My Take on the Prof. Henry Gates Incident

Nice One Petty :smt049

It is sad because lots of good ones end up leaving because of the brush the public often paints ALL officers with. It gets tough when on a 12 hour shift you get called a fucking pig, cunt, bitch,whore, dyke at least 10 to 15 times. I used to laugh when I would walk in somewhere( in my days in uniform) and some smart ass would say "Oooooooh I smell bacon" Yeah.....like I haven't heard THAT one 10 times today.

The worst was being spit on. Hit me, kick me......but don't spit on me. That is just down right nasty.

 

In my personal experience (as an Afr-Am male), the majority (90%) of the cops that I've interacted with were negative at best -- at worst, pure trash in uniform. That's been my reality.

The Kid Rasta

 

This is not true. They will not come.

No one is saying all cops are trash. Some are saying that all the cops they have interacted with are trash.

You describe a very hard life as a cop. You chose that life. You chose to become a police officer. Black Men, Hispanic Men, Native American Men, and poor people in general do not choose to become the targets of police officers.

I think it's great that you would come to help someone even if they did not support the police. This is not standard.

Even in diverse middle class neighborhoods, I have never in my married life been able to get a police officer when I needed one. I have called over and over when a vagrant broke into our building -- nothing. When he returned -- nothing. The third time I called university police from the neighboring school. They came. From that same building, I could see police cars park every day behind a large building so the officers inside could take 3-4 hour naps.


It is silly to say that police officers will help even those who shoot at them. I don't know about other cities, but in Chicago, it was a given that police would not go to calls from Cabrini Green. Who could blame them? Snipers shot at police when they approached. Who could blame the snipers? Police had a tendency to kill residents.

If you want people to stop hating the police, then the police need to stop hating the people they "protect" first. They need to be held accountable when they break the law. That means that if a cop decides to beat up a bartender, he should do real time. That means if a police officer snaps and kills someone, he should do time for killing someone.

Every time the police are found to be guilty of something, all other police officers come rushing to their defense. That doesn't make people more fond of the police, it makes it seem like there is nothing so low that a police officer can do that another police officer won't defend it.

In Chicago, we don't have the death penalty. Know why? Because Jon Burge routinely had his men "solve" cases by rounding up random Black Men off the street and torturing them using Guantanamo-like tactics into confessing to whatever case was open. Then the courts sent those men to death row. When DNA became available, and some journalism students got curious, they found one after another people on Death Row who were innocent. Not just not guilty, but innocent. I've watched a parade of Men be released from jail after years in prison, where they expected to die, for something they did not do. These men served for DECADES. They had the BULK of their lives taken away.

Jon Burge wasn't just a bad apple. His Men participated. Other officers knew. Everyone cooperated, everyone kept it quiet. Nobody told.

There's loyalty, and then there's the type of loyalty only found in gangs. That's the kind police officers show when the defend fellow officers who are found guilty of crimes.

It creates the impression that cops are just thugs. Dangerous, authoritarian, and powerful.

In other countries, this is not the case. In Montreal, the police were like aliens to me, they were so different from Chicago police.

But in the US, when someone says that all the police they have met have been trash, the person ruining the reputation of the police isn't the messenger, it's the police he's dealt with.

 

I would like to put this in the form of a question rather than a statement so I won't get cut down by a senior member enraged for the perspective I have taking:

Could Professor Gates upon seeing the police officer drive up to his home, exercise some patience, understanding and humility that the lawman was, at heart, attempting to scrutinize what he thought was an unauthorized intruder on some ones property ?

Could Professor Gates in all his self aggrandizing pompousness have imagined that this particular white office might not have known who he was in the academic circles?

Could Professor Gates have said in quiet civil manner instead of yelling hysterically to the law man: “ I am the property owner,...My name is Professor Gates of Harvard University...... I got lock out of my home.......if I can get into the home, I can present to you many forms of ID ...will you work with me officer ?

 

Yes In Montreal cops are good. In CANADA cops are good. I am not about to get into a debate about this.

I know what I lived....other people know what they lived but I will not stand by and let all police get shit on.

Yes, you are right I decided to be a police officer. I wanted to try to do something to try and help people. My bad.

I did not however ask to be shot and left on the side of the road for dead You have NO IDEA what I went thru or what happened after I got shot.

I will not apologize for standing up for the police. If you think I will you dont know me.

 

No offense, but why do you think your experience as a police officer in Montreal gives you any greater insight into what police are like in the United States than the average African American Man?

Do you stand up for Mexican police officers with the same enthusiasm? How about Iranian police officers?

You say you won't let "all" police get shit on, but the person you quoted obviously didn't, so perhaps you mean that you will not let "any" police get shit on?


It's good you wanted to do something to help people. I wonder tho, how many of the innocent men on Death Row in Illinois wanted to do something to help people someday, and were robbed of that opportunity. When good cops stand up for bad cops, it makes all cops look bad.

 

Why are you assuming he did not do this?

Are you taking Crowley's words as gospel? Because Gates claims he never raised his voice, did show ID, and was polite to the officer.

You appear to assume the police officer is telling the truth, and the professor is lying?


By the way, he didn't need to tell the officer "if I can get into the home", because he was in the home. He answered the door for the officer, by all accounts.

 

I was not an officer in Montreal. I do not stand up for bad cops. I have personally arrested a fellow officer and was given props for it...not shit on. So much for the thin blue line eh?

I do not think I know the experience of people in the states or of African American males. That would be rather ignorant of me to think I did.
However, I don't think anyone else here is or was an officer, so I would expect the same in return.

Dirty cops are a nightmare. As are dirty or bad lawyers, priests, teachers etc.