Police Discretion And Indiscretion on View

Police Discretion And Indiscretion on View

Late last July, I was driving up to Saratoga with a friend when I made the mistake of mentioning that I had never gotten a speeding ticket.

We were on the upper part of the Taconic Parkway when I noticed a police car on the left side of the road. I took a quick look at my speedometer and saw it was at 65, 10 miles over the speed limit. I wasn't apprehensive; a cousin of mine who was a highway cop in Queens for most of his career had once told me he gave drivers a 10-mile cushion, although a mile over that and he would pull them over.

And so I didn't slow down even when the cop car entered the road behind me, figuring that doing so would be an acknowledgment I had been doing something wrong when I was actually driving at the limit as it was enforced, rather than posted.

We had gone about a mile like that when his red overhead light came on and he directed me to pull over. After requesting my license and registration, he asked me if I knew why he had stopped me.

"Because I was doing more than 60," I replied, then explained what my cousin had long ago told me.

"You were doing 72," he said.

A MATTER OF RESPECT: Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates (left) took exception to being confronted in his home by Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, who objected to being accused of racism for investigating a report of a possible break-in. The question arising from the tense, angry exchange was whether Sergeant Crowley should have simply walked away once he ascertained the situation rather than arresting Mr. Gates on a disorderly conduct charge that was later dropped.

No Time for Loud Protests

I knew what my speedometer had said, but I wasn't going to challenge him, not even with an "with all due respect, officer" at the beginning of it. It wasn't clear to me why he felt the need to exaggerate how fast I was going, unless it was because there was something implicit in my citing of my cousin's advice that a cop pulling someone over for going just 10 miles over the speed limit on a largely empty road was either trying to meet a quota or too much of a stickler.

Instead, I just got quiet—learned behavior among the friends I had grown up with in a situation where a cop has made it clear you can't do yourself any good by further arguing your case. The cop returned to his car for what seemed an interminable time, came back and remarked on the fact that I had a clean driving record, and then handed me the ticket.

My friend offered to testify in my behalf if I wanted to contest it, but I didn't see the percentage in making a four-plus-hour drive for a court appearance when my primary defense was that I wasn't as far over the limit as the cop claimed.

Judging by the accounts of his confrontation with a Cambridge Police Sergeant at his house July 16 after a woman called to report a possible break-in there, Henry Louis Gates got noisy when he felt he was being unjustly treated. He loudly and impolitely challenged the authority of Sgt. James Crowley, and wound up being arrested for his impertinence on a disorderly conduct charge.

Because Mr. Gates is a Harvard professor and a noted scholar who is friendly with President Obama, the incident made national headlines, and then went viral when the President, asked about the incident at the end of a July 22 press conference on health care, responded, "I think it's fair to say that, No. 1, any of us would be angry" at being treated suspiciously while in their own home. "No. 2, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

A Pause Before the Magic Word

Careful man that he is, Mr. Obama had paused before delivering the word "stupidly." There's no way to know whether he did so because the impact of using that word weighed on him or he wanted to put a little extra mustard on the high hard one he was sending at Sergeant Crowley. Clearly, though, he didn't anticipate the furor it created, or, at least as importantly, the impact it had in burying the news he hoped to make during the press conference to regain momentum for a health-care bill.

Two days later, the President tried to put the genie back in the bottle by expressing regret about the language that he used, saying he didn't mean to impugn the intelligence or the character of Sergeant Crowley, a well-respected cop who teaches classes on how to avoid racial profiling. Mr. Obama, the Sergeant and Mr. Gates met at the White House July 30 and talked over a beer, the male equivalent of hugging it out.

It is unclear whether this will produce a serious dialogue about cops and race. Clearly Mr. Gates's reaction during the dispute leading to his arrest indicated he believed he was being hassled—beyond the normal concerns officers might have about someone being seen forcing their way into a house— because he was black. And Mr. Obama, by noting at the end of his reply during the press conference that "there is a long history of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by police disproportionately," suggested that dynamic affected the reactions of both parties during the incident.

Mr. Gates had just returned from a trip to discover that he couldn't open his front door with a key, leading him to force it with the help of the cabbie who had brought him there. Sergeant Crowley, responding to the report of a possible break-in in a neighborhood where there had been several recently, didn't know whether he was walking into a burglary and confronting individuals who were armed.

Mr. Gates became angry when he told Sergeant Crowley who he was and the cop was unfamiliar with his name, and responded to a request for identification by allegedly saying, "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?" There is a dispute as to whether the identification he produced showed that he lived in the house. When Sergeant Crowley asked him to step outside, he claimed Mr. Gates responded, "Yeah, I'll speak with your mama outside."

The Opposite of Defusing

Now it's obvious that if the statements attributed to him are accurate, Mr. Gates was throwing gas on the fire rather than tamping it down. The question becomes whether at this point, if in fact it had been established that he lived there, there was any reason for Sergeant Crowley to be continuing the discussion.

Never mind the President's remarks, which as he later acknowledged, added heat rather than bringing light to the situation. A better gauge comes from the New York Post column written by Rich Lowry that was published July 24, hours before Mr. Obama expressed regret about his comments.

As might be expected from the man who is editor of the National Review, the leading conservative magazine, Mr. Lowry was critical of both Mr. Obama and Mr. Gates, as reflected in the column's headline, "Prez and prof should have held their fire."

But late in the piece, Mr. Lowry said this: "The officer, who has an exemplary record and has taught a policeacademy class on racial profiling, probably should have shown more forbearance. But interactions with police officers typically end better when you don't verbally abuse them."

All of it true, but the most-striking phrase is the one that Sergeant Crowley "probably should have shown more forbearance." If Mr. Obama had used similar language and said that Sergeant Crowley might have used better judgment rather than accusing him of "acting stupidly," he would have made his point at least as effectively and probably minus the firestorm.

When is Line Crossed?

Cops believe, rightfully, that they should not be easy marks for members of the public to unload on, and that putting up with derogatory comments can sometimes encourage others in a crowd to join in the rowdiness, potentially escalating a situation.

In this case, however, there wasn't a mob gathered that could have been stirred up by Professor Gates's heated words. He was doing his venting outside only because Sergeant Crowley had asked him to step out of the house to continue their conversation.

The fact that the verbal haranguing wasn't necessarily any danger to the officer doesn't mean he should just have to take it. But an ordinary citizen who feels unjustly put upon usually responds just by yelling back. Sergeant Crowley bypassed that op- tion and took it up a notch by arresting Professor Gates and putting him through the system. That is a mostuncomfortable place to be, regardless of your race, particularly if you feel yourself to be a victim of injustice but also realize your own conduct may have been a contributing factor.

On the Receiving End

Sergeant Crowley, whose decision to arrest Mr. Gates was supported by a black officer who responded to the scene, wound up having the tables turned when Mr. Obama weighed in, essentially putting him through the system with the attendant humiliations and the accompanying reflections upon his own conduct and character.

Yet even the President couldn't escape that cycle. Some conservative critics and police groups argued that he never actually apologized to Sergeant Crowley. But his remarks were an acknowledgment that he had at the least been indiscreet, if not guilty of abusing his authority.

Aides to Mr. Obama said afterward that he was still coming to terms with the magnified impact that everything he says and does has, in ways he never imagined when he was merely one of the more-famous members of the Senate.

A police officer's power is more limited, and usually so are the consequences. But for most citizens it seems realer, because it is unimaginable that they are going to come faceto face with a President's application of the weight of his office.

Cops can't wear that responsibility too heavily, but the best ones keep it in perspective. Those are the cases that don't usually involve matters of life and death, giving them the luxury of a little extra time to consider the pros and cons of exerting that power or holstering it.