The Arrest of the Old Black Professor

I never heard of this guy before, Gates, but there seems to be some controversy about his arrest. Some say it was race related... I don't think so. The problem isn't race related at all, it's the cop mentality, abusing power, and it doesn't matter what race, creed, religion you or the cop are, the cop is going to abuse or at the very least, use all the power he can wield.

If you go to law school, you will learn that there are a lot of laws out there which are the result of cops abusing power. Give the guy a gun and it's no wonder so many cops get divorced and are generally dickheads. Not all cops are bad, of course, I know that, hope that, there are at least a few who aren't dicks. I had a step-dad who was a cop, I look back now and I can see that he was a dick. I had a grandpa that was a cop, he was pretty hard core that I remember, so I think he was probably just one of those really by-the-book guys, "Just the facts mam" instead of one of the power-tripping guys.

Anyway, the cop that arrested the black professor, was a power-tripping dickhead, so common among cops that few realize it themselves. So common that whole police organizations fail to see it. They have the goggles on that makes them see that if they can get away with it legally, as the law exists right now, then it's ok, even proper.

They get discretion. This can be a good thing, and it can be a bad thing. In the immediate case, the discretion used was piss poor. The cop got some old black professor mad, and the professor started mouthing off about race or whatnot. Who cares. At the point the cop determined that it was the guy's residence, he should have said, "Thank you" and left. End of story.

I don't care if the old guy followed him off screaming like a little girl or whatever, the cop should have left. Instead, he arrests the old guy under a bullshit charge after the officer helped facilitate the behavior. The call was about a possible break-in, not disorderly conduct. Once the identity was resolved and there was a realization that the house was not broken in to... I mean, just look at the guy, how many old farts are active in house break-ins anyway?... then the cop should have excused himself, apologized for any inconvenience, and got the fuck out of there.

But no, he's just one of the all too common power-tripping cops that wanted to teach this old guy a lesson. It wasn't about the old guy's race, or anything... it was about this cop teaching a lesson on his own about what he can do to even innocent civilians. It may have been technically legal to arrest the guy, but the total lack of proper discretion to see the cause and effect and the injustice of doing makes the arrest morally reprehensible. But guess what, this happens every day.

So I hope this cop gets everything that's coming, and then some. Maybe if more cops are held accountable for this type of abuse, then maybe we can hope for fewer of these types of incidents.

It's absolutely no excuse that cops have to deal with all sorts of people, that they never know what or who they're dealing with. If that's the problem, then the cops who, like this one, treat upstanding citizens as if they were career criminals, need to get their asses fired. Period. That's right, get the dickheads out of the uniform. Nothing is much worse than a dickhead cop abusing people on a daily basis and getting away with it.