Posted by Jack Lee
The police got a call from a woman who saw a man trying to forcibly enter her neighbors home. Concerned, she called the police to report a possible breakin in progress. The police responded and tried to identify the man in question. He refused to identfiy and was beligerant, but eventually it was determined he owned the home and had locked himself out. The police said the man had a chip on his shoulder and they were just doing their job. When the man followed the cop out of his house and kept berrating him, the cop had enough and arrested him for disorderly conduct. This was not about race because the arrested man was black..it was about “contempt of cop” and sometimes officers invoke this to let a person know how much they disapprove of the being yelled at and berrated.
Now read this from Rev. Al Sharpton on the same event, you won’t recognize it:
“This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen. I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs.”-Rev. Al Sharpton responding to the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation’s pre-eminent black scholar.
This part is from another blog http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2009/07/harvard_prof_henry_louis_gates_jr_is_an_idiot.html…
“First of all, the headline “Harvard Prof Arrested Trying to Enter Own Home” is not accurate. He was arrested for being a belligerent idiot. When you are seen by neighbors trying to pry open a locked door it doesn’t matter what color you are, you will be reported to the police. And when the cops come and ask you to identify yourself you don’t get all uppity [yes I said uppity] and refuse to do so because you think everything is about race.
This moron, instead of supplying a simple proof that he was indeed in his own home called the officer a racist and said, “This is what happens to black men in America,” according to the Associated Press (1). How dare the police not recognize that Gates is the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research!
As for the rest of us mere mortals, the proper thing to do, quite simply, is to tell the cop, “Yes, officer, here is my driver’s license, thanks for responding so quickly. Sorry, for the inconvenience I caused you.” And that would have been that.
Instead this racist imbecile, despite his academic credentials, hasn’t learned one thing about law enforcement: they are on your side unless you give them attitude. When he finally presented his id, the cops started to leave, but he couldn’t leave well enough alone – he just had to turn this into a racial incident so he followed them out where he started screaming and ranting. That is why he was arrested – he was being abusive and disorderly.
So he was not, as some morons like Ben Smith wrote that he was “reportedly detained for breaking into his own home.”
Al Sharpton has vowed to show up to defend the Prof (2), but that won’t be necessary: all charges were dropped (3) against this race-baiting moron.
Related: About 11 years ago, my son (who is white) drove his friend Damien (who is Black) to Harlem to pick up some personal belongings from Damien’s sister. It was about 1 a.m. when my son pulled up in front of the house. Damien ran into the apartment and my son waited inside his car, a brand new, sleek, black 1997 Limited Edition Toyota Supra Turbo.
After a few minutes my son saw a police car approach. They rolled alongside and after noticing that he was a white boy in an expensive car sitting outside an apartment building in Harlem, they pulled in front of him and got out to question him.
I have no doubt that he was being racially profiled; that is to say, because he looked like a rich white boy, he had no business being in Harlem unless he was there to buy drugs. They asked for his ID and questioned why he was in Harlem at that time of night.
My son could have gotten all white-with-attitude and started calling the cops racist for assuming he was buying drugs just because he was white. But he showed them his driver’s license and politely told them that he was waiting on his friend. When asked if he wouldn’t mind them looking in his trunk he obliged without hesitation. He could have demanded a search warrant and started yelling and screaming. But based on police experience of this particular circumstance (99 times out of a hundred rich white boys are indeed buying drugs this late at night) they would not have had a problem getting a search warrant and my son would only have delayed himself unnecessarily.
When Damien finally came out he saw the cops and started to act nervous. When one of the cops asked him for his sister’s name, Damien started stuttering and couldn’t remember her name. When the cop asked, “You don’t remember your sister’s name?” Damien told the officer he was really nervous. I guess the cops were experienced enough to be able to tell if someone is nervous because they are guilty of something or simply just nervous around cops. They let my son and Damien go. No problems.
Damien has been a good friend of mine for years and he’s never had any problems with the police. He lives in Bayonne where there are no racial tensions. When I asked him why he got so nervous, he said that he was already nervous just being in Harlem and when he saw the cops all he could think about was all those TV shows he saw about cops beating blacks in Harlem. Instead, he found the officers to be quite polite and courteous.
Of course, that could have turned otherwise if Damien had instead pulled an Al Sharpton: “You racist pigs, why you asking me my sister’s name? Cause I’m black – this is how blacks are treated in America – F*CK You! I ain’t tellin’ you sh*t!”
Yeah, get into an officer’s face – that’s the smart move.