by "Potus"
Hopefully, as this issue fades into the news headlines, more will read into the facts before blogging from emotions. Simply, once you have identified yourself as the owner of any property, the case is closed. In this case, after the property owner is clearly established, it wouldn't even be illegal to curse at an officer in YOUR own house. In Dr. Gates case, he asked officer Crowley several times for his name and badge number without any response. The police report alleges that Gates exhibited "loud and tumultuous behavior in a public place." The Gates home is not a "public place" — it is private property, including his porch and the yard around it.
In this case, considering the arrogance of incompetence being displayed by this individual officer, an apology has no value, won't happen and is not necessary. That's just the way it is.
REPEAT AFTER ME: Lawsuit, plus six zeros — and officer Crowley can keep his incompetent arrogance — while Dr. Gates uses the money to produce a groundbreaking prime-time documentary on racial profiling in the so-called post-racial Obama era.
No point in playing the race card when a hefty civil lawsuit can best change behavior. As it was with the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s — to not patronizing businesses that discriminate in the 21st century — money talks. The possibility of going broke in a capitalist society has always focused the bigoted mind.
The renown Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has an opportunity to send a major message, coincidently in the Obama era — a time when the country has changed and progressed, but the nature of certain individuals haven't. No political event or public policies will change the mentality of most individuals in one generation.
It would be easy and wrong to broad-brush any local police precinct or the entire Cambridge police department. What will be most effective for professor Gates to do is to file a civil lawsuit for major monetary damages against the individual police officers (not the department or city) initially engaged in this incident. Gates has the time, legal resources, credibility and overwhelming public integrity to do so.
Strategically and politically, the department and city will be motivated to quietly kick the individual wrongdoers to the curb so as not to be embroiled in the liabilities and bad public relations that will come their way. Unless the individual officers actions are official and condoned policy, the department or city should not be penalized for any rogue or independent actions by an individual officer.
Every step and action the arresting officers took, if all that the news reports and Gates' attorney alleges is true, was a clear violation of Mr. Gates and his property under the Constitution, Bill of Rights and sections of U.S. civil rights law.
As it would be for the rest of us, make the officers understand the real dollar and career price for their personal decisions, and their lack of genuine professional discretion. Expose and sue these individuals as aberrations operating under the guise of a police department and city that does not condone or cover for officers that violate citizen rights.
If the facts are affirmed, clearly the officers acted as individuals rather than public servants.
Six or more zeros behind a major monetary damages civil lawsuit against an individual will send a real message to others so inclined to violate the law and citizen rights.
For those with far less clout than Dr. Gates, please don't let this one go, 'Skip' — do the right thing.
Dennis Moore — Publisher — http://www.POTUSworld.com — ppceo@potusworld.com
Cambridge Police Department Police Report:http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
The United States Constitution - Bill of RightsAmendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/f081.htm
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/583503
VIDEO LINKS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKObGK4tIFg&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLkZ8a1V5MQ
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/10221/Lincoln+on+Race+and+Slavery.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates,_Jr.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/lookingforlincoln/
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