Prominent Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates arrested at his Home in Cambridge, MA
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I think both parties came to the table with certain assumptions about one another that were inaccurate, and consequently, both overreacted. As a followup, both are trying to cover their respective asses, with Gates claiming he was completely reasonable and measured in his approach to the police, and Crowley claiming there was a threat to public safety.
Both sides have a vested interest in not backing down. Crowley instructs other officers in a course on racial profiling, and doesn't want to look like he acted in response to a bruised ego. Gates is a prominent author of many books on the Black Experience in America and brings his research on past actions of a nation of police forces historically known for treating black people at least differently if not in a manner that overtly abuses their authority.
Here's an article with some audio content from both the 911 call (where the caller identifies a Hispanic man only after being prodded), and the radio transmissions themselves (where no loud, confrontational threats from Gates are evident).
As more content gets released, this will likely become a story about the media's tendency towards sensationalization more than anything else. Obama's statements weren't out of line...regardless of racial profiling or not, to arrest someone in their own home for insulting a police officer isn't what we pay the cops to do, but have served to completely distract people from his health care objective. For that reason alone he probably should have been more measured.
Covering shit like this has proven vastly more entertaining for the media than policy since it improves ratings in the short term. The fact that people have latched onto the issue to an almost hysterical degree, quickly grasping at straws to superimpose vaguely relevant life experiences onto both Gates' and Crowley's actions speaks more about race relations in this country than the event itself.