Showing posts with label henry louis gates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label henry louis gates. Show all posts

Monday, August 3, 2009

Gates-gate is about Police Power, Not Race

From Above the Law:

As Radley Balko argues in Reason, "[t]he conversation we ought to be having in response to [Gatesgate] isn't about race, it's about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government."

More on Gates-Crowley here.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Henry Louis Gates, Questions

The following questions aren't the usual "Let's get to know you better" kind. They are leading questions, and they force you to question your own principles.

1. What is the point of the 4th Amendment if the government can tell you how to behave in your own home even after it has verified that it is your home; you have not committed a crime; and you have a legal right to be there?

2. Prof. Gates was arrested on his own front porch. The officer who arrested him had already verified his ID and appears to have been walking outside. If Prof. Gates began yelling at the police officer and belligerently demanded the officer's badge number, whose job was it to walk away and de-escalate the situation? The Harvard professor in his own home, or the police officer whose salary is being paid by the Harvard professor?

3. As soon as the police officer verified Prof. Gates' ID and realized he was the proper homeowner, did Prof. Gates have the legal right to tell the police officer to leave his property? If yes, then as a legal principle, what does it matter the choice of words that Prof. Gates used to ask the officer to leave his home?

4. Is it a crime to be verbally belligerent to a police officer in your own home when the police officer has already verified that no crime is taking place in the home? Is there ever such a thing as "contempt of cop"?

Here is the best article I've read so far on the Gates-Crowley affair (Robin Wells, July 27, 2009):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-wells/hard-truths-and-the-teach_b_245856.html

I believe that the treatment of Professor Gates was unjust and unprofessional. Yes, he was belligerent to a police officer. But that is no crime, and nowhere has Officer Crowley shown that there was any chance of a crime being committed, confirmed by the Cambridge Police Department's quick decision to drop the charges against Professor Gates. Police officers are trained to be professionals, and a professional would have recognized that an obstreperous sexagenarian who walks with a cane standing in his own house and faced with a phalanx of armed police officers is no threat...

[But] The hard truth that Professor Gates needs to hear is that he is the one who handed over his power to Officer Crowley. Letting his agitation get the better of him, Gates lost the ability to shape the outcome of the encounter and set up his own victimization by a poorly trained police officer.


Amen, sister. Basically, the police officer was unprofessional and did not handle the situation properly, but Prof. Gates could have saved himself a lot of trouble by being the bigger man. Professor Gates might not have realized he had to show the officer his state-issued ID, not just his Harvard-issued ID.

By law, you must produce state-issued ID when requested to do so by a police officer who has lawfully detained you. Most states have statutes similar to the following: “Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer." I know these types of "ID" laws sound perilously close to "Show me your papers," but the law seems clear--see U.S. Supreme Court decision Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada (2004), decided by a 5 to 4 vote. (I wonder if Justice Kennedy is now reconsidering his deciding vote.) Perhaps if Prof. Gates had known the law requires him to produce state-issued ID to an officer, the situation might not have escalated.

In any case, when a police officer needs to call backup to handle a senior citizen Harvard professor, something's amiss. As President Obama stated, "I think...that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who is in his own home."

Although Prof. Gates could have de-escalated the situation, the burden was on the officer to do so, not Prof. Gates. The Cambridge Police Department owes Mr. Gates an apology for escalating what should have been a routine check.

Bonus: Here are 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kosinski's comments on free speech, which apply to Gates' case:

See Duran v. City of Douglas (1990): [T]he First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers." [Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451 at 461] The freedom of individuals to oppose or challenge police action verbally without thereby risking arrest is one important characteristic by which we distinguish ourselves from a police state. Id. at 462-63, 107 S.Ct. at 2510. Thus, while police, no less than anyone else, may resent having obscene words and gestures directed at them, they may not exercise the awesome power at their disposal to punish individuals for conduct that is not merely lawful, but protected by the First Amendment.

Re: criticism of judges, see Standing Committee of Discipline v. Yagman quoting Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 263 (1941):

"The assumption that respect for the judiciary can be won by shielding judges from published criticism wrongly appraises the character of American public opinion. For it is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions. And an enforced silence, however limited, solely in the name of preserving the dignity of the bench, would probably engender resentment, suspicion, and contempt much more than it would enhance respect."

Judge Kosinski is often named as one of the potential candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bonus II:

1. The question isn't whether Gates could have acted better under the circumstances--the question is what a government worker should do in someone else's house once he verifies there is no threat, no crime, and the owner wants him out.

2. Gates may have been outsmarted by the police officer. The officer probably couldn't arrest Gates inside his own home for "disorderly conduct," so he may have beckoned Gates outside, where he could plausibly argue that the public was affected or endangered by Gates' conduct.

Patrick S. says:

Based upon the holdings in the MA cases below, Dr. Gates' conduct did not even fall under the disorderly conduct statute. Whether this is an issue of the cop arresting him anyway or whether the cops were not properly trained on what is "disorderly conduct" in MA is another question:

In Commonwealth v. Mallahan, 72 Mass.App.Ct. 1103, 889 N.E.2d 77 (2008), a decision rendered last year, an appeals court held that a person who launched into an angry, profanity-laced tirade against a police officer in front of spectators could not be convicted of disorderly conduct.

In Commonwealth v. Lopiano,
(2004) 805 N.E.2d 522, 60 Mass.App.Ct. 723 (2004), an appeals court held it was not disorderly conduct for a person who angrily yelled at an officer that his civil rights were being violated. [In this case, according to the officer, Defendant was "yelling at me, you're violating my civil rights, then he began yelling at Ms. Carins, why are you doing this to me, you'll never go through with this."]

The Massachusetts statute defining "disorderly conduct" used to have a provision that made it illegal to make "unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display," or to address "abusive language to any person present." Yet the courts have interpreted that provision to violate the Massachusetts Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. So police cannot lawfully arrest a person for hurling abusive language at an officer.

[See more law-related discussion here and Commonwealth v Feigenbaum, 404 Mass. 471 (1989)]

Monday, July 27, 2009

Tyler Cowen on Henry Louis Gates

Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen on the Henry Louis Gates arrest:

On the substance of the altercation I do not know the details but some time ago we decided, for better or worse, to give policemen a lot of discretion in intimidating individuals, including innocent individuals and especially African-Americans. I don't think we chose an optimum but it is disingenuous to be suddenly shocked by what happened.

I agree wholeheartedly. The real issue is the proper balance between individual rights and police power. Since 9/11, we've elevated the status of law enforcement personnel from well-compensated civil servants to heroes. As a result, many Americans believe police can do no wrong, and citizens must be highly respectful to law enforcement at all times--even in their own homes. Prof. Gates' arrest should have been an opportunity to re-examine this shift in values; however, by focusing on race rather than how police ought to behave in another person's home, we've lost a chance to discuss a topic important to all Americans.