Free Republic

<p>For some defense lawyers, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was less about racial profiling than about how persons can be arrested simply for speaking angry words to a police officer.</p> <p>The laws against "disorderly conduct" give police wide power to arrest people who are said to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the neighborhood.</p>

The networks might just as well have hung out a sign this morning: non-African-American experts on policing and racial profiling need not apply. Good Morning America, the Early Show and Today had a total of six guests on the subject . . . and every one was African-American. Among the highlights: a writer from Tina Brown's Daily Beast suggested that given our incarceration rate, the USA meets the definition of a "police state." View video here.

Wednesday night of this week, during U.S. President Barack Obama’s press conference, Lynn Sweet, a reporter (and Washington Bureau Chief) for the Chicago Sun-Times, asked the president a question about the July 16th arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by officers of the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department for disorderly conduct. By now, just about everybody in America is aware of the arrest of the prominent Harvard scholar (and a professed friend of Barack Obama) and of President Obama’s declaration that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly,” this though he also admitted not knowing anything about the facts surrounding the...

JULY 23--Here are the police reports detailing the confrontation last week between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge cops, who were condemned last night by President Barack Obama for acting "stupidly" in arresting the African-American scholar. Cops responded to Gates's house after neighbor Lucia Whalen reported spotting "two black males with backpacks" trying to gain entry to the home (Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, and his driver were contending with a stuck front door). The Cambridge Police Department reports, authored by Sergeant James Crowley and Officer James Figueroa, quote an incensed Gates yelling, "This is what...

Henry Louis Gates Jr. just got the subject for his next PBS series, and it’s not going to be a history of the woeful consequences of yelling at cops. The Harvard scholar was arrested for disorderly conduct at his Cambridge, Mass., home in an incident that has earned the Cambridge police a rebuke from the president of the United States. In a press conference otherwise devoted to trying to save his sinking health-care plan, Barack Obama said the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates, although Obama stipulated twice that he didn’t know all the facts. Obama’s ignorance didn’t keep...

A Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer said Thursday he will "never apologize" about how he handled the arrest of prominent black Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Sgt. Jim Crowley said he has nothing to apologize for in regards to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. "That apology will never come from me as Jim Crowley, it won't come from me as sergeant in the Cambridge Police Department," Sgt. James Crowley told Boston radio station WEEI. "Whatever anybody else chooses to do in the name of the city of Cambridge or the Cambridge Police Department which are beyond my...

Let’s devote careful study to the recent unfortunate incident involving noted African American scholar Henry Louis Gates. And let’s begin by acknowledging that in our country’s past and present, there have been cases which can be labeled “racial profiling.” In the case of Henry Louis Gates vs. the Cambridge Police, however, the sorry affair reads more like a contrived event orchestrated by the arrested party. According to the police report, Gates got home, only to find his front door jammed. A female neighbor saw Gates and a cab driver wrestling to open the front door. Since Gates is relatively new...

I am not Al Sharpton. In fact, I never could be and I don't want to try. I am also not Henry Louis Gates, a man with an undeniable contribution to the legacy of Black Scholarship in America. I am simply Boyce Watkins, the son of a 17-year-old mother and a father who happened to be a high-ranking police official for the past 28 years. I've argued with my father for decades, as his Bill Cosby-like views of the world have often made my face twist with confusion. But I listen to my father, because there is value in seeing...

Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, retained a lawyer. Why? He claims cops in Cambridge, Mass., racially profiled him. Here's what happened. Gates, "one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars," writes The Boston Globe, was arrested about 1 p.m. at his home near Harvard Square by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. "The incident," says the Globe, "raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling." "Friends of Gates," writes the Globe, "said he was already in his home when police arrived. He...

Political correctness has always been a malignancy to the body of truth - whatever that truth may be. The willingness of some law enforcement agencies - particularly those directly involved in the security of this country - to shun the practice of "racial profiling" in the name of fairness and objectivity, i.e. political correctness, is not only antithetical to common sense but a genuine threat to security.In that spirit of inanity, here is a two-minute audio spot - a parody - that helps to demonstrate the absurdity of it all.It's an audio-only "commercial" that runs a little over two-minutes long.-

Too many people on the liberal side of the fence argue that illegal immigration is a racial issue. They believe that those of us who want to protect the US boarders are inspired by racism, trying to keep out Hispanics. Recent cases such as the Hezbollah Mole in the CIA case (Nada Nadim Prouty) and the terrorists targeting Army base after sneaking over the borders, highlight the reasons the United States true immigration reform without amnesty. How many others are out there-not to gather information but to launch terror attacks when the time is right. It is more difficult to...

Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson has again defended her department against charges of racial profiling, saying there's no conclusive evidence of it in the demographic data it collects about traffic stops.

The senator's tenure as a state legislator reveals him to be an old-fashioned, big government, race-conscious liberal.Barack Obama's neighborhood newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald, has a longstanding tradition of opening its pages to elected officials-from Chicago aldermen...senators. Obama himself, as a state senator, wrote more than 40 columns for the Herald, under the title "Springfield Report," between 1996 and 2004. Read in isolation, Obama's columns from the state capital tell us little. Placed in the context of political and policy battles then raging in Illinois, however, the young legislator's dispatches powerfully illuminate his political beliefs. Even more revealing are hundreds...

When Bigots Accuse by Clark Baker "I know, Officer - you're just stoppin’ me ‘cause I’m BLAAACK!” Cops hear it every day, and although millions of hours and tax dollars are wasted each year to disprove false allegations, many blacks (and guilt-ridden whites) consider the non-existence of racial profiling as proof of an institutional cover-up that corroborates its existence. Who needs more proof than that? Trial lawyer Merrick Bobb, who faked portions of the Christopher Commission Report, blames “… the impossibly high burden of proof…” for the exoneration of the falsely accused. While Bobb rejects the value of evidence, he...

The study by Queens College sociologist Harry Levin, titled “Marijuana Arrest Crusade,” accused police of purposely singling out minorities during the 10-year crackdown. It said that data provided by state Division of Criminal Justice Services showed that between 1997 and 2007, 52% of the suspects were black, 31% Hispanic, and only 15% white. The findings are further proof that “racial profiling is a fact of life on the streets of New York,” the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Donna Lieberman, told a news conference.

Profiling opponents erroneously or deceitfully claim that Timothy McVeigh was not profiled because he was white. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19121920&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6 I am currently working on a four part series about crime and punishment ( or lack thereof) in America. It should be very enlightening and informative. Concurrently, I am working with the Bulletin to sponsor a symposium about this. I have inquired about the availability of Justices Scalia and Alito both of whom are from the Philadelphia area, as well as Joe Arpaio who worked with my father at DEA. If anyone can think of a good panel member let me know. It...

I posted this again due to a bad link the first time.Sorry for the inconvenience. I was aghast to hear that a couple of fine young students were stopped outside of a U.S Naval base in South Carolina. These two fine young men are “students” at the University of South Florida. Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed better known to his friends as “The Big Sherf” 24, Yousef Samir Megahed known to his friends as “Megadeth” 21 were stopped for speeding. This is the same University where Sami Al Arian worked before he was “racially profiled” and convicted of aiding Palestinian terrorists....

The York Daily Record/Sunday News and WGAL 8 want to know what York County residents think, so we're holding a town meeting to find out. Join hosts Mike Argento and Kim Lemon, along with other representatives from the Daily Record/Sunday News and WGAL, at 7 p.m. today at the White Rose Room of the York Expo Center. Its your chance to express opinions and offer suggestions about community issues, WGAL's news programming and the Daily Record/Sunday News coverage. The meeting will be free, informal and fun.

The Police Department has developed rules for investigating racial profiling complaints against officers to address issues raised by the U.S. Justice Department and LAPD inspector general during a review of previous probes, officials said Friday.

At 14, Rocky Harris knows the routine: You raise your hands high, you keep your mouth shut and you don’t dare move a muscle. Then the police officer’s gloved hands go up and down each leg, around your waist, across your chest and back, then down your shoulders to your wrists. When they don’t find guns or drugs, Rocky said, they let you go. He said that he had been searched, fruitlessly, at least three times since last summer, and that he had friends who had been searched repeatedly. “They tell you that you’re selling drugs. But I don’t do...