The Professor and the Policeman

On the night of July 16, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was probably very tired from his trip to China and was also probably not in very good spirits when, upon finally reaching his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he discovered that his front door was jammed. With the assistance of his driver, though, Gates was able to finally enter his home. Meanwhile, a neighbor, seeing two men apparently trying to break into a house, called the police (wouldn’t you?). The Cambridge police responded in the person of Sgt. James Crowley, who entered the house and asked Gates for identification. The situation, which called for politeness and restraint on the part of both parties, escalated when Professor Gates began to accuse Crowley of racial profiling. Even when the matter had been settled and Sgt. Crowley was leaving the house, Gates wouldn’t let up and followed him, ranting angrily. Finally, Crowley arrested Gates on the charge of disorderly conduct. So an honest misunderstanding that could have been resolved in less than a minute has blown up into a national news story, with even President Obama weighing in (and later probably regretting that he did).

On Friday, heads of different police organizations held a press conference. They all appeared to have hurt feelings because Obama had offhandedly commented before that the arresting officer had acted “stupidly”. The various police representatives then went on to weave the sometimes-fictional narrative about how great, professional, and enlightened the police were and how Obama owed every policeman an apology for his careless remark. And Officer Crowley was there too, appearing stone-faced and offended.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Professor Gates could have defused the situation by trying to be a bit more understanding and a little less combative. But as far as I can tell, there was no reason for the officer to handcuff Gates in his own home and take him to jail when the incident had already been resolved and the professor obviously posed no threat to anyone.

Once I got a job working at a large hospital. Regardless of what type of work that new employees were engaged in there, they all had to attend an orientation meeting. In that meeting, the one thing that was heavily stressed was that, since the hospital was a place of very high stress and anxiety for its patients, their families, and visitors, all employees should take great care in exercising compassion and restraint when dealing with anyone who displays anger toward them. Because, after all, people are often not quite themselves in a hospital and often have some very unpleasant things weighing on their minds. In other words, we new employees were advised to soften our reactions to verbally abusive patients and visitors.

In like manner, Officer Crowley should have recognized the very sensitive matter of entering someone’s private domicile (which he had to do as part of his response to the reported break-in) and then making that person justify his residence there. And yes, also recognize that the resident was an African-American who was honestly convinced that he was being racially profiled. And yet this policeman held this obviously emotionally-upset citizen whom he was supposed to be protecting to the same standard of behavior that someone standing out in public would be expected to conform to. And that is unreasonable.

After seeing the public demonstration of self-righteousness and arrogance displayed across the board by the policemen at the press conference, it is not surprising to me that the police in America have a very serious public relations problem. And not just among African-Americans. As I have written before on this blog, my perception of them is that they tend to regard the general population as a “suspect pool” instead of as the people that they are being paid to protect. And if a policeman is so thin-skinned that he can’t take a little verbal abuse from someone after entering their own home without their permission, then he should find another profession. But if he does, then he should probably stay away from hospitals as well!