A Teaching Moment?

I have worked with a lot of cops. Some are deranged psychos but not that many. Quite a few are sadistic bullies but not most. Most are just guys that like the paycheck, pension and retirement and couldn't get through the screening process for the fire department. At night, in high crime areas and crowd situations usually two officers are assigned together, otherwise officers spend a lot of time working alone. There are unwritten rules in police work. If a person is uncooperative or provocative toward a police officer, they get arrested, cuffed and back up is called. If they resist, they get beat down. If they aggressively retaliate or show a weapon of any sort, they get shot dead.

Police are a lot more controlled in their behavior than they were twenty or thirty years ago. They are nowhere near as quick to go for the club or gun. I'm kind of a smart ass but most people, even cops, can tell I'm not violent. Even so, when I was young, I got slapped around by the cops once in awhile. They never did much permanent damage. I never hit back. I'm not stupid. I wasn't particularly offended when it was over. I never carried a grudge nor did the police. Hasn't happened for a long time. I used to get assigned to shore patrol quite a bit when I was in the Navy, so I have had a taste for what it's like on the other side of the badge. I don't sympathize with what the police do, as much as understand where they are coming from. I am at a loss as to how the situation can be changed much. It is what it is. The way it always has been.

My city is a very safe place to live. You can walk out on your own at 3 AM, meander through dark streets, parks, alleyways and beaches in perfect safety. There is no violent crime to speak of here. There aren't many burglaries. There is a downtown area that is a regional center for nightlife, probably thirty or forty liquor licenses in a two block area. Young people of many different types come there to carouse, day and night, from far and wide. Every once in a while there is a brawl or a rape but fewer than you would expect. There are eight or nine continuous miles of the best public beach in the world, with parking and restrooms for literally hundreds of thousands on busy Summer weekend days. There is plenty of drug activity but it's nonviolent and out of sight, just like the police want. There are enclaves of illegals as densely populated as anything you'll find outside of Calcutta, within a block of million dollar homes. The price we pay for our idyllic coexistence is the kind of police protection we choose to hire. Our police are killers. I'm not looking to move out of town.

When you look at the Gates/Crowley confrontation in Cambridge, Massachusetts last week, you can see that it falls outside the lines of the usual police/civilian interaction. It's clear that Crowley very quickly determined that Gates was who he said he was and had committed no crime but something kept him from making a rapid departure. It's also clear that Gates treated the officer in a manner very different from how most upper income, higher status, suburban dwellers, normally treat police officers. In a situation like this Crowley could expect to be responded to with polite condescension, bored impatience or even contemptuous superiority. He could ignore those responses and continue on with professional courtesy. He didn't get any of those responses from Gates.

I'm not Gates or Crowley or very much like either one of them. I don't have Dr Phil like psychological omniscience into the motivations of either of them, in the situation they found themselves in last week. I do think that Dr Gates felt he should be protected from what he felt was police harassment, by the position he had achieved in life. When this turned out to not be the case, I think he reacted with bluster and outrage rather than the fear and apprehension that most of us would fall back on when an interaction with the police starts to deteriorate. Gates' behavior spurred Sargent Crowley to react to a perceived threat that needed to be subdued. I don't think his reaction was a conscious decision at all, simply a reflexive reaction to all of the training and experience he ever had as a policeman. The police don't spend a lot of time in intellectual analysis when confronted by a possible threat. If a square hole opens up in front of them, they insert a square peg as quickly as possible and that's what happened last week, between Professor Gates and Sargent Crowley.

Do I think Race played a part? Of course I do. Ethnic minorities, especially Blacks, always get closer observation by the police but Gates, of all the Black men, in all the World Knows this. I don't think he could help himself in the way he reacted, any more than Crowley could. In the end, things went way beyond what they should have. Sometimes that happens. At least nobody died. Nobody is going to prison. Nobody's going to lose their job or pension. I think these are better outcomes than may have happened, not so long ago.

The real villain in this story are the political and media flacks who have used it to fan the flames of incipient racial hatreds that lie smoldering, never far below the surface of our society. There is no opportunity for a teaching moment here, just another incident that hardens both sides against the other and sets us back on a course we don't need to be taking, anymore.

As far as the two men meeting with President Obama for a beer and to talk the situation over. It may not accomplish anything. Probably won't. On the other hand, it probably couldn't hurt. Maybe it will only serve to put a better face on a bad situation. That's worth something. All by itself.