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Gates-gate: Colin Powell steps in
Prof Henry Louis Gates made too big a deal of his encounter with a white police officer, says his friend Powell
Gates-gate - the scandal of the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr arrested by a white police officer after he was seen forcing the front door of his own home in Cambridge, Massachusetts - refuses to lie down.
Yesterday Gen Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State and a friend of the professor's, weighed into the debate, saying Gates should have been more cooperative with Sgt James Crowley, the officer who arrested him on July 16.
"When you're faced with an officer trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him," Powell told CNN's Larry King Live. "I was taught that as a child. You don't argue with a police officer."
The history professor lost his temper with Crowley when he arrived to investigate why Gates, accompanied by his black cab driver, had forced the front door of the house near the Harvard campus.
When Crowley allegedly questioned whether it was his house, Gates is reported to have exclaimed, "Why, because I'm a black man in America?" and accused the officer of racism.
While Powell suggested that Gates should not have made "that big a deal" of it, he also questioned why one of the nation's most prominent black academics had to be taken to police headquarters in handcuffs and booked for disorderly conduct, a charge that was dropped when the arrest became a national issue.
In another development yesterday, an examination of the original emergency call recording revealed that the neighbour who reported the presumed break-in, Lucia Whalen, advised police that it was possible the man forcing the door might live there.
Meanwhile, both Sgt Crowley and Prof Gates have taken up President Barack Obama's offer of a cold beer at the White House in an effort to bring closure to the saga. They are to gather around the presidential picnic table on the South Lawn of the White House at 6pm on Thursday.
Which brings a new dilemma: where to find a Red Stripe for the professor and a Blue Moon for the sergeant - two foreign brews that have not been stocked at the White House since President Johnson's era. ·
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Colin Powell is right to state that Gates went overboard in his reaction to Crowley. Gates played the black victims narrative and frankly most intelligent people don't buy it. Gates said,"Why, because I'm a black man in America?" and accused the officer of racism..........does that make me a racist if I ask a black man for directions? It was a simple question and Gates should have respected the Police Officer and answered the question.
Whoa there, Mr Mc Gowan. Don't forget the triumverate who started the war. Until we put Blair, Bush Cheyney & co into the dock, let's hold off. However much you may dislike the general and for whatever reasons, he was not the war's main architect . I do agree with him that Professor Gates should have handled the police in a less belligerent way, rather like one deals with tantrum prone children. All intelligent people of colour are taught this, in the US and UK especially. Or should be.
"You never argue with a police officer"? Perhaps if more people had argued with this obtuse war-mongering madman Powell, 0.5m civilians wouldn't be dead in Iraq looking for the WMD he lied about.