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Yep! dat is now anodda debate point... seems some feel he should not as Prez offer personal opinions on race.... even heard a blk guy pon tv saying dat he was wrong to preface his comment wid di fak dat Gates was a fren....
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Re: Was the Prez irresponsible in commenting on Gates issue?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Yep! dat is now anodda debate point... seems some feel he should not as Prez offer personal opinions on race.... even heard a blk guy pon tv saying dat he was wrong to preface his comment wid di fak dat Gates was a fren.... </div></div>
I suppose that if he didn't comment then we'd be getting another debate about why he didn't comment...poor guy
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Re: Was the Prez irresponsible in commenting on Gates issue?
even di cop who involved is having his say re dat.. but as usual dem restate wat he said as dem point of focus.. Him neva seh dem was chupid, him seh dem behaved chupidly... Whole odda meaning, buuuuuutttComment
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Re: Was the Prez irresponsible in commenting on Gates issue?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: amberal37</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Yep! dat is now anodda debate point... seems some feel he should not as Prez offer personal opinions on race.... even heard a blk guy pon tv saying dat he was wrong to preface his comment wid di fak dat Gates was a fren.... </div></div>
I suppose that if he didn't comment then we'd be getting another debate about why he didn't comment...poor guy </div></div>yep...damned if you do and such and such...
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Re: Was the Prez irresponsible in commenting on Gates issue?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Yep! dat is now anodda debate point... seems some feel he should not as Prez offer personal opinions on race.... even heard a blk guy pon tv saying dat he was wrong to preface his comment wid di fak dat Gates was a fren.... </div></div> I told you that the bklack uncletoms wouild be saying that soon. They mane sure that someblack UTom do it firts. They give him the soapbox. then they now havethe right to run wid it.
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Police debate Obama's remark
Police debate Obama's remark
One former chief says it could prompt some self-examination. Another calls it a big mistake.
By Robin Abcarian and Kim Murphy
July 24, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and Seattle -- To some police officers, President Obama was merely speaking the truth about how a certain department behaved in a difficult situation. To others, he committed the unpardonable sin of sticking his nose where it does not belong.
When Obama accused Cambridge, Mass., police officers Wednesday of acting "stupidly" when they arrested his friend, Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., he reignited smoldering feelings in departments across the country about race, police practices and citizen obligations.
Gates accused the officer of racism, a charge the officer denied.
Two well-known retired police chiefs -- Norm Stamper of Seattle and Joseph McNamara of San Jose -- agreed that Obama's language was inflammatory. Though Stamper said the president's candid remark could provoke some necessary self-examination by police officers, McNamara took a different view.
"My personal belief is that had Professor Gates been white, the outcome would have been different," Stamper said. Although the incident could have ended in a handshake and "maybe even a couple of chuckles . . . it ended up becoming a huge national issue."
Stamper said Gates was acting as "a true American" -- somebody who has "a healthy skepticism about authority." The officer "lured him outside . . . and cuffed him up."
McNamara said he thought the officer had acted appropriately right up until the moment he decided to arrest Gates, which he thought unnecessary. But Obama, he said, made a big mistake.
"He really hurt the police terribly," said McNamara, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "What bothers me is the tremendous stature that President Obama has with the minority community." Obama's comment, he said, will lead to "a very unfortunate and tremendous setback for police efforts that have been impressive over the 50 years since I became a policeman."
Obama, McNamara said, "spoke with his heart and not with his head, as he should have -- as an attorney and the president of the United States."
But to Atlanta Police Officer Antonio Matos, who is black, even if Gates had berated Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley, as alleged in the police report, "that should have been the end of it. In our profession we're supposed to have thick skin. You can't take things personally."
The incident at Gates' house on July 16 unraveled quickly.
According to an interview Gates gave to the Root, an online magazine about black issues that he edits, he discovered that the front door of his home was jammed when he returned from a trip to China. He asked his limo driver, "a large black man," to help him jimmy open the door. Someone saw the men and called police.
Gates, who said his home is owned by Harvard, was on the phone with the university to fix the door when police arrived. He answered the door but refused to step onto his porch as the officer requested. "All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck," he said, "and I realized that I was in danger."
He said to prove he was in his own home, he showed his driver's license and Harvard identification to Crowley, and became angry when the officer refused to provide his name and badge number.
Police arrested and handcuffed Gates, director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and charged him with disorderly conduct. According to the police report, Gates "refused to be cooperative" and shouted "this is what happens to black men in America."
Gates spent four hours in jail, but on Tuesday authorities said the charges had been dropped. Cambridge's mayor apologized to Gates, calling the incident "regrettable and unfortunate."
Crowley, who arrested Gates, told a Boston radio station Thursday that he thought Obama went too far.
"I think he was way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts, as he himself stated before he made that comment," he said.
Crowley, who according to the Associated Press teaches a police training course in racial profiling, said he would not apologize, because he thought he had acted appropriately.
Carol Sobel, a Los Angeles civil rights lawyer who used to work for the American Civil Liberties Union and has often represented plaintiffs against police, said she thought Obama made "a fair comment, and one probably born out of his own experience."
But was the incident racial profiling? Sobel said it's more complicated than that.
"It probably involves a degree of racial profiling, but it cuts across race." Officers, she said, "have a badge and a gun, and they are going to exercise their authority."
Verbal insolence is sometimes called "contempt of cop," she said, and offended officers may use the catchall "disorderly conduct" charge to make an arrest. But, she said, "you cannot commit the crime of disorderly conduct in your own home." Nor is it illegal to curse or flip the bird to a police officer.
"The law is clear," McNamara said. "You can't be guilty of disorderly conduct simply because you are saying bad things to a police officer."
When Stamper was an officer in the San Diego Police Department, one training tool was a book called "Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion," by George Thompson.
"He said, 'Any cop can handle nice guys and wimps,' " Stamper said. " 'If you want to be seen as a really good cop, show me what you can do when somebody says no when you tell them to roll down their window and provide their driver's license.' That stuck with me and a whole lot of police officers who now pride themselves on being able to defuse volatile situations."
Gates, for his part, told the Root that he is still stunned by his arrest. "There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. . . . The only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," he said.
[email protected]
[email protected]
Times staff writers Joel Rubin and Richard Fausset contributed to this report.Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
Mr. Vivian, [a] diversity trainer in Atlanta, said that what happened to Professor Gates was “age old” in America, but that what was different this time was that it happened in a so-called post-racial America.
Mr. Vivian, 47, said that he had been unfairly stopped by the police in the past, but that he lived by “an unwritten code” for dealing with these incidents. And Dr. Gates certainly did not obey the code, he said.
Quiet politeness is Rule No. 1 in surviving an incident of racial profiling, he said. So is the frequent use of the word “sir.”
That there is a well-known code of behavior familiar to most minorities who are stopped by the police, Mr. Vivian said, is testament enough of a problem.
“It clearly says that we have a lot of work to do,” he said.
More...Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
Don't know if he was irresponsible, but I bet he now wishes he hadn't.Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
no comment.Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> To others, he committed the unpardonable sin of sticking his nose where it does not belong.
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Dem full ah crap. Di last time look him title sey, "President and Commandeering Chief of the Armed Forces"
Dat certainly include di police force. If dem doubt it, mek dem get involved inna corruption an dem wi si how quick di FBI can com in dem likkle town an tek ova TOTAL jurisdiction.
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">No drama Obama made the comment at a press briefing on health care. He needs to put that reporter, #1 Jerk Meister Chuck Todd from NBC, in his place. Sit tight. It's coming.</span>Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
"The officer "lured him outside . . . and cuffed him up."
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Dis part mi too noh get. Why was it necessary fi get him outside? Dem noh suppose fi charge yuh fi misconduct inside ah yuh own house? Mi kno sey dem duh it all di time. Dem hav all kina likkle loop-holes den caa charge yuh wid inna yuh house.Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: J kid</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
"The officer "lured him outside . . . and cuffed him up."
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Dis part mi too noh get. Why was it necessary fi get him outside? Dem noh suppose fi charge yuh fi misconduct inside ah yuh own house? Mi kno sey dem duh it all di time. Dem hav all kina likkle loop-holes den caa charge yuh wid inna yuh house. </div></div>If you don't get it you are acceptable to it. If they got him outside, that could support a better story and probably support a charge of caught in the act of breaking in his home. Since the police officer already knew a case like that would be weak if he got in the house, having him outside, would be able to say hi did not get in the house. You see he has no right in the houseif he was not invited. Once a police officer is invited in a house,they are free to search it. Without invitation to the homeowner, they can't legally enter it unless with search warrant.
Otherwise them could do so if the are in the process to save a life,or to interrupt an suspected crime.Comment
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Re: Police debate Obama's remark
Obama speaks to police officer in Gates case
Posted: 02:41 PM ET
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama said Friday he told the police officer who arrested an African-American Harvard professor that he did not mean to malign the Cambridge Police Department when he said the department “acted stupidly.”
“Because this has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think, I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. (James) Crowley specifically,” Obama said. “And I could have calibrated those words differently. And I told this to Sgt. Crowley.”
Obama spoke at the White House daily news briefing, an hour after police unions in Massachusetts called on him to apologize.
He did not apologize for his remark, but repeated that he believed his choice of words was unfortunate.
The president said he continues to believe, “based on what I have heard, that police overreacted,” and he also believes that the professor — his friend, Robert Louis Gates Jr. — “probably overreacted as well.”
“My sense is you have got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved,” he said.
cnn.comComment
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Re: Was the Prez irresponsible in commenting on Gates issue?
the answer is not Yes or No (whether he was irresponsible)
its a bit more dimensional..
The proud black man in me says NO, he is "erring" (since he obviously didnt have all the facts) on the side of his culture and experience... The "smart" black man in me says he should have probably deflect the question.. something to the effect of a "the issue is being investigated at the local level and it is inappropriate for me to comment at this time, so lets talk about health care...."
Its sad thought that the leader of the free world is now being asked/expected to APOLOGISE to a police officer after he arrested a black professor at his home..
A mean cmon.. lets think about the atrocities of this place called earth..Didnt GWB start a war on a nation of people, cause thousands of death from both Iraqis and American soldier.. on the pretence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.. No WMD, who asking him to apologise??
Whether Obama was right or wrong to have commented the way he did.. mi pass that.. personally mi woulda did prefer if he had wagged the (media) tail instead of making the media wag the dog.. but hey, him nuh perfect, the only perfect man was Eddie P. George "Blinds" Seaga.. (ok I know, mi loose it deh so
).. buts seriously.. it guh suh.. Him probably shoulda look inna him presidential crystal ball and know seh him utterances was precisely what the spin doctors were waiting on to go weave them proganda against him..
One thing for sure, its being made clear who is the master and whats the slaves place..
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