New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich points out one thing I missed in the stories about Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates being arrested by Cambridge cop James Crowley.
In his police report, Crowley clains 911 caller Lucia Whalen is a racial profiler, saying the two men at Gates’ back door were black. Actually, she said one “looked kind of Hispanic” and she couldn’t tell about the other because she couldn’t see him.
So far, no apology from Crowley to Whalen. Or a general “mea culpa” to the public. So, far, no comments on this part of the situation by the Cambridge PD.
This, in turn, gets back to the meme others have observed in the past few days. In part, if not in large part, this is about police authoritarianism. Now, whether its more about race, as Rich does dot-connecting over conservatives’ berating Obama’s initial response to this issue vs. their own ongoing response to Sonia Sotomayor, or whether police authoritarianism is the primary problem, or it’s something in the middle, I don’t know.
But, the image of James Crowley, constructed both by himself and peers on the Cambridge PD, doesn’t fully square with reality.
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