Racial Profiling or not?

[hkellick]

There's been a very interesting event happening in Boston this last week regarding a White Police Office arresting an elderly African American scholar in his own home.

Details seem to still be emerging from the case but what we knew more or less immediately was the following: Henry Louis Gates Jr. came home one day from overseas and found out he could not find his keys. So he and his driver, an African, decided to break into his own house.
Somehow the police got involved and handcuffs came out. Gates acknowledges he got upset at the officer and ended up in Jail.

Gates is screaming Racial Profiling. The nation, as a whole, seems to be backing him up.

Putting aside the color of Gates's skin.. my question is simply: what should the Police Officer have done if he arrived at a house to see ANY man trying to break into it?

I think the only real trick here.. the potentially damning part is simply the question of how Gates was approached. If the Police Officer saw a black man breaking into a house and brought out the cuffs immediately, then I agree it's racial profiling.

If the police officer approached him, as he says he did trying to find out what was going on and Gates' doesn't respond helpfully and THEN the cuffs came out.. I'd say it's maybe not so cut and dry. I can understand how a number of misunderstandings could have occurred and we got to where we are.

I'd really love to see the two stories.. Gates' story and the officers story put side by side and examined. I'm sure it'd be very "Rashomon" but I think it would at least give us a clearer picture of what really happened.

Comments

[alierak]

I don't so much care to pick a side on the arrest, but I do think you're missing some widely reported details that show Gates to be a moron. He didn't forget his keys, he found that the front door lock was jammed due to having been tampered with while he was away. So he went in the back door, still couldn't open the front door from the inside, and asked the Moroccan taxi driver who'd brought him home to help by pushing on the door from the outside.

Duhr. If you return home and find your lock's been tampered with, do not enter the house, do not pass go or collect $200. CALL THE EFFING POLICE. Kthxbye.

[phoenixsong]

That's actually the first I've heard that level of detail. Boston.com? (News sites that don't crash my browser at work are rather limited.)

In which case, yes -- at very least, if you've had someone housesitting for you, call them first. If not, call the cops. Unless you're the type to assume all cops are out to get you...ohwait. s:P~

[alierak]

I'm pretty sure I'd have gotten that thru CNN's RSS feed.

[hkellick]

You're right, I'd missed that. Or.. gotten confused on that point. :p
The whole thing seems... not quite as cut and dry as people want to say it is, though.