Ginned Up Beer
OBAMA's comments on the dialogue between his Professor friend and the cop:
"Hopefully, instead of ginning up anger and hyperbole everybody can just spend a little bit of time with some self-reflection and recognizing that other people have different points of view," Obama said. "And that's it."
Except that's not it. Because the Police still misbehave sometimes. There is still racial profiling sometimes. There are still rogue officers who do not-- by the books--a lot of things- there are still people whose constitutional rights are violated-every day. There are still vindictive Americans who sick the police on people they don't like-there are people who call themselves churchgoing Christians who sick the police frivolously on other church going Christians. There are significantly more African Americans in jails proportionately to whites and lots of them don't deserve the disparate treatment and some really are innocent. Gates epitomized that raw deal. His charges were dropped because he put up a stink and had a profile that carried it all the way to the White House. Other people are abused by police overreaching and abuse of authority and they are just joe or sally six pack and don't get invited to the White House. They get invited to an arraignment hearing- and eventually a trial, and if they don't have the money to pay a good lawyer, to a nice metal bed in a jail cell.
No one is ginning up anything- some defendants who are cuffed, finger printed and hauled to "county" get to stay there. They don't get to tour the White House and have a free beer.
As a lawyer actually out there in the client world you can see this quite a lot without even trying to look. It's ugly. In DC for example the police can be sicked on someone merely on the word of someone else without a shred of second witness support-they can be hauled in on the word of one person without a witness on an assault charge. On mere hearsay and rumor 'banning' orders are issued with police intimidation with zero due process rights. Hearsay will support an assault charge without evidence (the Prosecutor then decides whether to paper the file, etc. after the police intimidation) This has happened to people I know- the anger is real and really justifiable.
Remember Rodney King? There are still hate crimes masquarading as police action out there.
The episode should prompt the White House to do a serious study and demand statistics on the incidents of harassing police behavior where the charges were never papered by the prosecutor or dropped and look at the racial breakdown of this across the entire country. How many times have the police done something, hauled someone in, filed a charge or a unilateral order where it did not support a criminal charge and the prosecutor deemed the action frivolous or meritless. How much police harassment is there really out there. Everyone knows that the criminal justice system, and particularly the juvenille justice system are racked and stacked against African Americans. Why is that? How much racial harassment is there. If an African American administration is not going to take a serious look at this, with an African American Attorney General and and African American President, then we are in serious trouble.
Don't trivialize what happened here. You are missing your teachable moment.
You don't have to try so hard not to offend really offensive people. We get it.
It happened also to this guy- he should be invited to the next meeting (he wrote a book about it- read it):
http://www.law.gwu.edu/Faculty/profile.aspx?id=1723
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