The next person who uses that hideous non-phrase (where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio & Edwin Newman???) will get strapped to a chair, their eyes taped open (a la Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork), forced to watch an entire season of McLaughlin Report on a loop.
Thanks to Jack Dunphy (an LAPD officer’s nom de cyber) for writing what I’ve been dying to say, only he’s got the bona fides & the better words. h/t NRO:
So, since the president is keen on offering instruction, here is what I would advise he teach his Ivy League pals, and anyone else who may find himself unexpectedly confronted by a police officer: You may be as pure as the driven snow itself, but you have no idea what horrible crime that police officer might suspect you of committing. You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.
When the officer has satisfied himself that it was not you and your Hupmobile that were involved in the Piggly Wiggly heist, he owes you an explanation for the stop and an apology for the inconvenience, but if you’re running your mouth about your rights and your history of oppression and what have you, you’re likely to get neither.
Amen.
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Amen, sister, on that “teachable moment” phrase. It wouldn’t be so bad if it made any sense, linguistically. (How can you teach a moment?)
R.R. Reno at First Thoughts has a good post about this, which is an answer to the strictly Libertarian view (which I think is Floyd’s view) that the cop should not have arrested Gates for the way he was acting.
Mike… the only thing different is that in this case he was in his own home…. without PC and something more this kind of arrest bothers me a little bit. I’m not saying Gates was right at all, but in his own home he can recite the Elders of the Protocol of Zion, 23rd Psalm or read Archie Comics for all I know. We have the right to be a DICK in our own home — about the only place in America where one used t be free.
We’re getting so caught up in the trees of race that we’re losing the forest of liberty (not least because we’re not talking about Obamacare). If Gates was in the parking lot and had not been asked to leave his home to go to the parking lot this is a slam dunk. I don’t blame Crowley — he’s enforcing the law as written and doing what he’s trained to do.
Dunphy is 100% accurate except in this case there is no Hupmobile… the suspect was IN HIS OWN HOME, asked to exit the house by the PO, had already been ID’d as the lawful resident of that house — and thus no longer a suspect.
I’m not sure exactly when modern bureaucracy crushed the notion that a man’s home is his castle, but I’d rather put up with the Gates of the world than all the well-meaning police officers in the world able to take me out of home and then arrest me when I have an emotional meltdown — especially if the PO has back-up. I’ve worked with, trained and educated cops for 15 years so I am neither ignorant of nor unsympathetic to the difficulties they face. This highlights a systemic problem not an individual officer problem.
Floyd, I may be mis-remembering the order of events. I thought the first thing Crowley did was ask Gates to step out onto the porch, before he ascertained who Gates was. It was then that Gates started screaming, “Why? Because I’m a black man in America?”
Mike…. I just went back to The Smoking Gun. I mis-remembered the police report… Gates followed Crowley outside. My above post still stands on general principle, but in this case Gates sealed his fate by voluntarily leaving the house.
I worked a number of DUIs where people would meet the description of a burglary, robbery, etc. get pulled over (not be the suspect), but get arrested because the WERE loaded. Whoops!
For the record, Floyd, I completely see your point. You really shouldn’t get arrested for “contempt of cop.” But I can understand why you will, if that makes any sense.
I really don’t have a problem with Gates being arrested, but I’m also glad they dropped the charges.
I think we’re both on the side of “Law & Order” here, Floyd. But your focus is on the law, and I put (maybe too much?) emphasis on order.
The law is great after a crime has been committed, while a sense order is what can prevent crimes from happening.
Good catch Wanks! AWESOME!
Right on Wankette!