Know your neighbors, know your police.
Community policing would have eliminated the need for an arrest to begin with.
Everyone wants to find fault with either the professor or the police officer. A middle aged Summa-Cum Laude Professor on the property of a prestigious university, or upscale neighborhood or luxury apartment building, with a cane and an assistant. In this case they turned out to be black, still not major issue, locked themselves out or left the key, all possibilities occurring within normal parameters. So, that means we start with the phone the kicked off this major racial song and dance the press dragged the President into. The profiling started not with the law enforcement officers, but with the neighbor, she identified two strange black men attempting to gain entry into a property next to hers. I would think that takes us back to location, as I mentioned in opening this commentary; How long has this individual who calls 911 about a possible burglary by two black men, been in the location herself, and why did she not know who was living next door to her is such a prestigious neighborhood as I expect a man with Mr. Gates credentials would find himself living. Personally, as a man looking at the amount of damage we as men have done to women to date, I would think, first said woman would have asked the real estate broker who sold her the property, who her neighbors were, expecting them to be people of power, prestige or position.
Once a call goes into the police station about an attempted burglary, I feel the cops played it by the numbers in the beginning. I can understand the Professor becoming upset about his identity being questioned in his own home, considering his position. But, folks, this is exactly the point about who he is and who is in his neighborhood. Both the neighbor and the police should have been aware of his presence even if there was no interaction between them because impolite or just even discourteous behavior prior to this incident. Had the neighborhood been policed with ground patrols as well as squad cars for quick response and chases, those cops would have quickly recognized the Professor and avoided this brouhaha about racial profiling. So, I say this starts with the woman calling the break-in to the cops; did she have a problem with the Professor or what? The Professor most probably escalated the situation with his response the being questioned in a manner I would expect was somewhat derogatory in nature as he was being accused of being a burglar.
Two cops on the scene and neither one knows of this man’s prestige or position, I take issue with that. If I was a member of that community, I’d have some major issues for the price of living in a secluded upscale neighborhood and little knowledge of its citizenry by the people paid to protect them. That is a very hard one for me to get past, I would expect that at least some of the cops here in New York City have an idea who lives on York Street here, but you never know. I still come back to original call being placed by the neighbor, was she looking to start a ruckus like this for amusement, or was this personal. I have been the victim of being black at the wrong place and time, as well as having a neighbor send the cops to my house for no good reason. I just refused to move until they picked up my wallet from the table with my address on my license matching the numbers on the door. They asked me to get my license and show it to them and that was my response to their request, not to get up from the sofa. I was sitting in my living room watching Sports Center when they came into my door which I had not locked as my son just left five minutes prior. I can almost guarantee 90 percent of a population of black people who make up 13 percent of all the population here in America can say it has happened to them in one manner or another at least once in their lives. That is but one price to pay for living black in America. The cops should have known how to defuse the situation better; it is what they get paid for. He was a little middle aged man with a cane for goodness sake, black or not.
© 2009, agentleman.
