The Role of the Beat Cop
Joe Carter wrote a widely praised blog post on Le Affair Gates at First Things. It is a thoughtful inquiry into the libertarian psyche, and the appropriate role of the cop on his beat (an issue I recently explored here).
Read Joe’s whole post. And note that regarding the Cambridge kerfuffle, he is wrong.
His take:
I share the view of noted criminologist James Q. Wilson that the primary function of patrol officers—whether walking a beat or patrolling in a car—is the maintenance of public order rather than strict enforcement of the letter of the law.
Law-focused libertarians, giving primacy to the harm principle, contend that the officer should have acted only after harm had occurred (e.g., after Gates committed a violent act) in clear violation of the law. Order-centric conservatives like me, giving primacy to the entropy principle, believe that the officer should have acted in a way that prevented the situation from degenerating into public disorder. There is a natural tension between these two positions that requires finding the right balance; leaning too far in either direction leads to either civil unrest or violations of civil rights.
As applied to the Gates situation, I think we saw an acceptable, though imperfect, balance of interests.
It’s useful to look at the Atlantic article where James Q. Wilson articulated why he thinks police should maintain public order:
Should police activity on the street be shaped, in important ways, by the standards of the neighborhood rather than by the rules of the state? Over the past two decades, the shift of police from order-maintenance to law enforcement has brought them increasingly under the influence of legal restrictions, provoked by media complaints and enforced by court decisions and departmental orders. As a consequence, the order maintenance functions of the police are now governed by rules developed to control police relations with suspected criminals. This is, we think, an entirely new development. For centuries, the role of the police as watchmen was judged primarily not in terms of its compliance with appropriate procedures but rather in terms of its attaining a desired objective…
Until quite recently in many states, and even today in some places, the police made arrests on such charges as “suspicious person” or “vagrancy” or “public drunkenness”—charges with scarcely any legal meaning. These charges exist not because society wants judges to punish vagrants or drunks but because it wants an officer to have the legal tools to remove undesirable persons from a neighborhood when informal efforts to preserve order in the streets have failed.
Once we begin to think of all aspects of police work as involving the application of universal rules under special procedures, we inevitably ask what constitutes an “undesirable person” and why we should “criminalize” vagrancy or drunkenness. A strong and commendable desire to see that people are treated fairly makes us worry about allowing the police to rout persons who are undesirable by some vague or parochial standard. A growing and not-so-commendable utilitarianism leads us to doubt that any behavior that does not “hurt” another person should be made illegal. And thus many of us who watch over the police are reluctant to allow them to perform, in the only way they can, a function that every neighborhood desperately wants them to perform.
This wish to “decriminalize” disreputable behavior that “harms no one”- and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order—is, we think, a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community.
So was the arrest of Skip Gates an example of a police officer reasonably applying the James Q. Wilson approach to keeping public order? I don’t think so. Professor Gates wasn’t an “undesirable” who needed to be removed from the neighborhood after “informal efforts to preserve order in the streets” had failed — he was a law-abiding Cambridge resident standing in his own house, which happens to be located in a perfectly orderly neighborhood.
Nor does the action for which he was arrested — verbally berating a police officer — constitute a source of disorder in the neighborhood. Would anyone in Cambridge claim that there is a rash or these sorts of situations, in the same way that some locales experience a rash of public drunkenness or vagrancy? Does the neighborhood “desperately want” the police to push back against an “epidemic” of folks verbally abusing police officers? Is there even a plausible scenario in which the officer departing the scene without making an arrest would’ve led to future disorder in that neighborhood?
Libertarians and conservatives do disagree about whether the police should use James Q. Wilson style policing to maintain order, but this particular case bolsters the libertarian position — the discretion afforded police by disorderly conduct laws led to an arrest even though public order wasn’t threatened.
He gets things exactly backwards in terms of how to maintain order in a case like this. The officer should have swallowed his ego, treated Gates respectfully, and tried to defuse the situation (e.g., by giving his name and badge number). Instead, he exerted his authority, escalated the situation, and helped create the public spectacle, which he took to the next level when he detained Gates.
— Brad · Jul 28, 08:39 PM · #
I have been really torn about this question for a few days.
Let’s grant, arguendo, that the officer’s side of the story is basically right. He reasonably investigated the report and Gates essentially blew up at him and spent the next several minutes yelling at him.
1. As a libertarian, I believe philosophically that you should have the right to yell at the police on your own property all you want, and that the police should not arrest you to make a point.
2. As a realist, I get that in the real world, cops have basically three tools to keep public order: (i) cooperation from the citizens; (ii) their authority, and (iii) force. Cops don’t have any control over (i), but if you challenge their authority in a situation, they are going to respond, because if they lose their authority, the only thing they have left is force, and frankly, that’s not a situation they want to be in.
I also get that it’s particularly humilating and offensive to defer to white authority when you are black, and on your own property, etc. And I get that in this specific situation, the cop could have let Gates be the alpha dog and pee all over him without damage to the public order.
3. The problem is in reconciling theory and the real world. On the one hand, I’m not sure we can ever reasonably expect cops to surrender dominance in confrontations. I’m not even 100% sure we want to — I think the cops think it would impact their ability to safely protect us, and I’m not sure they’re wrong. On the other, I don’t want to excuse routine arrests just to make a point, or worse (like taser + arrest, which is probably what a younger man would get in the same situation).
At bottom, I don’t have an answer – just “on the one hand” and “on the other hand.” Anyone?
— J Mann · Jul 28, 08:45 PM · #
Let’s not, since it’s not.
Conor – two guys arguing with each other is “public disorder”? Really? And you think it’s the liberals who promote a stultifying, meddlesome Big Government?
— Chet · Jul 28, 09:33 PM · #
Is “order-centric” a polite way of saying authoritarian ?
— Kevin · Jul 28, 10:11 PM · #
And isn’t THAT a polite way of making Carter’s very point about libertarians — that they are indifferent to anything but law.
I’m also curious how “Chet” knows what he states as a blunt fact in the first graf of his own (“since it’s not”). Unless it flows from blind authorityphobia, thus making Carter’s very point.
— Victor Morton · Jul 28, 10:55 PM · #
Even accepting Joe’s preference for public order, in the Gates situation, couldn’t public order have been restored very quickly by the officer saying “Sorry to have bothered you” and leaving?
— Steven Donegal · Jul 28, 11:10 PM · #
Ooh, well, I am not a libertarian, and I don’t live in Cambridge, but I certainly don’t want people here on the Upper West Side to stand on their stoops and yell at the police. It would make the neighborhood seem very slummy. So, as a voter and taxpayer, I would be in favor of arresting anyone who does that. So I think would a majority of New Yorkers, given their recent mayoral votes.
— y81 · Jul 28, 11:32 PM · #
Conor:
Does the fact that the 911 call reported someone trying to bust down a door with a crowbar enter into your thinking on this at all? I believe that was why Crowley went there in the first place. So he certainly had good reason to suspect an “undesirable.”
Professor Gates would expect a good officer to act promptly if some other black guy was trying to bust down his door.
Where exactly does this thing become the fault of the officer? I guess it’s when he doesn’t walk away from a Harvard professor calling him a racist, profiling, stupid cop (Do you know who I AM?). Obviously, I don’t know how this went down, but I bet it’s something like that. And I believe that there is a digital voice recording of this incident.
If Gates went off on the cop like I think he did, it’s pretty obvious that the cop had to step on him harshly. If you’re the citizen and the cop says shut-up, then shut up.
The truly sad thing about this is that the community-organizer-in-chief chose to make this a national issue. But then maybe we needed to have some more “dialogue” about race.
— jd · Jul 29, 12:21 AM · #
. . .the discretion afforded police by disorderly conduct laws led to an arrest even though public order wasn’t threatened.
This is a fair point—at least in hindsight. And I’ll certainly concede that his case isn’t the best example of public order arrest. But I think it bolsters my point that libertarians tend to think that most situations are like this since it aligns with their middle-class experiences. Basing what cops should do universally based on an incident in Cambridge would be unwise.
. . . he was a law-abiding Cambridge resident standing in his own house, which happens to be located in a perfectly orderly neighborhood.
But one of the reasons its a perfectly orderly neighborhood is because the residents don’t make a habit of standing on their porches yelling at cops. Gates breakdown in personal order necessitated order-restoration by a public official.
Again, I’ll grant that this particular situation isn’t the best example of may point. But consider if the scenario had played out a different way. Imagine if the officer had walked away from an agitated Gates, who then goes back in the house to gets a gun. Since he believes the cop is a racist he thinks he needs to take preemptive action to protect himself from a vengeful, bigoted cop, so he shoots the officer or misses and shoots and innocent bystander.
Had it worked out like this, how many people would have said “Well, of course, the cop should have just apologized (though he did nothing wrong) and walked away. When a potentially deranged man yells at you to leave the right thing for the police to do is to walk away so as not to provoke him further”? Would President Obama have said that the police had acted “smartly” in this situation?
It’s easy to play armchair jurist, deciding after the fact how the officer should have responded. But we know who Gates—information that the cop didn’t have at the time. All he knew is some jerk was ranting about him being a racist and was acting in an irrational manner. I suspect that the majority of the time cops experience this type of thing it doesn’t end with having beers at the White House.
— Joe Carter · Jul 29, 01:16 AM · #
“Imagine if the officer had walked away from an agitated Gates, who then goes back in the house to gets a gun.”
Then you’ll have to imagine Sgt. Crowley was dealing with someone other than Prof. Gates.
More to the point, if Crowley had felt for even one second that such a scenario was remotely plausible, I can assure you that Gates would have been arrested a lot more forcefully than he was.
The fact that Crowley didn’t seem to feel threatened by Gates in any way completely undermines your own attempt at ‘armchair jurisprudence’, Joe.
— Erik Siegrist · Jul 29, 01:36 AM · #
The cop’s report has been contradicted by the eyewitnesses and the victim, as well as by the 911 call itself.
— Chet · Jul 29, 01:47 AM · #
The part where he was told “two men with suitcases, maybe they’re residents” and heard “two black men with backpacks, maybe they’re burglars.” That’s why it’s his fault; that’s why the cop is a racist.
— Chet · Jul 29, 01:50 AM · #
In my experience Joe Carter is almost always wrong. I’m not implying that he is a bad person in anyway, just that he is in the wrong business.
— cw · Jul 29, 01:59 AM · #
second cw. i think Joe is just not clever…..a well-intentioned bumbler, like another i could name.
Joe the Blogger, lol.
Conor, praps you should consider the multidimensional aspect of the whole thing.
on another axis, its jock on nerd action.
then there is whole dick measuring thing, my SES is bigger than your SES.
elitist intellectual snob vs the noble commoner…..
its a microcosm of america!
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 05:14 AM · #
Carter’s position is not order-centric, it’s authority-centric— as Steven Donegal’s devastating point shows. Also, this is hilarious:
Imagine if the officer had walked away from an agitated Gates, who then goes back in the house to gets a gun. Since he believes the cop is a racist he thinks he needs to take preemptive action to protect himself from a vengeful, bigoted cop, so he shoots the officer or misses and shoots and innocent bystander.
I’d also ask Carter to consider why the officer invited Gates to follow him outside.
— matt · Jul 29, 01:47 PM · #
Things I can prove:
1. Per public order-maintenance, or per law enforcement, Crowley should never have arrested.
2. Gates is an asshole, and I kind of dig the fact that he got arrested.
3. I’m hungry.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 29, 01:49 PM · #
I’ve slept on it, and I say this with love and affection, but I think you guys are delusional utopian libertarians.
As a libertarian, I agree that all else being equal, it would have been better for Officer Crowley to apologize to Gates, take any yelling like a good Christian, and move on.
As a realist, I think that cops almost universally believe that they cannot surrender authority and do their job, and that if you get in a dominance contest with a cop, the cop will not back down because he or she honestly believes that she can’t. As a non-cop, I am not sure that they are wrong — certainly, the fact that the people with the most actual knowledge seem to agree has to give me pause.
(Yes, this time, Crowley could have walked away from Gates without any obvious danger, but as far as I can tell, cops don’t surrender authority ever if they can avoid it.)
So it would be better to have cops meekly let citizens yell at them, at least in those situations where, in hindsight, we can all agree that the yelling was harmless. It would also be better if a central price-setting bureaucracy could set “fair” oil prices, or if we could enact a carefully tailored rent control system that let landlords make a fair profit while still allowing middle and low income tenants to stay in downtown Manhattan. But in our actual world, I am sceptical that any of those things are possible.
p.s.: As to the tapes, they seem to contradict everyone’s story. Prior to the tapes’ release, Gates told the Boston Globe that he did not yell at Crowley and could not have because of a bronchial infection. Shortly after that, we saw the photo of him yelling and now we have heard the tapes, which sound an awful lot like him yelling.
— J Mann · Jul 29, 02:00 PM · #
Let me flesh out number one. Wilson writes,
A more exact statement is this: For centuries, the role of the police was to maintain public order for property owners, according to property owners. An example nowadays: rent-a-cops in gated communities will remove non-residents 100% of the time on the mere whim of a property owner; no just cause is required.
The turn to “law enforcement” was an attempt to level the public playing field for the working class.
During Wilson’s centuries-long order love-in, Gates would never have been arrested for shouting at the police while propertied. Back then, the police knew why, and for whom, they toiled in the streets.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 29, 02:36 PM · #
Kris, I take your point regarding “classical” order maintenance.
Carter’s conception of the modern “democratic” order is something closer to we are all expected to act respectfully to police acting within their authority, whether we’re Joe Sixpack, Mel Gibson, or Larry Craig.
— J Mann · Jul 29, 02:44 PM · #
“police acting within their authority”
So Joe the Blogger’s position is that it was within Crowleys authority to arrest Gates based on a mistake, and to describe “two men with suitcases one possibly hispanic” as “two black men with backpacks”?
Would that be your position also, J Mann?
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 02:50 PM · #
Does Crowley have the “authority” to describe a suitcase as a backpack? I’m not sure I understand the question.
Are you arguing that Gates was correct to yell at Crowley, and then later to lie about yelling at it, because Crowley would later write “backpack” in his report instead of “suitcase?” How would that work – did Crowley say “do you have a backpack”, justifiably outraging Gates?
He’s probably required to make his best efforts to record information accurately, but that strikes me as a game of telephone – he gets the call, drives out to the house, and by the time he writes the report, he can’t remember whether the dispatcher said suitcase or backpack.
— J Mann · Jul 29, 02:57 PM · #
He could have looked at the transcript, J Mann.
But my main question is was it within his authority to arrest Gates based on a mistake?
I do not see any rational for Crowley believing that Gates was a threat to either society or the ….officer himself.
And why invite Gates to follow him outside?
To extend his authority?
And I guess I am arguing that yelling should not be a rationale for arrest, if that is all Crowley had.
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 03:07 PM · #
Also…how did “two men one possibly hispanic” morph into “two black men”?
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 03:09 PM · #
I think that would be a very odd mistake for Crowley to make, given that he taught classes in racial sensitivity to other cops.
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 03:12 PM · #
Matoko,
At least down here in the South, cops don’t field 911 calls. Nor are they sent transcripts of 911 calls while out on the beat. Criticism of Crowley’s mistake might be valid, but to know that we need to know what dispatch said to him.
JMann, I don’t disagree with that at all. Respect for office is a democratic ideal, and when dealing with patrolmen, a prudential strategy to boot. And Gates is an asshole, no question.
Crowley shouldn’t have arrested him, though. Not from his house, not for being rude and erratic.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 29, 03:56 PM · #
KVS, if people can be arrested for being assholes, wouldn’t that put at least of the “conservative” pundit class in prison?
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 04:43 PM · #
most.
;)
and srsly….KVS expects meh to believe that the dispatcher turned “two men one possible hispanic” into “two black men”?
get real.
That would surely be a firing offense.
I imagine there is an established transmission protocol in place.
try again.
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 04:46 PM · #
“ME: I’m also curious how “Chet” knows what he states as a blunt fact in the first graf of his own (“since it’s not”). CHET: The cop’s report has been contradicted by the eyewitnesses and the victim, as well as by the 911 call itself.”
That doesn’t prove your point. The cop’s report being contradicted by others merely establishes the fact of a contradiction, not who is right on the point. Your use of the term “victim” makes it clear you a-priori decided on the narrative, privileging Professor Gates as the victim. The 911 call (as noted by others above) also clearly establishes Prof. Gates as not having told the truth on at least a couple of points, while the only fact point of the officer it contradicts is the “two black men” detail. And I am unaware of contradictions among eyewitnesses and Sgt. Crowley’s account (could you elaborate on what they are).
And at worst, Sgt. Crowley’s statement about two black men doesn’t establish he’s a racist (“telephone” example by someone else above) and at worst merely counterbalances the trustworthiness stakes vis Prof. Gates’ instant racialism, both inside the home and his initial media appearances. (Someone not completely oblivious and/or blinded by racialism would have remembered that he had acted suspiciously in the manner he got into his home and so wouldn’t have been surprised that a cop might have shown up shortly thereafter.)
— Victor Morton · Jul 29, 04:58 PM · #
I kinda get Carter’s position. But I’m creeped out by Wilson’s article. He thinks police should be able to arrest “undersirable persons” on “charges with scarcely any legal meaning”? I thought the first phrase was a euphemism that went out with the Soviet Union, and am surprised he doesn’t even feel the need to use a euphemism in the second case.
He talks as if the abuses the media reported on where a bunch of ados about nothing. I suspect, though, that it was more a matter of highlighting what should have been obvious to anyone who thought about the situation: if the police can arrest people on meaningless charges, then in practice it’s a crime to be disliked by the police.
— Chris Hallquist · Jul 29, 05:01 PM · #
Matoko, what the hell are you talking about? I’m not a conservative. I’m not trying anything.
Anyway, I was wrong about us not knowing what the dispatcher said.
That’s from the NYTimes story. I hadn’t read it all the way through.
And Matoko, sweetheart, don’t you think citing the NYTimes article would have been the better response to my (now admitted) mistake? Especially since (gulp) I’m on your side with this?
Maybe it’s time to stop blowing the adderol, eh kid?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 29, 05:03 PM · #
“As a realist, I think that cops almost universally believe that they cannot surrender authority and do their job, and that if you get in a dominance contest with a cop, the cop will not back down because he or she honestly believes that she can’t. As a non-cop, I am not sure that they are wrong — certainly, the fact that the people with the most actual knowledge seem to agree has to give me pause.”
Actually, you seriously understate. It’s not that “Cops believe X,” but “X is true.” Cops cannot surrender authority and do their job, and that is why Sgt. Crowley arrested Professor Gates. It is not about law-enforcement at all (so all the post-hoc “did he have to” and parsing the meaning of the statute is not only completely beside the point, but exactly the problem in contemporary society and actually proves what Mr. Carter is saying).
There is a difference between power (which is force) and authority (which requires deference, albeit backed by the threat of force). Authority is far preferable, but it’s fragile, precisely because it’s based on mores and social attitudes not laws. The minute you reduce a question of authority to a matter of law, you have demystified the taboo. And if you undermine authority habitually and regard it as contemptible or something in the slogan “Question ———-” (and this is the very essence of libertarianism) the result is not freedom, but greater reliance on power.
— Victor Morton · Jul 29, 05:07 PM · #
The minute you reduce a question of authority to a matter of law, you have demystified the taboo.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joseph de Maistre!
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 29, 05:14 PM · #
Quit throwing chaff, KVS.
So where did the “two black men” come from?
Crowley volunteered he teaches a class to cops on racial sensitivity.
I am jus’ sayin’ that is a mighty peculiar mistake for an avowed racial sensitive like “officer” crowley to make, lol.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 05:23 PM · #
Look, the bottom line with all of this bullshit about Gates and Crowley and racism and being mean to working-class cops/African-American professors is this: Cops do not have conflict resolution skills. They have asserting-control-of-the-situation skills. And those skills are wildly inappropriate for a large number of situations that cops find themselves in. For example, a slight black man yelling at a cop. When did it start being reasonable to resort to physically or chemically restrain someone for saying mean shit? Cops need a broader skill set.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Jul 29, 05:32 PM · #
Well, I, personally, just want Conor and the rest of the bourgie conservative class to admit that Joe the Blogger is WRONG, as per usual, cite the TAS Darklord cw.
I’d be satisfied with that.
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 05:36 PM · #
matoko_chan asks: ‘So where did the “two black men” come from?’
Considering that it was two black men, I think the most reasonable assumption is that it came from the truth.
The mechanism of transmission was probably the conversation between the witness and Crowley that was not caught on tape.
I find it appalling, but not totally surprising, that Crowley is being attacked as racist for reporting an accurate description.
— Andrew Berman · Jul 29, 05:37 PM · #
“Ladies and gentlemen, Joseph de Maistre!”
Yes, the thought cited is quite heavily indebted to Maistre. And it has the benefit of being true — authority, as distinct from law, is not written and cannot be made the object of rationalistic, positivistic “reason” … do you have a point other than a name-calling declaration of ritual uncleanliness?
— Victor Morton · Jul 29, 05:48 PM · #
Victor, nah — a name-calling declaration of ritual uncleanliness was pretty much all I wanted.
Though if I were to procrastinate even more from my job and get into a discussion with you about this, I would say that authority and legitimacy are distinct, and that in a democracy, authority removed from reason soon loses its legitimacy.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 29, 05:52 PM · #
No, I am attacking Crowley for offering his involvement in racial sensitivity training classes as proof he wasn’t racially profiling when he quite obviously did.
And I am attacking Joe the Blogger for being consistantly wrong, while Conor feels like he has to give him some sort of bourgie conservative solidarity props.
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 05:53 PM · #
Matoko,
I’d consider your request if you’d grant my long standing desire for a biographical sketch.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jul 29, 06:11 PM · #
haha, what if im cupid and you’re pysche?
if you drip hot wax on my naked shoulder I’ll have to quit blogging.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 06:23 PM · #
“in a democracy, authority removed from reason soon loses its legitimacy.”
“Legitimacy” really is closer to the global universal claim of “the right to rule,” than anything depending on “the wisdom of rules.”
But more fundamentally, your formulation presupposes that “removed from reason” is a judgement that (1) each person has a legitimate claim to make, (2) regarding every particular government act, (3) according to criteria about “reason” that each person has the right to determine.
And yes, once every man becomes the judge of the rationality of particular state acts and perceives their legitimacy as flowing from his particular assent, you no longer really have authority at all. The harder they push on these points, the more liberalism and libertarianism become intellectually indistinguishable from anarchism.
— Victor Morton · Jul 29, 06:26 PM · #
Where would Conor get the wax, Matoko? After all, if there’s one thing we all know, it’s that you can’t fake teh substrate .
— J Mann · Jul 29, 07:14 PM · #
He could dig it out of your ears, J Mann. ;)
hehe, not only would I prolly have to quit blogging but Conor would have to wander the world doing useless makework tasks for my mother, Venus.
Or maybe we could change that to Mark Levin, to make it more onerous.
— matoko_chan · Jul 29, 07:30 PM · #
Victor-
What’s the non-suspicious way to open a stuck door?
— Chet · Jul 30, 01:12 AM · #
This is a weirdly abstracted discussion. “Order-centric” policing has been the rule of the day in poor urban neighborhoods for a long time, with plenty of sweeps of corner-hanging undesirables, and the attending useless arrests, to show for it. I don’t know, but I suspect that if similar policing tactics were applied in wealthier areas, in search of domestic abuse or drug use, you’d have a lot of Joe Carter conservatives turning into libertarians.
— ben · Jul 30, 02:09 AM · #
Ben, that would depend on whether wealthy areas saw the same crime levels as poor urban neighborhoods.
If wealthy areas started seeing drug dealing and petty crime by local teens on the scale that many poor urban neighborhoods, my sense is that the Joe Carters would DEMAND order-centric policing.
— J Mann · Jul 30, 01:14 PM · #
“What’s the non-suspicious way to open a stuck door?”
There isn’t one.
Not that the point I was actually making, about Gates’ self-awareness and how he should have acted when the cop showed up, is in any way affected by that fact.
— Victor Morton · Jul 30, 04:02 PM · #
You Bourgie Conservatives sukk at summation.
Let me do it for you.
Eric K
“50 years ago you shouted nigger, 30 years ago you talked about States Rights, now you ask to see the president’s birth certificate.”
White godly cops >> jungle monkeys
Malkin + Beck —> Return to the Southern Strategy
And its worrrrrking!
“Thirdly, Obama’s comments on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. appear to have played some role in his ratings decline. News about the arrest of the prominent African American Harvard professor at his Cambridge home was widely followed by the public and 79% are aware of Obama’s comments on the incident. Analysis of the poll data found that the president’s approval ratings fell among non-Hispanic whites over the course of the interviewing period as the focus of the Gates story shifted from details about the incident to Obama’s remarks about the incident1. Interviews Wednesday and Thursday of last week found 53% of whites approving of Obama’s job performance. This slipped to 46% among whites interviewed Friday through Sunday as the Gates story played out across the nation.”
RACEBAITING FTW!!!!!!!!!!
— matoko_chan · Jul 30, 04:06 PM · #
Then opening a stuck door by definition can’t be suspicious behavior. What was suspicious was that a black man was entering a nice house – suspicious to a racist cop, I mean.
— Chet · Jul 31, 04:05 AM · #
Chet:
Thank you for demonstrating perfectly what a horrible thinker you are and giving me good cause to ignore you henceforth. Here is the conversation:
He asks me: “What’s the non-suspicious way to open a stuck door?” (July 29, 912pm)
I answer: “There isn’t one.” (July 30, 1202pm)
He responds: “Then opening a stuck door by definition can’t be suspicious behavior.” (July 31, 1205 am)
Absolutely priceless.
I literally cannot do justice to the complete idiocy on display, other than to repeat it in the hope it discredits. I say there is no non-suspicious way to open a stuck door, i.e., opening a stuck door requires acting suspiciously. And then he thinks that proves “by definition [it] can’t be suspicious.” “It’s always suspicious” proves “it can’t be suspicious.”
It is black, therefore it is white.
— Victor Morton · Jul 31, 04:42 PM · #
J Mann,
I really don’t think so. After anti-loitering and other laws so broad as to allow arrest entirely at the cop’s discretion had been in place for a while, and after a critical mass of nice white kids had been beaten and/or humiliated, after the fourth amendment had been effectively suspended, after Joe C had been pulled over and harassed for driving with some male friends and seen an unarmed neighbor kid or two get shot by cops, he’d be pretty skeptical about police.
— ben · Jul 31, 07:22 PM · #
Yes, exactly. If there’s only one way to free your stuck door, then by definition no act of freeing a stuck door can be considered out of the ordinary behavior – because the only way to free the door is the ordinary way.
You can ignore me or not, I don’t really care; but your reply makes it pretty clear that the “horrible thinker” in this case is you. If it was actually wrong you’d be able to refute it.
— Chet · Aug 3, 03:57 AM · #
“If there’s only one way to free your stuck door, then by definition no act of freeing a stuck door can be considered out of the ordinary behavior”
You really don’t know when you’re licked.
You are assuming “suspicious” means “out of the ordinary.” No such equivalence exists.
The act of opening a stuck door is by nature suspicious because one must use means that are not the normal way to open a door, since the norm is for doors not to be stuck.
Let’s see if this construction makes the principle clearer: “Climbing into a home through a window is by nature suspicious.”
— Victor Morton · Aug 3, 08:03 PM · #