Dr. Henry Louis Gates Arrested

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

You lost me here. She can be judgmental and prejudiced but her instantly siding with Blacks on such issues would not make her racist.

/see all of the previous "what is racism" threads

She implied that all people who side against blacks in situations that could possibly include racism are racists. Therefore, if she always sides with blacks, she must be racist, also.

I know this isn't the case. Just trying to make a point for deepimpact... which she probably won't understand and/or listen to anyway. I know, because I have her all figured out and already know what her response will be..........

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

It's illegal to sue the President.

Executive privilege is a very squishy, grey, untested area.

Here, my feeling on the subject is that in theory, if the alleged slander arose from the President's duties since he was commenting on a matter of public concern during a Presidential press conference. That should probably be a privileged statement.

Even if the statement wasn't privileged, I don't know if it'd be actionable anyhow for a few reasons. 1) The police officer is a limited purpose public figure -- he's famous, of public concern, etc. 2) since the President's statements weren't made with malice (he didn't know the statement was false or wasn't necessarily reckless with regard to the truth), and even if he did that it's hard to say that the President's words would have the tendency to lower the police officer's standing in the community. The whole story is out there and the President's remarks are a mere sideshow.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Executive privilege is a very squishy, grey, untested area.

Here, my feeling on the subject is that in theory, if the alleged slander arose from the President's duties since he was commenting on a matter of public concern during a Presidential press conference. That should probably be a privileged statement.

Even if the statement wasn't privileged, I don't know if it'd be actionable anyhow for a few reasons. 1) The police officer is a limited purpose public figure -- he's famous, of public concern, etc. 2) since the President's statements weren't made with malice (he didn't know the statement was false or wasn't necessarily reckless with regard to the truth), and even if he did that it's hard to say that the President's words would have the tendency to lower the police officer's standing in the community. The whole story is out there and the President's remarks are a mere sideshow.

Having the President say on national TV that your actions were stupid does seem to me to be likely to lower the police officer's standing in the community. That's actually the only thing that would make me wonder if he could be included in the defamation. The damage likely to be done to the cop's reputation was magnified greatly, I think, by the President commenting on it.

And since it was a health care address, I think it's a little less clear that he was responding to an issue of national concern. Had "Skip" not been a personal friend, which I think is how he put it, I think he would been a lot more reticent to speak up without knowing all the facts.

But as I said before, I think it would foolish for the cop to try to sue Gates, much less Obama.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Having the President say on national TV that your actions were stupid does seem to me to be likely to lower the police officer's standing in the community. That's actually the only thing that would make me wonder if he could be included in the defamation. The damage likely to be done to the cop's reputation was magnified greatly, I think, by the President commenting on it.

And since it was a health care address, I think it's a little less clear that he was responding to an issue of national concern. Had "Skip" not been a personal friend, which I think is how he put it, I think he would been a lot more reticent to speak up without knowing all the facts.

But as I said before, I think it would foolish for the cop to try to sue Gates, much less Obama.

I understand and agree with what both of you are saying...the basic problem is, and it's just not Cambridge, unfortunately police officers in general has an established history of being of wrong side of profiling. Just look at how many articles that have been written, filmed and even posted here on GC.

Some of us even have personal experiences.

However, that does NOT MEAN ALL COPS are bad.

Fact: All police officers are not bad. All citizens that have mistaken run ins with police officers are not always innocent.

But the issue is simply, when you have one that messes up, it makes all of the rest look bad. If anyone up to and including the President had commented directly to the officer in question to whose name I don't even remember or know, then the burden of blame is on him and him alone but because he was lumped into a whole group, that whole group is being stereotyped based on that officer's action.

Just like on the flipside, we are discussing this whole race thing because Gates is Black and raised holy hell in his house because he perceived that because he is part of a minority group he recieved undue action because of that. Like someone asked earlier, suppose Gates was White? Suppose the officer was Black? Would there even be a story? Probably not.

BTW...here is an update on this: Obama calls policeman

Good move BTW.

[UGAalum94]

That was well done by Obama to quickly correct his own error.

I hope it gets widespread media play.

I don't think this case involved profiling by the police. I think it's impossible to say if it involved profiling by the person who made the call, but I wouldn't want the police just to ignore calls because the suspect was black. I actually think that would be worse for black people than it would for others. Didn't Public Enemy have a song about that? Eh, nevermind, 911 Is a Joke is more about ambulance response times, it seems.

[Kevin]

I think the incident is useful in that it does provide a nice springboard for a real nationwide discussion of racial profiling. I think it's a conversation we need to have over and over until something can be done. Listening to NPR yesterday, the DR show had some pretty interesting callers. One pointed out that whites were also the victims of racial profiling, e.g., what could a white person be doing in 'that part of town' at night other than buying drugs or looking for prostitutes?'

It must be an incredibly difficult line for police -- one which I doubt many intentionally cross (but cross anyway) to differentiate between suspicious conduct and suspicion based upon race alone, e.g., a black person sitting in a beat up old car in an affluent neighborhood, seemingly doing nothing.

Because police work is often conducted within grey areas of the law (especially when it comes to obtaining probable cause to search), it becomes very difficult to know what is legitimate and what is not.

At any rate, maybe the conversation should move beyond Gates. He's the not a good example. We all know this goes on, but how to fix it? I'm at a complete loss.

[Munchkin03]

I think a lot of it has to come down to "unlearning" a lot of our assumptions about race and class; I don't know how easy that will be, especially in areas of the country where residential areas are segregated by class in addition to race and ethnicity.

[UGAalum94]

What do you all think is the relationship between profiling and arrest and conviction rate disparities among races ( http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0008.htm )

Does racial profiling make non-whites more likely to be arrested and convicted or do the difference in rates by race offer faulty somewhat empirical-seeming justification for why profiling might make sense to the police?

(Senusret, I'm doing what I can to bring you a race war.)

[Kevin]

The only real conclusion you can reach from those statistics is that blacks are much more likely to be caught and convicted and incarcerated for certain crimes than whites. It raises the question of whether this is because blacks commit more crimes per capita than whites or blacks are more likely per capita to get caught and convicted than whites. I suspect the answer is a little of both.

What I think would be helpful would be to have statistics about race when police make contact with the public. I'd like to see statistically how much more likely it is for a black driver to be pulled over than a white driver. Only with information like that can we really make sense of the statistics above.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

BTW...here is an update on this: Obama calls policeman

Good move BTW.

He wouldn't have to play politics here if he had shut up in the first place.

But oh so great public speaker Obama couldn't just shut up.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

He wouldn't have to play politics here if he had shut up in the first place.

But oh so great public speaker Obama couldn't just shut up.

Ahhhhhh....wait...he exercised his 1st Amendment right, did he not?

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Didn't Public Enemy have a song about that? Eh, nevermind, 911 Is a Joke is more about ambulance response times, it seems.

N.W.A. 's F the Police is what you're looking for

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Ahhhhhh....wait...he exercised his 1st Amendment right, did he not?

Is that what he was doing?

If only the public statements of every POTUS were so easily dismissed as 1st Amendment right. There goes that Obama effect again.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

Is that what he was doing?

If only the public statements of every POTUS were so easily dismissed as 1st Amendment right. There goes that Obama effect again.

Ooooohh noo......don't go there, what's good for one isn't good for anyone else.

Obama did what few POTUS' (es?, i,?) do, (and also what I hate) he said something, realized what he said and then corrected it. (the exception being is that he has so far fixed some of his gaffes faster than some others)

Why? Because like anyone else, he exercised his right to say what he wanted, but then realized the consequences and repercussion of what he did and corrected himself.

What I said earlier wasn't to give him a free pass to what he said, just for you to realize that he did what most people won't do, he corrected what could be seen as a mistake...thought personally he should have stuck with it and let it stand...but...and this goes for those who are in the public eye, he chose to fix it so so to not hurt his standing.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Kevin

What I think would be helpful would be to have statistics about race when police make contact with the public. I'd like to see statistically how much more likely it is for a black driver to be pulled over than a white driver. Only with information like that can we really make sense of the statistics above.

This retains part of the "chicken-and-egg" conundrum, though, since presumably police patrols will be concentrated in the high-crime parts of a given city. So now, we've added another factor: police presence will invariably lead to more arrests, which will lead to a greater police presence, which will invariably . . .

The controls would have to be tighter, something along the lines of "how much more likely is it for a black driver to be pulled over on a specific stretch of road versus a white driver, proportional to the raw totals of black drivers versus white drivers." This kind of data is nigh impossible to obtain, so most of the research is done in "model" form . . . bringing about its own problems, as the assumptions used to design the model affect the outcome.

The earlier issue, of course, leads to another question: for cities in which police presence is concentrated in ____ part of town (where ____ is black/hispanic/asian/white/poor/rich/stupid/ballpark/whatever), why did that start? Why does it continue?

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

The earlier issue, of course, leads to another question: for cities in which police presence is concentrated in ____ part of town (where ____ is black/hispanic/asian/white/poor/rich/stupid/ballpark/whatever), why did that start? Why does it continue?

Because ______ tends to _______ ______ than _____.