TRANSCRIPT OF GATES 911 CALL

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911 caller in Gates case to hold news conference today

911 caller in Gates case to hold news conference today
By Globe Staff

It all began with a well-meaning call to Cambridge Police, an attempt to just be a good citizen. Lucia Whalen could never have known it would mushroom into a national controversy.

Today at noon, Whalen, the woman whose 911 call led to the encounter between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Police Sergeant James Crowley, will hold a news conference to tell her side of the story. She'll meet with the media at a park near Cambridge's Fresh Pond Mall.

The white police officer's July 16 arrest of the noted black academic sparked a heated debate over police relations with minorities. President Obama stepped into the fray last week, saying Cambridge police "acted stupidly." He later expressed regret for his words and invited Gates and Crowley to the White House to meet with him and have a beer, hoping to turn the case into a "teachable moment." That meeting is slated for 6 p.m. Thursday.

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Powell weighs in on Gates incident

In an interview with CNN's Larry King, former Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that both the Cambridge police and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates were to blame for last week's incident.
Saying he has suffered from racial profiling "many times," the general suggested that Gates could have handled the situation differently. He urged young people confronted by the police to "cooperate. Don't make the situation more difficult."
Powell later added, "Do you get angry? Yes. Do you manifest that anger? You protest, you try to get things fixed, but it's kind of a better course of action to take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse.

The full exchange on Gates:
KING: You're saying Gates was wrong?

POWELL: I'm saying that Skip, perhaps in this instance, might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer, and that might have been the end of it. I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal. But, he's just home from China, just home from New York. All he wanted to do was get to bed.
His door was jammed. And so he was in a mood where...
KING: What about those who say he brings the whole history into that body of a black movement?
Story continues below

(CROSSTALK)
POWELL: That may well be the case. But I still think that it might well have been resolved in a different manner if we didn't have this verbal altercation between the two of them.
So, my first teaching point for young people, especially, not for Dr. Gates, that the young people, especially, is, when the police are looking into something, and if you're involved in it in one way or another, cooperate. Don't make the situation more difficult. And I think in this case, the situation was made more difficult.
And you could part on the part of the Cambridge Police Department. Once they felt they had to bring Dr. Gates out of the house and to handcuff him, I would have thought at that point some adult supervision would have stepped in and said, OK, look, it is his house. Come on, let's not take this any further. Take the handcuffs off. Goodnight, Dr. Gates.
And on racial profiling:
KING: Were you ever racially profiled?

POWELL: Yes, many times.
KING: And didn't you ever bring anger to it?
POWELL: Of course. But, you know, anger is best controlled. And sure I got mad.
I got mad when I, as a national security adviser to the president of the United States, I went down to meet somebody at Reagan National Airport and nobody recognized -- nobody thought I could possibly be the national security adviser to the president. I was just a black guy at Reagan National Airport.
And it was only when I went up to the counter and said, "Is my guest here who's waiting for me?" did somebody say, "Oh, you're General Powell." It was inconceivable to him that a black guy could be the national security adviser.
KING: How do you deal with things like that?
POWELL: You just suck it up. What are you going to do? It was a teaching point for him. Yes, I'm the national security adviser, I'm black. And watch, I can do the job. So, you have this kind of -- there is no African-American in this country who has not been exposed to this kind of situation.
Do you get angry? Yes. Do you manifest that anger? You protest, you try to get things fixed, but it's kind of a better course of action to take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse.

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Gates' Arrest Was Nothing Compared to Evan Howard's


I may be the only black person in America who doesn’t give a tinker’s dam that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. got arrested.

Yes, I can hear BlackAmericaWeb.com readers now: “There goes Kane again, being an Uncle Tom” or “What would you expect from a black conservative and a Republican?” But I have what I think are valid reasons for my initial reaction to Gates’ arrest on July 16.

And that reaction was: To hell with Henry Louis Gates Jr. I’m more concerned about the arrest of Evan Howard.

A Cambridge, Mass., police sergeant arrested Gates, charged him with disorderly conduct and had the Harvard professor spend about four hours in the city’s booking center. Howard emerged from a Baltimore store one Friday night, got nailed for trespassing and had to spend 56 hours in Bodymore, Murderland’s Central Booking and Intake Facility.

Fifty-six hours.

Howard’s arrest was every bit as unjust, every bit as ridiculous, as Gates’. Howard is just as black as Gates. And the only reason you heard about Gates’ arrest and not Howard’s is that Howard is neither a Harvard University professor nor a personal friend of the president of the United States.

Gates’ arrest has drawn criticism from the likes of President Obama, Jesse Jackson, black elected officials and black journalists. Howard’s arrest drew criticism of a bunch of black folks who were all but ignored.

Obama, Jackson and Gates himself have long bemoaned the fate of all those black men in American jails and prisons. But that criticizes a condition and policy without criticizing anything at all. Those three men know that many of those black men in prison belong there. What happened to Howard was part of an insidious arrest policy that resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of young black men with no prior criminal records who were sent to jail on the flimsiest of evidence and the pettiest of reasons. And it was implemented by a liberal, Democratic mayor and supported by black, liberal, Democratic officials.

At the height of the policy, in the years 2004 and 2005, we heard not one word critical of that policy from the likes of Obama, Jackson and Gates. And Obama and Jackson had plenty of opportunity to do it when they visited Baltimore.

The policy was the brainchild of Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, whom Baltimoreans rewarded for his jack booting of young black men by sending him on to the governor’s office in 2006. That goes to prove, as I’ve been saying all along, that when you bring up the issue of all those black men in jails and prisons, you might want to look at who’s sending them there. No one has brought up the fact that Gates was arrested in the bluest city in the bluest state in the nation.

Few black liberal Democrats in Maryland spoke out against O’Malley’s draconian arrest policies that disproportionately and adversely impacted young black men. Maryland state Del. Jill Carter of Baltimore was one of the few; today she remains marginalized, ostracized and stigmatized by most black Democrats because she dared oppose Fuehrer O’Malley.

The policies were part of O’Malley’s “zero tolerance” philosophy, which he adopted from New York City. Yes, it’s the same policy that resulted in the death of Amadou Diallo, but O’Malley had no problem with it. Nor did his loyal legion of black Boobacrats.

Instead of writing citations for offenses like loitering, trespassing and public urination, cops would arrest offenders. Some, like Howard, contended they weren’t even committing those minor offenses. They say the cops, to get their arrest numbers up to comply with O’Malley’s demands, simply jacked them, sent them to central booking
..... and made up the charges.

I remember interviewing one man who was arrested for trespassing. He told me central booking was filled with young black men arrested on the same charge. Many had jobs and had their uncashed paychecks still in their pockets. They were stressed out because they knew the long, multi-hour stretch in central booking put their jobs in jeopardy.

Only Carter and a few other black Democrats protested this state of affairs. The president of the Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police raised a bigger stink about the arrests than most black Democrats in Maryland. He said cops would come to him complaining about the arrest policies.

When someone proposed legislation that would allow those young black men to at least have those questionable arrests expunged from their records, the move was opposed by a – you guessed it – liberal black Democrat. O’Malley wanted to be governor, you see, and such a law might make him look bad.

So when it was a question of Democrats gaining political power, black Democrats in Maryland had no problem throwing young black men under the bus. And then backing it up.

Gates getting arrested in Cambridge? He’s darned lucky. If he’d lived in Baltimore during the Stalag O’Malley years, he’d be working on arrest number 27 right about now.