Bite Your Tongue

The Washington Post
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: July 25, 2009

Being obnoxious isn’t a crime.
As we reflect on the arc of civil rights dramas from Jim Crow to Jim Crowley, my friend John Timoney, the police chief of Miami, observes: “There’s a fine line between disorderly conduct and freedom of speech. It can get tough out there, but I tell my officers, ‘Don’t make matters worse by throwing handcuffs on someone. Bite your tongue and just leave.’ ”
As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police. But this time, I’m struggling.
No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sergeant Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.
President Obama was right the first time, that the encounter had a stupid ending, and the second time, that both Gates and Crowley overreacted. His soothing assessment that two good people got snared in a bad moment seems on target.
It escalated into a clash of egos — the hard-working white cop vs. the globe-trotting black scholar, the town vs. the gown, the Lowell Police Academy vs. the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Crowley told a Boston sports station that Gates “seemed very peculiar — even more so now that I know how educated he is.”
Gates told his daughter Elizabeth in The Daily Beast: “He should have gotten out of there and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, good luck. Loved your PBS series — check with you later!’ ”
Gates told me Crowley was so “gruff” and unsolicitous “the hair on my neck stood up.” Crowley says Gates acted “put off” and “agitated.” But the strong guy with the gun has more control than the weak guy with the cane. An officer who teaches racial sensitivity should not have latched on to a technicality about neighbors — who seemed to be outnumbered by cops — getting “alarmed” by Gates’s “outburst.”
From Shakespeare to Hitchcock, mistaken identity makes for a powerful narrative.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/opinion/26dowd.html