Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

**Panajar** · 07-21-2009, 11:49 AM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: neutral</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> let's remain sympathetic to the man's plight even though he himself is not when it comes to other black people in similar situations. </div></div>

I dont see why anyone should be sympathetic to his plight,if the officer approached him in the middle of bashing down a door all he had to do was explain himself and be a bit more courteous,the matter would have ended there,the police officers are not mind readers to know that it`s his own door,the man may be a scholar but his behaviour certainly wasnt scholarly when approached by the cops,he saw it as an excuse to cry foul because he was cocksure in the fact that he wasnt comitting any wrong.
Some black people are too ready to be discourteous and abusive then jump up and down excitedly and shout that it`s because they are black. </div></div>

<span style="font-weight: bold">He was not "in the middle of bashing down a door" .</span>
You need to take a second look.

Here is prof Gates side of the story.

<span style="font-weight: bold">As he was talking to the Harvard Real Estate office on his portable phone in his house, he observed a uniformed officer on his front porch.</span> When Professor Gates opened the door, the officer immediately asked him to step outside. Professor Gates remained inside his home and asked the officer why he was there. The officer indicated that he was responding to a 911 call about a breaking and entering in progress at this address. Professor Gates informed the officer that he lived there and was a faculty member at Harvard University. The officer then asked Professor Gates whether he could prove that he lived there and taught at Harvard. Professor Gates said that he could, and turned to walk into his kitchen, where he had left his wallet. The officer followed him. Professor Gates handed both his Harvard University identification and his valid Massachusetts driver’s license to the officer. Both include Professor Gates’ photograph, and the license includes his address
FULL STORY PROF.. GATES

**neutral** · 07-21-2009, 12:19 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

The assumption that "Some black people are too ready to be discourteous and abusive then jump up and down excitedly and shout that it`s because they are black" is a form of racial profiling too. </div></div>

yeah it is,...but it does happen,..and the funny thing is seeing some people of colour who wouldnt usually identify themselves as black seizing on the opportunity to cry racism,and using the "its because I`m black" mantra.

**Dr.Dudd** · 07-21-2009, 12:37 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Pepper</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I ran in here with my heart pounding wondering what Skip could have done. Whew!

Racial profiling...in Cambridge of all places? Imagine that. </div></div> What do you mean by that??

**Dr.Dudd** · 07-21-2009, 12:41 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: neutral</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> let's remain sympathetic to the man's plight even though he himself is not when it comes to other black people in similar situations. </div></div>

I dont see why anyone should be sympathetic to his plight,if the officer approached him in the middle of bashing down a door all he had to do was explain himself and be a bit more courteous,the matter would have ended there,the police officers are not mind readers to know that it`s his own door,the man may be a scholar but his behaviour certainly wasnt scholarly when approached by the cops,he saw it as an excuse to cry foul because he was cocksure in the fact that he wasnt comitting any wrong.
Some black people are too ready to be discourteous and abusive then jump up and down excitedly and shout that it`s because they are black. </div></div>You must think everywher inthe world is like the little paradise you live in eh??
All I can say, like I use to say to him is, .... <span style="font-weight: bold">your time will come.</span>

**Dr.Dudd** · 07-21-2009, 12:47 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: neutral</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-style: italic">I dont see why anyone should be sympathetic to his plight,if the officer approached him in the middle of bashing down a door all he had to do was explain himself and be a bit more courteous,the matter would have ended there,the police officers are not mind readers to know that it`s his own door,the man may be a scholar but his behaviour certainly wasnt scholarly when approached by the cops,he saw it as an excuse to cry foul because he was cocksure in the fact that he wasnt comitting any wrong.
Some black people are too ready to be discourteous and abusive then jump up and down excitedly and shout that it`s because they are black.</span> </div></div>Does anyone seriously think the police report is completely truthful and the man refused to identify himself by name and as the owner of the home?

The assumption that "Some black people are too ready to be discourteous and abusive then jump up and down excitedly and shout that it`s because they are black" is a form of racial profiling too. </div></div>That would be the last man to do it. He use to talk just like Nutral. He traced his white ancestors and eve whe ht traced Africans was not very objective of their involvement inthe slave trade. Inthat he played up the stories tgat the locals that only talk whenthey wer taught, about their ancestors selling slaves. For all I know they may be th eones who wer not fit enough to be sold.

**julie*mango** · 07-21-2009, 12:50 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

that remind me of the time when mi did near 8 months pregnant last year and had to break into mi house an climb troo broken glass and cut miself...go open di front door fi go back inna mi van an get mi purse mi si police outside...

dem seh concerned neighbor call dem to report home invasion

all dem ask mi was fi mi ID which mi had to go in di van to get an dat was it...

**Suesumba** · 07-21-2009, 01:00 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

your neighbours don't know what you look like? or what kind of vehicle you drive?

**julie*mango** · 07-21-2009, 01:09 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

I don't think so..I broke in at the back of my house and I think it is one of the neighbors behind me who called.....at any rate they would not have a good view of me

**Suesumba** · 07-21-2009, 01:13 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

neighbourhood watch in effect.

**Dr.Dudd** · 07-21-2009, 01:19 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _______</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I don't think so..I broke in at the back of my house and I think it is one of the neighbors behind me who called.....at any rate they would not have a good view of me </div></div> Theerr is niothingb wrongwith the neighbors calling, if they don;t recognize you. What is wrong is that these poor excuse for police that they select onthe basis if how racist they are, just don't believ a word a black person tells them unless it is admittingto bing a criminal.

**Panajar** · 07-21-2009, 01:34 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<span style="font-weight: bold">All charges dropped ...They realize that they mess with the wrong black man. i knew this was some b@ll crap charge.
</span>
<span style="font-size: 20pt">Charges against Harvard scholar dropped</span>
Cops responding to report of break-in arrested black scholar at home

July 21: Police responding to a call about a home break-in arrest famed African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. WHDH's Byron Barnett reports.

NBC News Channel

Scholar's arrest raises racism claims
July 21: Police responding to a call about a home break-in arrest famed African-American Harvard scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr. as he tries to force open his front door. WHDH's Byron Barnett reports.
Correcting the record on race
Weighing Obama's 'no excuses' speech
At NAACP, Obama urges responsibility
Celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela

<span style="font-weight: bold">BOSTON - Prosecutors on Tuesday agreed to drop a disorderly conduct charge against Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after the noted African-American scholar accused police of racism when he was arrested at his home following a report of a break-in there.

In a statement, the city and police department of Cambridge, Mass., said they had "recommended to the Middlesex County District Attorney that the criminal charge against Professor Gates not proceed."
</span>
"This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the FULL STORY

**blugiant** · 07-21-2009, 01:36 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _______</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I don't think so..I broke in at the back of my house and I think it is one of the neighbors behind me who called.....at any rate they would not have a good view of me </div></div> Theerr is niothingb wrongwith the neighbors calling, if they don;t recognize you. What is wrong is that these poor excuse for police that they select onthe basis if how racist they are, just don't believ a word a black person tells them unless it is admittingto bing a criminal. </div></div>

doo yu tink wannabee mzungu gate lived inn wan mzungu ar blakk neighbarhood? iff popo wass cawled too wan mzungu neighbarhood bout blakk man breakinn inn a oouse wood dey react diffarantlee qwestianinn wat de wannabee mzungu doinn deer? muta sey itt nuh good fii live inna mzungu countree too lang. mii sey dem racist popo juss remindinn gates dat imm blakks ann dat popo arginated fram dem mzungu gangs wey use fii hunt downn runnaway slaves

**Yuriatin** · 07-21-2009, 01:42 PM

Same Crap, Different Day

Yeah, yeah - I know it's long.

<span style="font-size: 17pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">The Perils of Being Black Officer</span></span>

By Wil Haygood
Updated: Tuesday, July 21, 2009

BOSTON -- <span style="color: #FF0000">This old city has <span style="text-decoration: underline"><span style="font-weight: bold">long</span></span> been bewitched and enlivened by the racial dynamics of black and white.</span> Sweet uplift traveling alongside bitter tonic. The warring sagas have often seared right into the consciousness of America itself.

In 1863 the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was formed consisting of freedmen and former slaves who distinguished themselves during the Civil War. That seemed to set a progressive story line. In 1966 Edward Brooke was elected a U.S senator from here, becoming the first black elected to that body since Reconstruction. In 2006 Deval Patrickwas elected the state's first black governor. Bostonians -- this capital city being the political nerve center of the state -- took particular pride in such advancements.

But there have been racial setbacks that have roiled the black populace here.

In 1974 a desegregation plan unleashed havoc as hundreds of whites morphed into angry mobs. In 1988 inmate Willie Horton became a symbolic talisman in the presidential campaign of Gov. Michael Dukakis: Horton, a convicted murderer, had been released under a weekend furlough program backed by Dukakis and eventually committed armed robbery and rape. Some saw the GOP ads featuring Horton as racial flame-throwing: Horton was black.

Two years later, in 1989, Charles Stuart said his pregnant wife had been shot by a "black man" who rushed up to his car. Boston police began stopping young black men, hungry for an arrest. There was no black man; Stuart later jumped from a bridge and died. His brother had implicated him in the murder.

<span style="color: #FF0000">And this is what happened on a January night in 1995. A young black man had been gunned down in an eatery. A neighborhood resident dialed 911 claiming an officer had been shot: He later said it was the quickest way to get help in an inner city establishment.</span> Four black suspects were being pursued across a 10-mile area. On a dead-end street, police believed they had cornered one of the suspects. <span style="font-weight: bold">They pummeled him before he uttered a word, using a baton, fists, and boot-laden feet. The "suspect" spurted blood, dropped to the cold ground, tried to get up, only to be beaten more. His gurgling words were unintelligible through blood and pain.

The "suspect" was actually Michael Cox, a decorated undercover police officer who had himself been in pursuit of the suspects, had even been in the lead chase vehicle. And who happened to be black.</span>

At least two and possibly three officers participated in Cox's beating. More than two dozen officers would eventually arrive at the scene, some who held supervisory positions. But in the follow-up investigation, no officer took responsibility for the beating. Cox survived.

"The Boston police department chewed up one of its own and spit him out," says Dick Lehr, author of the recently published "The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide." Lehr spent four years unraveling the saga which exposed anew the concern of black police officers working undercover. In New York City seven weeks ago, Omar Edwards, an off-duty black officer, was shot dead by a white officer who mistook him for a criminal suspect.

The Cox case would draw comparisons to the infamous 1991 Los Angeles Rodney King case, in which King -- who wasn't a police officer -- had been beaten by police officers, a scene caught on videotape. "It never became as sensational as the Rodney King beating because there was no videotape," says Rob Sinsheimer, one of Cox's trial lawyers. "But if you look at the beating, stroke for stroke, it could have actually been worse than the King beating."

In the end the Cox case would come to involve a city investigation as well as a federal probe, and the mysterious actions of a white officer by the name of Kenny Conley who was at the scene that night, and would come to be defended by noted Washington lawyer Robert Bennett.

In the mid-1990s, there were streets that snaked through certain Boston neighborhoods -- Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan -- that many characterized as mean streets. There was gang warfare. The crime stats were breaking records.

Lehr was working as an investigative reporter for the Boston Globe at the time. He covered city corruption and the Irish mafia. Secrets in dark places enthralled him. He thought the Cox case would be solved by those who perpetrated it: the police themselves. "Mike wanted accountability," Lehr says, "but he wanted it inside the department. When that didn't happen and he's getting a different kind of beating -- silence by his own department -- well, that's his evolution, his pursuit of justice."

The author is sitting in his SUV at curbside on Blue Hill Avenue. It's where the chase began that night.

"So someone called in 'Officer down!' " Lehr says. "It got corrected during the chase, but it doesn't mean everyone heard it."

Lehr is scanning an old map he used to traverse the mean streets during research. "I wanted to re-create the whole night and how they -- the police and the suspects -- came together," he says, driving off to follow that twisted night. "I don't really like that term 'social realism,' but that's what I was after."

There were four suspects in a gold Lexus. Their getaway leader was Robert "Smut" Brown.

"Smut turns here," says Lehr, his reading glasses now in his lap.

There were already many police officers in pursuit, among them Ian Daley, Jim Burgio and Dave Williams, all three of whom would draw Lehr's attention. "Burgio and Williams join the chase right here on Blue Hill Avenue," Lehr says. "They take a right onto American Legion. Ian Daley is behind them."

Lehr, rolling through traffic on a cloudy day, says: "Smut turns here. This is the Franklin Hills housing project. One of the things I learned while doing this book is that gang members on the run are always trying to take the cops into the housing projects. You can shake them. The streets get narrower."

Midway through the chase -- alternating between high and low speeds, radios crackling -- two other officers, anti-gang unit partners Mike Cox and Craig Jones, would join the pursuit. "Mike and Craig take over in the lead car," Lehr says. "Right here on Harvard Street. They take a right on Itasca. Smut's destination is Woodruff Way. Right here is where one of the suspects threw a gun out of the car."

Beyond Woodruff Way lay woods. Smut Brown imagined the woods would serve as a getaway for him and his cohort.

Lehr goes on: "Then they cut up Norfolk Street here. I know all of this because I got the police tapes through lawsuits. They come up Morton Street. Take a right. They're flying up here. Cops are swirling everywhere. Smut's in the Lexus briefing everybody about the woods. And this right here is the big turn to the dead end."

But almost immediately after Smut Brown and gang reach the dead-end, Cox and his partner Jones are upon them. Jones takes off in one direction after a suspect; Cox attempts to hurdle the fence in pursuit of a suspect, but slips. And then, quick as the fire that appears from a struck match, his world goes blank and bloody. He's being beaten.

Two officers are upon him: Jim Burgio and Dave Williams. Ian Daley arrives on the scene within minutes. According to Lehr, Burgio begins the beating. "I think the first blow came from Burgio," he says. "To me, Burgio is the primary beater. He's the one with his boot in Cox's face. It was Rodney King time. They thought they had Smut Brown." (Burgio and Williams would be found liable for assault in a federal civil trial. Daley would be cleared.)

Lehr believes it was another officer who had come upon the scene who suddenly realized the "suspect" they had beaten, who was now lying semiconscious on the icy ground, was actually undercover officer Mike Cox.

Lehr says officers, after some quick huddling, began vanishing into the night. "Running away," as he puts it. And supervisors who arrived on the scene concocted a tale of police fantasia: Cox slipped on ice.

The story spread down hallways and around corners at the police department.

Only Cox's wife, upon seeing his injuries at the hospital that night, knew better: Kimberly Cox was a medical school student. Those were not the kind of injuries you get from a fall on ice.

While Cox's primary beater was Burgio, a white cop, the other two cops involved, Williams and Daley, were black. Thus the tale turned on black, white and police blue.

There would be months of recuperation for Mike Cox.

Absent a civil rights battle cry on Cox's behalf, activists were bewildered about what to do. It took the newspapers a little while to catch up with the police department subterfuge. "I think it was a failing of Boston media at the time," Lehr says. "We didn't report on it until weeks later. And the black clergy never made an issue of it because Mike didn't want them to."

A city investigation, led by the district attorney, yielded nothing. So city investigators turned to the U.S. Justice Department. Federal prosecutors pinned their sights on Kenny Conley, one of the officers at Woodruff Way that night, believing he had witnessed officers beating Cox. Conley swore otherwise. The feds didn't believe him and he was indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

Lehr believed Conley was telling the truth -- that he didn't see the beating -- and attributed Conley's version of events to a condition known as "inattentional blindness," a process where one's attention is so focused on a particular situation that something otherwise apparent -- Cox being beaten yards away -- goes unseen.

There are those, however, who find Lehr's "inattentional blindness" theory difficult to believe. "There was compelling evidence that Officer Conley saw what happened," says Sinsheimer, the Cox attorney. "To put it another way, I have doubts about this tunnel-vision theory. In my view there is only one hero in this case, Michael Cox. Lehr has taken a big leap of faith."

While awaiting a date to report to prison, Conley was put in touch with attorney Robert Bennett. "I absolutely believed this kid," Bennett says. "They wanted Conley to break this blue wall of silence. But he had leaped out of the moving car to chase one of the suspects."

With the eventual dismissal of Conley's case, Cox was still searching for justice.

Dick Lehr, 55, lives in Belmont, a small town just outside Boston, with his wife, Karin, and four children. He grew up in Connecticut, went to prep school, went to Harvard. After Harvard he got small jobs on movie sets; he thought he might write screenplays. He wound up at the Hartford Courant. He enrolled nights at the University of Connecticut Law School. He finished there, then got hired at the Boston Globe.

He figured he'd unravel the lies told by men and women in powerful positions. Ethnic rivalries and old wounds fascinated him.

In between years as an investigative reporter, he co-wrote books about the mafia and collusion between corrupt FBI agents and mobsters. "It's about the abuse of power, accountability," he says of his work.

He left daily journalism to write books. He also teaches at Boston University.

The saga of Mike Cox got him back out on the streets.

Of the four suspects on the run that night, two would be convicted in the murder of Lyle Jackson, whose shooting prompted the chase. Two other suspects, Smut Brown and Ron "Boogie-Down" Tinsley, would be acquitted.

Lehr grew close to some of the family members who lived on these streets during his research. "I'm a white guy from Connecticut. I can only understand so much of Irish culture, or black culture," he says. "But there was a moment in my research when I got a sense of what it must have been like to have been born in Smut Brown's shoes. These are loving people living in poverty and in high-crime areas. You look at Smut Brown's rap sheet and you think: bad guy. But there's so much love. It's well-meaning in a loving sense, but then there's the pull of the neighborhood."

Brown's life didn't exactly get stitched back together. He wound up in prison in Maine on a drug charge, where he remains.

New York State Sen. Eric Adams was a police officer in New York City for 22 years. He left the force in 2006. Adams has been outspoken about the circumstances surrounding minority officers -- "black or brown," he says -- who are shot or maimed by fellow officers. "If you had a group of black cops accidentally shooting young white students or beating up white professionals, you would immediately see national research into finding out why this is happening," Adams says. "It's a national failure to not recognize that we need to deal with the psychology of policing and how we bring stereotypes into the law enforcement environment."

The beatings and shootings of minority officers has led some to wonder why any minority cop would risk such an assignment. "It's a quick way to promotion," Adams says of the risky undercover work. "Taking the exams is one way, and another is taking these dangerous jobs. Go undercover to buy drugs or guns."

This is what happened to Mike Cox.

He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. Smut Brown was a key defense witness. Brown's testimony of what happened at the fence that night had never been sought until the lawsuit. He told jurors what he had seen: men with badges beating Cox.

Cox was awarded $900,000 plus legal fees, a total settlement of $1.3 million.

<span style="color: #FF0000">The Boston Police Department did not discipline a single officer who participated in the beating or who was there. Although two of the officers, Jim Burgio and Dave Williams, were later dismissed from the force for using excessive force. (Williams would be reinstated by an arbitrator.)</span>

"No comment," came the reply from Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, when asked about Lehr's book.

Kenny Conley eventually returned to the department, where he works as a patrol officer.

Mike Cox, who declined to comment, is now 44 years old. He and his wife have three children. Cox returned to the police department. He is now assistant chief of the Bureau of Professional Standards. The Department of Internal Affairs, which failed to bring his abusers to justice, falls under his leadership.

Photo: By Cj Gunther For The Washington Post

**Dr.Dudd** · 07-21-2009, 01:47 PM

Re: Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: blakkgiant</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _______</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I don't think so..I broke in at the back of my house and I think it is one of the neighbors behind me who called.....at any rate they would not have a good view of me </div></div> Theerr is niothingb wrongwith the neighbors calling, if they don;t recognize you. What is wrong is that these poor excuse for police that they select onthe basis if how racist they are, just don't believ a word a black person tells them unless it is admittingto bing a criminal. </div></div>

doo yu tink wannabee mzungu gate lived inn wan mzungu ar blakk neighbarhood? iff popo wass cawled too wan mzungu neighbarhood bout blakk man breakinn inn a oouse wood dey react diffarantlee qwestianinn wat de wannabee mzungu doinn deer? muta sey itt nuh good fii live inna mzungu countree too lang. mii sey dem racist popo juss remindinn gates dat imm blakks ann dat popo arginated fram dem mzungu gangs wey use fii hunt downn runnaway slaves </div></div> Ther are no black neighborhoods ari\ound her that even the blacks that there would stay iof they had a choice. Ther are no white neighborhoods either. Ther are just neighborhoods. since the state has about 10% blacks ewvery neighborhood outside of Boston is majority white.
What you don't realize is that eveb if you live in a neighborhood for decades.
Your neighbor may be new,and will likely call the police onyou if you are black. I mam on eof thelongest living person in my neighborhood.
majority move in after me. And yes I am in e minority.
move out

**Dr.Dudd** · 07-21-2009, 01:50 PM

Re: Same Crap, Different Day

This have nothing todo with Boston police department though. They are different and behave different. They are still racist like themajority of government and private sector organzations are though. It is the policy of the country.

Prof. Henry Louis Gates ARRESTED in

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