Editor’s Note: Bellevue resident William Wheeler is responding to John Carlson’s recent column, “Race and sensitivity” about a white police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, and a black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Sgt. James Crowley would have been widely vilified throughout this country, and would be looking for another job today, if he had been a black police officer and his victim had been a white Harvard University professor.
He filed an incident report in this case. Incident reports are routinely admitted into evidence in trials as business/public record exceptions to the hearsay rule. For this reason, a report is required to be as accurate as possible. A number of things can be said about Crowley’s Incident Report, but accurate is not one of them.
In the report, Crowley claims he spoke with Lucia Whalen when he arrived at Prof. Henry Gates Jr.’s residence. She told him she had observed two black men with backpacks on the porch of the residence.
Ms. Whalen has asserted, publicly, she never made these statements to Crowley. In fact, she never had a conversation with him. Her assertion is backed-up by the transcript of her conversation with the police dispatcher. Neither the media nor those across this country who support Crowley are asking the crucial question: Why did he lie?
It was imperative for Crowley to establish some connection between Gates and the suspects. Without that nexus, he had no legal authority to question Gates because there were no other facts tying Prof. Gates to a possible crime.
In this case, there was one equivocal fact – an unidentified person wedging his shoulder against the front door of Gates’s residence – that suggested a crime “might” have been committed; but absolutely no evidence to connect Gates to that person.
The incident report indicates Crowley asked Gates to step out on the porch to speak with Crowley and Gates refused. Many people across the country see this action as an unjustifiable lack of cooperation. Nonsense! Gates, like any other citizen, had an absolute legal right to refuse.
In Commonwealth v. Murdough, 428 Mass. 760, 763 (1999) the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court stated: “[O]fficers may make inquiry of anyone they wish and knock on any door, so long as they do not implicitly or explicitly assert that the person inquired of is not free to ignore their inquiries.” A lawful refusal can never properly be interpreted as an unjustifiable lack of cooperation, unless, for some Americans it seems, the questioner is a police officer and the lawful refusal comes from an African-American.
Next Crowley entered Gates’s home without a warrant, in the absence of exigent circumstances and without Gates’s permission. Doing so was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 14 of the Massachusetts Constitution.
If I had been in Gates’s position, I would have been irate, too. I might have handled the situation differently, but Gates was perfectly within his rights to handle Crowley’s unlawful invasion of his home in the way that he did.
Crowley asked Gates to provide proof he resided at the location. Gates did so. As soon as this proof was provided, the investigation should have ended. Every bad thing that happened beyond this point was Crowley’s fault.
Crowley should have left the residence immediately. Instead, he tricked Gates into walking onto the front porch of his home. He needed Gates to come onto the porch to satisfy the “in public” element of a disorderly conduct charge.
If you are cheering at this disclosure, try to remember that, whether you believe it or not, the same tactics, if not condemned here, could one day be used against you.
By engaging in this subterfuge, Crowley so obviously abused his authority that the Cambridge DA threw the case out in less than 24 hours. Crowley should have been severely reprimanded for his conduct. A black officer would have been passionately condemned by many of the same people who are so ardently supporting Crowley.
Yet, in many parts of this country, Crowley is being hailed as a hero. If we are to become the truly great country America certainly has the potential to become, as opposed to merely the greatest country on earth, fair-minded people of all races must continue to work to make sure these kinds of double standards become relics of the past.
Crowley may be a very good man, but in this instance, his conduct was not only vindictively stupid, it might well have been unlawful.
William Wheeler is a a 26-year member of the Bellevue community, is married and has three children. He has a law degree from the University of Oregon and works for a start-up energy management company. He acts in his spare time.
