prevented the fire and the break in. Also what happens if it was a restraining order on a person to protect the family? Lets say what you think, we don’t have a police around to monitor the home because it is a “waste”. The restrained person comes into the house with a gun, shoots a the family to death and runs aways. Ok so the police comes. Oh the people are dead. Dying from a gun shot can be faster than having a police come to a house from a couple of mile away. If a police have been near by the home (like in the neighborhood). The police could have seen the break in or a potential break in and then prevented the killing. </p>
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Ok so if you have understood the reply I wrote on top then you might understand this. If a restraining order have been placed, there would be a police near by the monitor the home. Then in that case, when a 911 call is called, then the police nearby could reply and he/she would know if the suspect was restrained or not. So if you replace the suspect with Gates. If Gates was restricted, there would be a police by his house (seem really awkward). So when a 911 call is in, the police nearby can respond immediately and quickly. If he sees that it is Gates (usually by look but even if it requires ID). Then he would know that Gates is restricted. Again it is about the fact that there will be a police nearby.</p>
<p>Wow that actually took a while…</p>
<p>I am actually getting tired of this debate. This public issue is quite ■■■■■■■■ in my opinion. I wish both parties would just shush up. The police are obvious going to protect the police and friends will obvious protect friends. The fact that there was a convoy of police to arrest Gates makes it seem even more awkward (you don’t need a whole convoy of police to arrest a man who is standing right there). And releasing him didn’t make it any better either. And the black officer’s argument is actually not as valid as it can be because Crowley called in for Harvard police to check an ID. And the fact that they decided to arrest him didn’t make this situation any better. But it also doesn’t help that Gates decided to shout. Yes I do have to say that Gates did do something dumb but I would also say that the police did too.
- Gates shouldn’t have resisted (even though it is legal) and shout and insult (which was a dumb act by him)
- But I also have to say that the police handling was quite bad: the statement in which he wrote “public place” was quite dumb, the fact that he called in for more police didn’t make it any better because there was photo ID with the address (and note Gates did step outside).</p>
<p>Honestly I think both sides acted (in the president’s word) “stupidly”. The police should have just said sorry and walked away after seeing that he was the rightful and not arrested him (even if he made statements), then it wouldn’t fuel this big of an debate and issue (although it might have done a little bit). But having to arrest him just made him more mad.</p>
<p>@cdz, this actually has to do with the central topic, but distantly, so we can talk about it. Your whole entire argument (last post) is null and void unless you can give me proof (a link perhaps?) that at least most “home restraining orders” include police monitoring. I would assume enforcement of this type of restraining order is handled in a similar fashion to person2person restraining orders: punishment not prevention.</p>
<p>By the way, the wiki article is labeled: “restraining order”, and their is no “home restraining order” article.</p>
<p>That didn’t take a while :). I am trying to cut the length of our argument, lol. </p>
<p>By the way, I can’t believe Northstarmom instigated this argument and fled to start the same argument in the Parent’s Cafe. She is to blame, not Gates or Crowley.</p>
<p>@TheDuke, I would expect this to have a negative, but mild, effect on Harvard. If your verdict ends up to be true, many applicants will realize: “so those are the kind of people who teach here. If Gates is supposed to be one of the world’s most “renowned” scholars, and Harvard is one of the most “renowned” Universities in the world…” </p>
<p>After hearing this story, I am kind of glad that I got rejected from Harvard, because then I might have started to believe the same crap this man preaches. </p>
<p>But like I said, this will barely affect Harvard’s image, whether Gates is wrong or right.</p>
<p>Look like both Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley have been invited to the whitehouse.</p>
<p>From time to time, I amuse myself driving home and listening to Talk
radio. Did anybody catch Sean Hannity’s Harvard rant about it being a bastion of elite liberal snobbism in regards to the Gates’ case?</p>
<p>No, but I heard in the police report that Gates explained: “Do you know who you are dealing with”. If that is the case, I am not saying it is, then the talk show host is correct.</p>
<p>I’m very divided on this whole incident. I so sympathize with Gates, not because he’s a black man but because he’s getting up in years, was tired from a long trip and annoyed at being unable to get back in his house - I know when I’m tired, frustrated, maybe hungry and just not feeling well that I can be really, really touchy and sometimes apt to explode if something rubs me the wrong way.</p>
<p>So I sympathize with Gates as an older person who is just getting worn out and annoyed by life sometimes.</p>
<p>OTOH, for our president to weigh in on this was just really, really not cool. He may be a personal friend to Gates, but he did the man a real disservice. The whole thing would probably be a complete non-issue by now if not for Obama’s remarks during his defense of the health care reform bill. I watched that whole speech and the Q & A that followed, and frankly it just didn’t seem to be going that well. Then the question was asked about the “incident in Cambridge” and he seemed to just sort of milk it. I was very turned off.</p>
<p>This whole ordeal makes me lawl.</p>