Life

Why ‘Grin and Bear It’ is Bull

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Last Updated on January 28, 2022

There are a large number of people who seem to believe that it’s okay to be as big of a jerk as you want to be to a law enforcement officer, and that no matter what is said to them or what kind of verbal abuses they have to endure, the officers themselves should be willing to turn the other cheek and be “professional.”

I call that a bunch of bunk.

The arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Gates has had a lot of people siding against police. Gates told CNN that after producing his driver’s license and Harvard ID, he “demanded” the responding police officer’s name and badge number. Yet there’s no rational reason why Gates should have been so angry as to start “demanding” anything.

As educated guesses based on common sense go, I’m as certain as I can be without actually witnessing the situation firsthand of four things:

  1. The officer, Sgt. James Crowley, likely had a very serious, possibly even accusatory tone from the moment he encountered Gates.  Crowley had to assume, for his own safety and the safety of a homeowner who might not be aware that a burglar was in the house, that Gates might not belong there until it was proven otherwise.
  2. Crowley introduced himself as a police officer and pointed out his reason for being there early in the encounter. This is a normal practice for police.  Even during a simple traffic stop, the police officer takes a moment to explain why he stopped you.  There’s no way that, at some point early in their meeting, he didn’t point out that he was investigating a possible crime. In fact, Gates even admitted this, and told CNN that the officer asked if he could provide proof that Gates himself did live there as he had stated.
  3. Gates, as much as he accused Crowley of having the narrative already written out in his mind, was suffering from that very affliction. Gates had already decided that he was being hassled because he was black, which is why he began demanding information from the officer for no apparent reason.
  4. As surely as Crowley could have and should have immediately thanked Gates for producing his ID, no matter how long that took, and left when it was established that he did belong there, Gates should have thanked the officer for making the attempt to protect his home and taking a report of a break-in so seriously.

The people who insist that no matter what Gates had to say, no matter how irate he became and no matter how many racial accusations he threw, Crowley should have just remained all smiles don’t really find that level of free speech to be acceptable.

But to prove it, I’m going to step away from the Gates/Crowley controversy and move to a different one:

Remember that midwest church that protests at the funerals of American soldiers who are killed in Iraq? The church members insist that the deaths are the result of America’s growing acceptance of homosexuality.

You can believe that the War in Iraq is about oil. Or that it’s about George W. Bush trying to finish what his daddy started. Or that it’s a massive egomaniacal power play from Bush and Cheney.

You can’t possibly argue, however, that the primary reason we’ve been fighting in Iraq anything whatsoever to do with homosexuality in America.

Yet these over-eager bible-thumpers, the folks a friend might call JFARS (that’s “Jesus Followers Acting Really Stupidly”), insist on having their say. At the funerals of the men and women whose job it is to fight for our freedom. And who, ironically enough, protect our freedom, including the right to do such outlandish things under the umbrella of free speech.

Funny thing is, I’ve not read of a single instance in which these folks protest at the funerals of their own members. When a deacon of their own church dies, or when a faithful member who’s been going to the church for decades and has never missed a Sunday passes away, do these people stage protests at their funerals, too? Maybe they do, but if they do, they don’t mention it.

Why is that?

Clearly, because something within them tells them that such behavior wouldn’t be acceptable. But people whom they have no reason to believe has anything to do with homosexuality, but who happen to be complete strangers, especially if they’re soldiers, are fair targets.

They shouldn’t be considered fair targets. Neither should law enforcement officers. It should never be acceptable to abuse or harass them.

A well-done essay in Time magazine points out that police have in their vernacular a phrase called “Contempt of Cop.” It sounds a lot like “Contempt of Court,” but there’s a difference: contempt of court, wherein a litigant or witness — or even a lawyer — gets abusive and can legally be punished for doing so. It’s against the law.

Contempt of Cop isn’t. The First Amendment allows us to say anything we want to a cop. (Although, oddly enough, this same First Amendment doesn’t give us the same right inside a courtroom. Interesting double standard, isn’t it?)

Police ought to be treated with the same respect we give to our soldiers. When we have a problem at our home, we’re much more likely to find that it’s a police officer who’s actually responding to help us out than a member of our armed forces.

So why is it okay to get in a cop’s face whenever we want, then seriously expect them to continue to give a damn about what happens to us?

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.

8 Comments

  • Oh boy do I totally agree with you on this one Patrick. I have many officer friends & to hear the stories & I just went on a ride along with one of them. What is it that people think they can #### all over them. EVERYONE deserves respect! And even if they are a disrespectful officer, why would you go down to their level? That says something more about you then. You should still be a good person. If you are not then you deserve to be tasered or arrested in my opinion. If you were doing this to someone in a place of business then you could be arrested for disturbing the peace the minimum if you would not stop or leave. This is their place of business. You mouth off to a waitress they will call the cops & if you do not stop or leave then you should be arrested and barred from the restaurant.

    I totally agree I would say thank you for caring & making sure my home is safe. And I love the JFARS, never heard of that! HA!

  • According to CNN, Whalen’s lawyer claimed just a few days ago that Crowley and Whalen never spoke on the scene. Discrepancies by the truckload.

  • The Cambridge Police Commissioner said the same thing, backing up her initial story. I think her attorney (Wendy Murphy) has explained that to mean that Whalen was disputing the allegations that she ID’d them as black, which was what some were assuming she said.

    It would be interesting to find out why that was in Crowley’s report. I still think there are significant Fourth (and possibly Fifth) Amendment issues here.

    (Here’s the source for the Police Commissioner part of this: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/27/gates_caller_didnt_cite_race_police_say/ )

  • Jeff, for what it’s worth, prior to the release of the 911 tapes, Whalen, while lamenting media reports that she reported “two black males,” an account I never heard, claimed that she never mentioned race. Though clearly in the 911 call, when the dispatcher asks if the men she saw were white, black or Hispanic, she said one of them “was kind of Hispanic but she wasn’t really sure” then said she didn’t get a good look at the other man at all. Even though she didn’t mention race until she was specifically asked, she did mention it. So her account appears to contain some degree of discrepancy as well.

  • For what it’s worth, the 911 caller, Lucia Whalen, just held a press conference and contradicted Sgt. Crowley’s account of their conversation outside the home.

    Crowley’s report says: “She went on to tell me she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks.”

    At her press conference moments ago, Whalen said the only words she exchanged with Sgt. Crowley were her telling him that she was the 911 caller, and him telling her to stay right there on the sidewalk.

    Whalen’s story makes more sense, as the 911 call itself reveals that she never mentioned any black males. Crowley’s credibility is highly suspect at this point, I think.

  • I have seen comments to the effect of “the cop should have just taken it” many times in response to this incident and many others. It was not that long ago that I read on CNN about some grandmother who got pulled over for speeding and was subsequently tasered when she refused to cooperate with the police officer. She was a real piece of work, dropping F-bombs and “daring” the cop to arrest her. The cop was also trying to keep her from walking straight into bypassing heavy traffic.

    The comment I saw repeated a lot was that the police officer should pick a different job if he cannot find any other way to deal with a “little old lady” than with a taser. A lot of people out there seem to think that they should be able to talk to police officers any which way they want, and the cop should just take the abuse as long as it was verbal.

    I do not think age, gender, or race should play any part in how a cop addresses a combative individual. Just as they are not expected to treat a black man any differently than a white man, the same laws ought to apply to little old women with an inflated sense of entitlement.

    Cops aren’t customer service representatives that you can yell at when things don’t go your way. People deliberately misinterpret the latter part of “to protect and serve.” In any given situation, the police has to consider the safety of everyone involved, and not cater to your ego or your feelings. The best approach is to cooperate, regardless of what your race is.

  • “Contempt of Cop” seems to be what happened in this case. I don’t think the Gates incident is an example of someone getting in a cop’s face whenever we want; he was in his own home, and it seems he was arrested for yelling at a cop. The more I read about this (especially Lawrence O’Donnell’s piece) I think there was a serious violation of Gates’s Fourth Amendment rights.

  • I’d agree with your statement of respecting 90% of the cops I know. However, I live in a small town. And there are cops here that not only don’t deserve respect, they deserve nothing short of a different job, perhaps cleaning toilets. I refuse to respect them when they refuse to respect me as a woman of a certain age…or the blacks…or the Hispanics in this town.

    Since I work for the city, I know exactly how to complain and to whom (at least around here) and how loud and with what words. And I do, about the ones who are managing to tarnish the reputation of the thousands of police officers across the country by their behavior. [Not once has an officer I’ve complained about been reprimanded. Not. Once.] Most people are nowhere near as fortunate as I am in this respect (ahem, pun intended) and so they pay the tickets, put up with the abuse, and develop an understandably lousy attitude about authority in general.

    If this is news to you, you need to get pulled over for no reason more often. It’s called Driving While [Teenaged, Black, Hispanic, Female….etc.] and it’s happened to me. It’s happend to my friends. It’s happened to my son’s friends, my nephews, my mother-in-law…and it has happened in several different locales. It’s not exactly a local problem.

    I haven’t responded to most of your Henry Gates posts up till now, but I’m beginning to wonder if this is the only news in the world. Is there really nothing substantial to discuss? I don’t think Gates was 100% right (or wrong) nor do I think the officer is the Worst (or Best) Policeman In The World. I think it was a very unfortunate and very understandable situation and they both need to go to their individual corners and cool off. And the President (whom I adore) needs to STFU.

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