Yesterday, a committee released a report on the infamous arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Sgt. James Crowley. It found that both missed opportunities to de-escalate the situation and both were at fault for the outcome. Not surprisingly, many in the community took issue with the idea that Gates was responsible for his own arrest without having committed a crime, and the fact that the report didn't address race relations in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As everyone knows, Gates, who was returning from vacation, struggled with the lock to his home, prompting a 911 call. Police, including Crowley, arrived and determined it was his home, but arrested him and charged him with disorderly conduct because he was loud and upset. What's missing from the report is the power discrepancy between Crowley and Gates. Both were in an upsetting situation, but only Crowley had the power to arrest Gates. It's hard not to see how he wouldn't have more responsibility in this situation as a result. And of course Gates was upset: He was being threatened with arrest in his own home. Interactions with police officers are inherently upsetting, and people are usually upset before officers even arrive; officers are, after all, called to upsetting situations.
When I used to investigate New York City police officers at the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board, disorderly conduct was among the shadiest charges, and one of the most likely to spur complaints of abuse. Officers sometimes had the ready, necessary excuse -- there have to be enough people around, or enough people were disturbed by someone's behavior, to justify the idea that a person's conduct might cause disorder. More often, though, it was clear that officers were just arresting people for yelling or talking back. If you need proof that officers would sometimes engage in, or even start, verbal altercations with bystanders simply to justify an arrest, just listen to this episode of This American Life, which discusses the case of an officer in Brooklyn whose supervisor told him to do just that. The way officers treat communities of color is often alarmingly unfair, and this could have been an opportunity to delve into that, but it was missed.
-- Monica Potts