Racial talk swirls with Louis Gates arrest

[Dapxin]

I admit I didnt follow the entire story here but this is a snippet of what a new Yorker chap - a radio show made of the entire story

and they both seem to agree that the beer-ing end of it, is 5**** from Obama.

I think that is all to take from me. I am posting a small edit from the BBC, in case you wanna listen.
here

http://cid-8172b0be4dbc5dba.skydrive...chunk%7C_1.mp3

Edit : Modern Parlance : There is now Beer-plo-macy. Brilliant !

[Rose]

Originally Posted by DaBishop

Did ya not get it?
He's a dispassionate analyst. Gotta keep ya knickers on, be dispassionately analytical...anything less makes you human!

Automaton to the max!

[Rose]

Invite Pookie for a Beer
by Julianne Malveaux
NNPA Columnist

I just happened to be reading Dr. Price Cobbs autobiography as commentary swirled about Cambridge happenings and the President’s involvement in them.

Dr. Skip Gates was arrested in his own front yard for disorderly conduct by police officer James Crowley, who apparently didn’t like being called a racist by Gates. President Obama correctly said the arrest was stupid (if you can’t be disorderly anyplace else, you ought to get a pass in your own front yard), and then he backpedaled a bit and invited Gates and Crowley to the White House for a beer. Gates accepted, but there is no word from Crowley.

What does this have to do with Dr. Price Cobbs? Cobbs, an octogenarian San Francisco-based psychiatrist, is one of the wisest men I know. He wrote the book, Black Rage, in 1968, to attempt to explain the anger that so many African-Americans were feeling then about the slights they had swallowed personally and historically.

In his new book, My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement, Cobbs examines his own life and its race matters in context, examining the anger, expressed and swallowed, that so many African-Americans felt. I wasn’t on the porch with Skip Gates and James Crowley, so I don’t know exactly what was said. And as a veteran of police encounters (I could tell you about the time a White man tried to break into my home in DC and because I was “bellicose” and would not settle down, the police tried to arrest ME), my sympathy lies squarely with Gates.

If he raised his voice, and he says he did not, it is certainly understandable. And obviously officer Crowley is an arrogant White man who had the discretionary power to arrest Gates because he didn’t like his attitude. Somebody so fully disagreed with his decision that charges were dropped before, not after arraignment.

The Newsweek journalist Ellis Cose updated Price Cobbs’ work with a 1993 book, The Rage of a Privileged Class.

He wrote about the Black folk who were literally seething at the micro inequities they experienced, the racial slights they encountered as a matter of course.

Going to work on a Saturday and being challenged by a security guard. Hearing locks turn as an expensive store is approached. Being followed as you shop. Being accosted, rudely, by a White police office on your own-self porch after returning home from an international flight and simply wanting peace. Dr. Gates said he didn’t yell, but I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

Class is written all over this encounter. Years ago, there was a Washington DC statistic that more than a third of all Black men had been stopped will driving. Driving while Black is an occupational hazard for too many African-Americans.

If you scratch a brother you will find some kind of a police encounter. Being made to get out of the new Porsche on one’s knees and White shirt while the tags are run. Having a car torn up, supposedly in a search for drugs, and then not reassembled when nothing is found and there is no apology, either.

Being spoken harshly to, disparagingly to, in front of one’s spouse. Remember the movie Crash?

My nephew, Anyi Malik Howell, a budding journalist at Youth Radio spent a May weekend in jail because he “resembled” a robber whose description was simple – Black and over 6 feet.

The robber’s footprint revealed a man with a size 10 shoe. Anyi wears a size 16 or 17. No matter. He spent the weekend in jail, no apology, because he “resembled”.

In another instance, he was stopped because his 1986 Cadillac (don’t ask) was mistaken for a stolen 1996 Toyota – the police officer entered the license plate incorrectly and stopped him at an Oakland BART station, accused him of theft, pulled a gun on him, and had him in tears on his knees in front of his coworkers.

After one of his friends pleaded for the officer to check the plate number again, he did, and abruptly said, it’s not the car.

Again, no apology.

Skip Gates has access to the White House by virtue of his position at Harvard. Anyi and Pookie and tens of thousands like them don’t have access, and nobody wants to hear what happened to them. President Obama was right on time when he suggested the arrest was stupid, and then he reverted to his chosen role as conciliator when he invited Gates and Crowley for a beer.

If he really wants to have a beer to talk about the many ways police misuse their discretion and then refuse to apologize when found wrong, he should reach out to Anyi. Or Pookie. Or a brother who lives a stone’s throw from the White House and just got pulled over in his new car because race still matters way too much in matters of so-called law enforcement.

[Magic]

Sergeant cleared in 8 citizen complaints

Cambridge police release details of Crowley’s record
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | August 20, 2009 boston.com
Eight citizen complaints have been filed against Cambridge police Sergeant James M. Crowley during his 11 years on the force, including two by black males who alleged racial bias, according to internal affairs reports made public yesterday.

Crowley, whose arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. last month sparked a national debate on race that was inadvertently stoked and then calmed by President Obama, was cleared of wrongdoing in all eight instances by internal affairs investigators, according to reports provided by the Police Department.

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas wrote that Crowley has made or helped make 422 arrests, participated in about 800 criminal investigations, and issued 1,866 citations for motor vehicle infractions and other offenses.

“It is noteworthy that despite Sergeant Crowley’s numerous arrests and citations, only eight citizen complaints have been filed against him, which represents less than 1 percent of his interactions with the public,’’ Haas said in a three-page letter that accompanied the documents.

Crowley, who is white, arrested Gates, a black professor, and charged him with disorderly conduct during the investigation of a possible break-in at his house on July 16. Authorities later dropped the charges.

Five of the eight complaints provided by Haas involved allegations that Crowley was rude to people he encountered, including motorists whom he gave tickets. But two complaints also contained accusations of racial bias.

In a 1999 complaint, a black man ticketed for driving the wrong way down a one-way street and driving while drinking alcohol said Crowley sarcastically referred to his passenger as a “homeboy.’’

And in a 2002 complaint, another driver said Crowley and other officers wrongly detained him and a friend briefly because one of the men supposedly matched the description of a light-skinned black man who had just robbed a nearby video store.

“As a young African-American male, I am especially concerned by the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation,’’ wrote the driver, whose name was redacted in the file, as were all names of complainants. “I am curious if the description of ‘black male’ immediately suspends the rights of all brown-skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.’’

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, said it is difficult to say whether eight complaints represents a significant number over 11 years, adding that it depends on a variety of factors, including where Crowley worked in Cambridge and what time of day.

But Fox said it was hardly surprising that some compl