/Begin Rant
I tuned into Morning Joe this morning (never good for the blood pressure...)to see what today's media tea leaves foretell, and it is clear that there will be another day of talking about President Obama's comments regarding the arrest of Dr. Gates, focusing on race. Is the officer racist?? OMG! But he says he's not in the video!?! And, you know what? Maybe he's not. Apparently the officer teaches diversity training, and it is clear even from the pictures on TV that at the time of the arrest there was at least one black officer on the scene. So, is the Cambridge Police Department or this officer racist? Maybe not.
But, to paraphrase Dr. Howard Dean, WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS: Is the Cambridge police department unamerican? Has police procedure in this country become fundamentally unamerican in its outlook and application?
What happened to the American idea that a man's home is his castle? What happened to the American idea that we all live under the rule of law, including the police? What happened to the American ideal of Freedom of Speech?
Because when combined, all these ideals mean that Dr. Gates should be able to cuss that officer from here to nowhere while he was in his own home. So, I don't care what names Dr. Gates called the officer. I don't care whether Mr. Gates was disorderly: It's his house, not a public street, and he can be disorderly as he pleases so long as he isn't disturbing his neighbors. Obviously, I similarly don't care whether Gates called the officer a racist or anything else. That's beside the point.
The fact remains that Gates produced the ID required to prove his residence. After that point, the ONLY thing the officer should have been doing was to say, "Thank you, Mr. Gates. We apologize for the inconvenience."
And if Gates wanted his badge number or whatever at that point, the officer should have been happy to give it. Why not? If he'd acted as he should have, there would have been no reason that anyone knowing such information was a problem, and even now, we know who the guy is anyway. He's been all over the internets, so he wasn't trying to hide his secret hero-cop identity.
So, what I really want to know is when we will start having a serious conversation about the rights we as a people, of all races, have in our own homes and the boundaries that we expect the police to observe.
I, for one, believe that if the police do not have a WARRANT (see Fourth Amendment) authorizing their presence on my property, then I have every right as a property owner to DEMAND that the police get off my property and expect them to comply with such an order, whether I phrase it as "Please leave" or "You Mother Fuckers get the the Hell off my property!"
While I am perfectly willing to concede that a greater measure of deference might be due the police when you are on a public street where it is their duty to patrol (though, even there, I think true free speech means you should still be able to say to the officer whatever you want without fear of arrest for 'disorderly conduct'), I'm not willing to concede that remotely similar standards can ever apply when I am in my own private residence in a nation that is supposed to respect the rule of law.
But the police of America (even those in liberal Cambridge, MA), apparently, have something else in mind in our post-9/11 security state era.
So, I for one applaud the president for calling the conduct stupid, though I would have said 'repugnant to our ideals and expectations as American citizens'. So, while the Cambridge police, and the officer, and apparently even some police unions (and, of course, the media) are now complaining, I think the president let them off far too easy.
/End Rant