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Gates affair: officer suspended after racial slur
Obama’s beer summit at the White House is overshadowed by Boston policeman’s ‘jungle monkey’ email
President Barack Obama's efforts to quell the furore over the confrontation between the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the white police officer James Crowley have been overshadowed by news that a Boston police officer has been suspended from duty for using a racial slur in commenting on the Gates affair.
Addressing the press yesterday, Boston's police commissioner Ed Davis said he was 'disgusted' to have learned that Officer Justin Barrett, who had nothing to do with the arrest of Prof Gates, had sent an email to friends which read in part:
"His [Gates's] first priority effort should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [a brand of pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance..."
Barrett went on to use the racial slur three more times in the email.
Commissioner Davis said Officer Barrett had been stripped of his gun and badge, and placed on administrative leave pending a termination hearing. The Boston police department's internal affairs division is now investigating Barrett's history as a police officer.
Davis made his announcement on the same day Obama invited Prof Gates and Sgt Crowley to the much-heralded "beer summit" in the White House garden to discuss how they might put the July 16 incident behind them.
That was the day Gates found the front door jammed at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts and with the help of his cab driver - another black man - forced it open.
Suspecting a break-in, neighbours called the police. When Sgt Crowley asked Gates for proof that it was his own home, the professor is believed to have lost his cool and shouted: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America." The temperature rose and Gates was eventually led off in handcuffs and booked for disorderly conduct.
Obama stepped into the row and called the police action "stupid" but a day later tried to row back from the issue, inviting both men for "a cold beer" at the White House.
Whether the 'beer summit' can be deemed a success is a moot point. Gates and Crowley agreed to meet again for "a series of discussions" - though to what purpose, it was unclear - and neither man apologised to the other.
As for the view that Gates was the victim of racial profiling - shared by many liberal commentators - the Barrett email has done nothing to help lower the tension.
Larry Ellison, a spokesman for minority officers, said the incident reflects a subtly racist culture within the Boston police department. He pointed to two specific cases in the last year: a white officer who urinated in the water bottle of a black female officer and another who posted an article titled 'Slavery: Best Thing that Ever Happened to Blacks'. ·
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The mindset of this policeman is indicative of certain individuals who demand total and immediate compliance and react unpleasantly to any hint of refusal.
It is impossible to reconcile this attitude with the notion of serving the public, and the reference to the use of pepper spray shows how such an unstable individual lacks the ability to understand the need for appropriate and proportionate responses.
Such officers are a danger both to themselves and the public, their possession of guns, tasers and pepper spray mean that the public have very good reason to fear them.
The Gates-Crowley incident was not "Racial Profiling," it was "Contempt of Cop," a frequent occurrence with a high incidence of race and class bias. If they are wise, Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley will do a joint study of the 'Contempt of Cop' issue. Sgt. Crowley (who taught a class on racial profiling at the Lowell Police Academy) could instruct officers how to avoid this abuse of discretionary police powers of arrest.
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/beer-summit-hangover/