Bluemoon. Just because a case gets thrown out, doesn’t mean the person did nothing wrong. It just means the judge is the one who ultimately decides the case. You can’t dispute the fact that Gates decided to take the “high road” and want to move on AFTER he learned the incident was on TAPE, Crowley :police was a respected officer who taught a PROFILING class, and there were NO witnesses backing him up. All that lawsuit talk just turned into “lets move on”… I would too if I looked like a :cussing. Obama showed no better judgment by commenting before knowing the facts. But I guess :beer will make it all better. I don’t think every cop is right all the time no matter what. But in THIS case. The cops were right. Gates was wrong. Not wrong enough to warrant having a conviction on his record. But wrong enough to get arrested. More than likely Gates has no prior arrests/convictions. Most judges give a first time offender a free pass. Especially if they’ve stayed out of trouble their whole life.
Bluemoon06,
“So what you are saying is that the police saving face in front of a few people is grounds for taking a crippled old professor to jail when there are real threats to life and limb running amok in the town?”
No… what I am saying is IGNORING the police when they warn you multiple times that you are being disorderly in view of the public, and even upon seeing the cuffs come out, does not even give him pause ARE grounds for this old man, crippled or not, to be taken in for disorderly conduct… What are you saying, that crippled people should be allowed to be disorderly???
Like I said, if you don’t like the law, campaign against it… until then, it is the law and they currently have the right to use it…
“And you have to remember where he is. The people other than cops are university types. They are not impressed by tough cops. The cops are impressed by tough cops. This was for them.”
Yes, remember where he is… Not only are the Cambridge police but so are the HARVARD campus police, who more likely than not, KNOW Gates, and even THEY did not come forward to say Crowley was wrong… Never mind the other multi-racial officers from Cambridge or the other eight (8) citizens who had their attention drawn to this public display…
“I say that for every case that an officer gets dismissed he should have to pay a fine of $25. It is not enough to cause his wife and kids to go hungry but it will make him think twice before he performs a stupid arrest just to save face. He will have to decide if there is a crime here or does he want to risk $25.”
It is not the police’s job to be prosecutor, judge or jury…
“I was on a jury last year. During jury selection questioning they asked us if we believed the word of a police officer because he was a police officer. There was this one guy who said that if a police said it was true no matter what it is. I remember thinking this has got to be the only guy in the world that thinks that way. But now I guess there are 2.”
I never said the police are not wrong… I said in this case, they were not… You STILL cannot get past that not only were there (8) citizen witnesses who did not come forward to dispute the police, but that TWO separate police departments were ON THE SCENE, and NONE OF THEM, disputed the arrest…
That combined with the fact that once the recordings were made public, SUPPORTING Crowley’s police report, NOT Gates, that Gates dropped his threat of a lawsuit and demand for an apology…
There has been NOTHING provided by you Bluemoon06 that disputes ANY of this… So while you may accuse me of siding with the police all the time, it is quite obvious that DESPITE THE FACTS, you will just try to find ANY reason to justify Gates, and try to find SOME reason why he shouldn’t have been arrested for Disorderly Conduct… Your argument is with the law itself… Don’t blame the police for using a law that goes back DECADES, and is used all across the country, especially when it was a textbook example if you read the statutes…
Look how many times you have tried to twist the facts of the case to create an alternative impression… Give it up… it just shows you either don’t KNOW all the facts or you simply just don’t care, and will stick with your opinion DESPITE the facts… :rolleyes
So, because that is the case, like I said, we’ll have to agree to disagree…