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The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Professor with the Limp and the Cane and the Cop with the Gun and the Badge
Police forces tend to be among the most secretive and
least accountable of all organizations. When pressed for
accountability or sued for malfeasance, obfuscation and
evasiveness are the typical response. The phenomenon is
hardly limited to certain countries or societies—the unas*
sailability of police organizations seems to be universal.
—Michael H. Fox
The serve-and-protect model of police motivation that
was drummed into police corps across the country in the
aftermath of the response to anti-war demonstrations in
the sixties and seventies has been heavily encroached on
by the control-and-suppress model. —J. Ackerman
The best motto for a police officer is that sticks and
stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
. —George Kirkham
1 *he recently published Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest
of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class, and Crime in
America (2010), by Charles 3. Ogletree, Jr., a Harvard
law professor and friend of Gates, tells the story of Gates'
arrest as well as the stories of other black Americans who, like
Gates, have been arrested or accosted by police officers acting
suspiciously. The oublication of this book started me thinking
again about the whole Gates affair and motivated me to under
take the following probe into aspects of the Gates arrest that
the general public may not be aware of or fully understand.
Infamously, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher, Jr.
University Professor at Harvard University, Director of the
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American
Research, the author of a dozen scholarly books and editor of
half a dozen more, the prominent literary historian, theorist
and critic, the renowned intellectual with a worldwide reputa
tion and currently this country's most noted black scholar,
was arrested for disorderly conduct on the front porch of his
Cambridge, MA home by Sgt. James P. Crowley, a Cambridge
police officer, shortly before 1 p.m. on Thursday, July 16, 2009.
Police mugshots of Prof. Gates, as well as a photograph of
him in handcuffs on his porch, surrounded by armed police
men, appeared in news stories on the incident and were seen
all around the world.
Reactions to the arrest of Gates varied To liberals and civil
liberties advocates, the arrest was unconstitutional, unjusti
fied and outrageous. To these people, the arrest resulted from
vindictiveness, pettiness and racism. To conservatives and
apologists for the crime-control establishment, the arrest was
appropriate, proper and perfectly legal To the defenders of the
arrest, Crowley was just a hardworking cop doing his duty, a
blue-collar type simply performing his job, whereas Gates was
an arrogant, pointy-headed, pampered elitist who breached the
peace and deserved arrest
Predictably, Crowley's fellow police officers circled the
wagons in his defense. "I believe that Sgt Crowley acted in
a way that is consistent with his training at the department
and consistent with national standards of law enforcement
protocol* said Robert Hass, Commissioner of the Cambridge
Police Department *We stand by whatever the officer said in
his report," announced Sgt James DeFrancesco, spokesman for
the Cambridge Police Department. And the Cambridge Police
Superior Officers Association issued a statement expressing its
"full and unqualified support" for Crowley, adding that Crowley
is "a highly respected veteran supervisor with a distinguished
record. His actions at the scene of this matter were consis
tent with his training, with the informed policies and prac
tices of the department and with applicable legal standards."
Doubtlessly, police officers throughout America overwhelmingly
shared these pro-Crowley views. Crowley himself dismissed sug
gestions that he should apologize to Gate* for arresting him: "I
have nothing to apologize for. It will never happen."
Undisputed Facts
Regarding the Arrest
Many of the facts surrounding the arrest are hotly disputed,
but I begin my analysis with the undisputed bask facts, which
are:
1. On the day in question, July 16, 2009, the 56-year-old
Gates arrived at Boston's Logan Airport, returning from a trip
8 FlAGPOLE.COM • DECEMBER 1,2010
to China, where he had been filming a PBS documentary. He
was met there by his usual chauffeur from a Boston car service
and driven to his home (which he was renting from Harvard)
at 17 Ware St. in Cambridge, arriving there about 12:30 p.m.
Gates and the chauffeur carried the luggage to the front porch
of the house. They then discovered the front door to the house
was jammed, perhaps due to an attempt to jimmy the door lock
while Gates was away. Gates was able to enter his house via
the back door but found the front door could not be opened
from the inside. He then went around to the front and with the
chauffeur forced the door open. The chauffeur departed. Gates
then got on the phone with the Harvard Real Estate Office to
report that the lock on his front door was defective and needed
replacement
2. Shortly after the front door had been pushed in, 40-year-
old Ms. Lucia Whalen, a Harvard Magazine employee, dialed
911 on her cell phone. Whalen had been walking through the
neighborhood on her way to lunch when an elderty woman
without a cell phone stopped her to report that a break-in
might have just occurred at 17 Ware St.
3. In its entirety, the transcript of Whalen's 911 call reads
as follows: Dispatcher "Tell me exactly what happened." -
Whalen: "Umm, I don't know what's happening. I just have an
elderly woman here, uh, standing here, and she had noticed
two gentlemen trying to get in a house at that number, 17
Ware Street, and they kind of had to barge in. And they broke
the screen door and they finally got in, and when I looked, I
went further, closer to the house a little bit, after the gentle
men were already in the house, I noticed two suitcases, so I'm
not sure if these are two individuals who actually work there, I
mean who live there."*
Dispatcher "You think they might've been breaking..."
Whalen: "I don't know, 'cause I have no idea, I just noticed..."
Dispatcher "So, you think the possibility might have been
there or...? What do you mean by barged in? Did they kick the
door in or...?" Whalen: "No, they were pushing the door in,
like, uhhh, like the screen part of the front door was kind of
like cut" Dispatcher "How did they open the door itself, the
lock?" Whalen: "I didn't see a key or anything 'cause I was a
little bit away from the door. But I did notice that they pushed
their..."
Dispatcher "And what did the suitcases have to do with
anything?" Whalen: "I don't know. I'm just telling you that's
what I saw. I just [inaudible]."
Dispatcher "Do you know what apartment they broke into?"
Whalen: "No, it's just the first floor. I don't even think that it's
an apartment. It's 17 Ware Street It's a house. It's a yellow
hQuse. Number 17.1 don't know if they live there and they just
had a hard time with their key, but I did notice that they had
to use their shoulder to try to barge in and they got in. I don't
know if they had a key or not 'cause I couldn't see from my
angle..."
Dispatcher "[inaudible] black or Hispanic? Are they still
in the house?" Whalen: "They're still in the house, I believe,
yeah." Dispatcher "Are they white, black or Hispanic?" Whalen:
"Umm, there were two larger men, one looked kind of Hispanic,
but I'm not really sure. And the other one entered, and I didn't
see what he looked like at all. I just saw it from a distance,
and this older wonfan was worried, thinking someone's break
ing in someone's .bouse. They've been barging in, a..d she
interrupted me, ami that's when I had noticed. Otherwise, I
probably wouldn't have noticed it alt to be honest with you.
So, I was just calling 'cause she was a concerned neighbor, I
guess... *
Dispatcher "All right, welt police are on the way, you can
meet them when they get there."
4. Around 12:44 p.m. Sgt. Crowley, who was in uniform in
an uremarked patrol car, received a police radio broadcast about
the possible break-in at 17 Ware St. and drove there. Exiting
his car, he spoke briefly with Whalen and then walked up the
steps onto the porch of 17 Ware St. and went to the front
door, where through the glass pane he saw Gates inside in the
foyer of the house. He asked Gates to step out onto the porch.
Gates refused. During all or most of the encounter between the
two men Gates vehemently protested and criticized Crowley's
actions. At some point Gates requested Crowley to provide
his name. At some point Crowley entered the home (although
whether Gates opened the door for Crowley, or whether Crowley
entered with Gates' consent, is disputed). At some point Gates
told Crowley that he lived there, and Crowley requested some
identification. In response to Crowley's request for identifica
tion, Gates produced his Harvard
faculty photo ID card. At some point
Crowley radioed this message to
headquarters: Tm up with a gentle
man who says he resides here but
uncooperative... He gave me the
name of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on
Harvard property." At some point
Crowley left the house and Gates
came out onto the front porch,
whereupon Crowley arrested him on
the porch for disorderly conduct and
handcuffed him.
5. The elapsed time from
Crowley's first arrival at Gates' front
door to his arrest of Gates was
approximately six minutes.
6. Taken away, manacled, to the
police station where he was booked,
fingerprinted and photographed,
Gates was later released after four hours of detention there.
Five days later the district attorney dismissed the charges...
Gatesgate
The arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was scandalous. Gates,
it appears, was not at fault, although understandably he was
no doubt overexcited.
Defenders of Crowley believe Gates was the cause of his
own arrest and agree with something Crowley said to the press:
"The professor could have resolved the issue by quieting down
and/or going back inside the house." This clever attempt to
blame the victim has been witheringly answered by Robert
Schlesinger: "True. But the police officer could also have
resolved the issue by rolling his eyes, wishing the cranky old
professor a nice day, getting in his car and going off in search
of real crime. And as the person with greater power—-in this
case, the power to arrest and incarcerate—Crowley had more
responsibility to defuse the situation."
America is deeply in trouble when it is saddled with law
enforcement personnel such as Sgt. James P. Crowley and
with a law enforcement establishment which rushes to take
Crowley's side. They make the sinister claim that Crowley only
did what police are trained to do at the academy! They out
rageously maintain that the manner in which Prof. Gates was
treated was acceptable—that it was standard, professional
and in accordance with police protocol! The entire world can
see that they are champions of chump arrests, apologists for
petty tyrants and defenders of the indefensible. If their grip
on power is not broken, our unwritten national anthem will be
"America the Beautiful Police State."
I ' V . ' v •
Dontld E. MNHcm, Jr.
Note-. Sgt. Crowley's and another officer’s arrest reports, together with the
transcripts of Ms. Whalen's 911 call and other police radio communica
tions relating to the arrest of Prof. Gates, can be accessed on the Interne*
at http-y/wWw.thesmokinggun.com/doaiments/crime/hennMoois-gates-
ir-police-repofl A much fuller version of Prof. Wilkes' article can be read
onlineatwww.flagpote.com.