Gates and the law

Hopefully, the President's latest comments will put an end to the uproar over the arrest of Professor Henry Gates, a 58 year old black man, in his home. The reason for the officer arresting the professor is that, when responding to a possible breaking and entering call, Professor Gates, tired and ill from a recent overseas trip, was less then nice to the officer and insulted him. The officer decided Gates was disturbing the peace and arrested him. In a nutshell, this all happened because two men were having a really bad day and took their frustrations out on each other.

Some have been crying racism but has been ignoring the bigger question. Since when is it illegal for a man, white or black, to insult a police officer from his own home? If a police officer wants to come into my home or me to step out of my home for questioning, I am perfectly within my rights to ask him for his search or arrest warrant first. Of course, it didn't help when President Obama opened his mouth because, as the President admitted, he doesn't know all the facts and shouldn't have stepped in.

We probably won't ever know what really happened aside from an over reaction by both parties and even this blog entry may be proven pre-mature one day. My problem centers around the arrest, Even looking at it in its best light, it all sounds fishy. The officer, upon finding Professor Gates in his own home, sees an elderly man with a cane. He has a report of two armed men breaking in. He doesn't know if those men are still in the house and possibly holding a companion of Mr. Gates hostage and Gates is being hostile because he is under duress. Gates, ill and probably suffering jet lag, is being cranky. Fine. It is what happened next that is interesting and I find a problem with, not on race issues, but on constitutional issues.

I find it difficult to believe the police department doesn't have training to deal with cranky older people who don't want the police in their home without permission. One would think that a senior officer would have developed a thick enough skin by time he or she is promoted to sergeant. And I also find it difficult to believe that a police officer doesn't know about the 1st (free speech) and 4th Amendments (search warrants) to the US Constitution that let Professor Gates say whatever he pleased and to keep on saying it (or course all bets were off once Gates stepped outside his door). Once Gates presented ID proving the house was his and then confirming that he was the one who broke into his own home the emergency that would have allowed the officer to enter Gates house without a warrant due to the need for immediate action was pretty much gone, except perhaps for the officer the Professor was not saying all was well under duress. Once that was gone, the officer had no business in the Professor's house and that brings me to the second troubling issue: freedom of speech. Since when is it a crime to raise your voice in your own home to an unwelcome visitor? In my house I thought I was allowed to be as disrespectful to a visitor as much as I wanted (or as my wife will let me when a certain visitor comes over with her dog that forgets to go outside when it needs to go outside for some private time)? I would think a man's home is one place where he could definitely say what is on his mind without fear of peresecution by the government. Yet, according to the Professor, the officer who entered the Professor's home without a warrant to ultimately arrest him for yelling feels that is apparently not the case.

That said, I can also see how the Professor over reacted. I find it hard to believe that an officer who teaches officers about the evils of racial profiling and by all accounts is a good guy was really just looking to put a black man in his place. There was a report of a breaking and entering. The officer came to verify all was well which may have included an additional action beyond verifying the house was Gates's home. That is good police work, though, since things didn't go smoothly, it seems pretty clear the officer didn't do a good job in explaining that to Professor Gates (and here I am assuming that is what happened next as it seems logical). For all we know the officer, looking at an elderly man with a cane, wasn't convinced that Gates was the person whoi broke in and believed the emergency situation requiring swift action by him, including checking out the Professor's house for intruders wasn't gone? Now imagine the officer took Gates' word and there really was someone in the house. The next days headlines would have been something like racist cops don't care enough to really protect black people.

If I broke into my house, I'd hope the cops showed up too (more likely my neighbors wouldn't notice, the problem of the suburbs) and I think it would be fair for me to prove that I was the owner of the house and to prove I wasn't telling the officers all was well under duress. I somehow doubt that the officer, once he verified Professor Gates was the owner of the home and not some confused elderly person who broke into a stranger's home thinking it his own, really thought Professor Gates was a danger. But the officer could have felt it necessary to make sure all was well in Professor Gates house even if Gates didn't want him to. It is too bad for the officer that his own report doesn't show this.

An officer verifying an elderly man was in the right house and was not in danger was not a racial thing; it was a safety thing. I believe that the Professor really should have understood the officer was just doing his job, even if the Professor was tired and just wanted to go to sleep and didn't understand why the sergeant wouldn't go away. The sergeant really should also have understood that some people just want to be left alone and that is their right in their own home.

But, racism aside, how this could lead to the Professor being arrested in his own home for telling an intruder to leave is what is really baffling. Did the sergeant really forget he was in someone's home without a warrant, making a nonconsensual warrantless entry, and felt he couldn't be disrespected by a citizen no matter the cirmcumstances? I don't think being cursed at is one of those offenses so grevious that a warrantless entry for arrest is justified, but it has been many moons since I took Con Law. Did the Professor do something to the officer aside from tell him off or follow the officer outside his home and do something in public that caused the officer to really think an arrest was justified? Again, the facts are not out now and when they are it will probably be a sanitized version of all this.

However, for whatever reason, the sergeant and the Professor didn't exchange their views (making sure all is well v. go away and leave me alone) and then things got so strange that we somehow ended up with a citizen who, just moments earlier, had been minding his own business in his own home being arrested for disturbing the peace. There is sure some stupidity in there somewhere to share.

Work, work, work

Former GE CEO Jack Welch recently climbed out of his cave and told women who want a work-life balance to sew up their uterus as the only balance that matters is work-work. I agree and disagree with Mr. Welch and some of the people who were also quoted. Face time, in an age where many employees, including upper management, telecommute at least part of the time, is not what it used to be. Does it really matter if I'm answering emails at 6:30AM in my sweats at home or in my office 30 miles away? I can easily work and hour or two (depending when I get up) while waiting for the school bus before driving to work (with the added benefit of missing rush hour) and still make any meeting scheduled (and conversely I can attend late night meetings with the west coast office from my home too). The other thing is that a work-life balance is not just for mothers anymore. See, I'm not the mom, I'm the dad and I am fortunate enough to work for a company with a very flexible schedule. Our hours are flexible. We can work at home a few days a week. Some directors with small children are home based. It does help that my company has many offices and face to face meetings are rare even if all are in their particular office.

Of course I am aware that there is a trade-off for this flexibility. I am a highly skilled and educated employee and my compensation and career path are not what they could have been if I had devoted myself to moving up the ladder. I and those like me with young families have turned down promotions because they would have limited our work-life balance abilities. However, my hours are fairly regular and I rarely have to travel meaning we don't worry about child care or missing a school event (since I have the flexible hours and my wife doesn't I'm usually the one who goes to these type of events). I choose life over just work. So shoot me and members of my generation (Generation X for the record), but before you do, remember that this is only for a relatively short period of our career life and, at least for those of us who are highly skilled and talented, if an employer chooses not to place our skills sets back on the corporate ladder, there is usually somebody else who would

Real Americans

Here is another wonder American who thinks anyone who does not live in rural America and swear allegiance to Jesus, Sarah Palin and their version of conservative values is not a real American. Unbelievable. Not so much that he was able to say this on TV; this is America after all and I'm not into censorship. What I find unbelievable is that these evil people have such a following. Yes, evil.

All these "conservatives" who make their living turning one group of Americans against another should be taken out back and shot for treason. It is fine to disagree but to say someone is not a real American because they don't agree with you is a bunch of bull. These terrorists, hiding under the cloak of conservatism, who are busy dividing the country on the basis of religion, urban v. rural or education by pandering to the lowest common denominator, are our real enemy. Yet we allow them to vomit their hatred with barely a peep because "uneducated, socially conservative, gun-toting, Jesus freaks" are the real Americans and the rest of us are not (although we were apparently good enough in 2001 when two of our cities were bombed by terrorists) because we decided to better ourselves in school, have a let and let live attitude regarding homosexuality, don't feel the need to bring our guns to church and are friends with those who may have different religious views then us -- you know, that whole freedom from persecution thing.

As to Sarah Palin, I just don't understand the so called conservatives' love of this woman (not to mention their sincere embrace of Joe the plumber as a party symbol). Her experience as mayor of a small town and as governor of a state with a population smaller than many major US cities has already shown her limited abilities and leaves me with no confidence that she can be anything more than eye candy on the national scene. Is there nobody who has the same general conservative beliefs with a brain and a bit of gravitas? An Alito or Roberts type who wants to run for President? Somebody who can keep Obama and the Democrats from getting too complacent. Taking anti-intellectual (Oh no! Elitists!), anti-science stances to attract a segment of voters couldn't have sidelined all the intelligent conservatives, could it?