This isn’t good for the Cambridge cop who arrested Dr. Gates in his own home. The person who made the original 911 call has completely contradicted his story about reporting “black males” being on the scene at Gates’ house, which not only contradicts the cop’s police report but also removes his key justification for demanding Gates’ ID and barging into his house. The falsifying policeman, writing up his report on the day of the arrest and far before he could comprehend it would become national news, needed to get from her 9/11 call (in which she never brings up race, and when pressed, only says one of the people she saw “might be Hispanic,” to his desired rationalization of his prior actions (barging into Gates’ house and demanding ID). In his police report, he specifically wrote that when meeting her in person outside the house, that she identified “two black males,” leading to his decision to question the cane-using, elderly lone black male he spied in the house through the glass window in the front door, talking on the telephone. Now she has totally blown apart that crucial fabrication by the cop.
In fact, Whalen said that her only face-to-face interaction with the responding officer, Sgt. James Crowley, was brief.”The exchange was: I said I was the 911 caller. He pointed to me and said ‘Stay right there,'” said Whalen, whose voice broke as she told her side of the story. “Nothing more than that.”
Obama himself elevated this relatively minor incident into national news by saying the police acted “stupidly” in arresting someone inside their own home, and I agree that they did. However, we now know that after coming under apparently unexpected criticism on the first day, the cop reacted by fabricating the record of his actions. Having never been told by anyone about anyone black being involved, he looked through the window, saw a black man, and decided to question what he was doing inside his own home, and rather aggressively as well. Would he have done that if he saw a white Harvard professor through the window? If the white Harvard professor had been irate, would he have arrested the professor and taken him downtown for booking? Only the cop knows the answer to this question. If the answer is that he would have acted differently, that would be very similar to racial profiling, a subject that Obama has been under intense criticism for mentioning when asked by a report about the arrest. In any case, it turns out that the specific thing that the cop lied about was the subject of race.
UPDATE:
The cop is having a press conference and to his credit doesn’t seem to be intent on insisting he’s still being persecuted. He also seems quite professional and a bit nervous, which is not surprising. I have the impression he doesn’t want to discuss any of the above news revelations.
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