The Gates Arrest or Why Being a Jerk Shouldn’t be a Crime

According to the police reports, when Sgt. Crowley arrived at Professor Henry Louis Gates’ Ware St. home to investigate a possible break-in, the good professor loudly demanded to know “why, because I’m a black man in America?” He then went on to accuse the policeman of racism and shouted, “You don’t know who you’re messing with!” It was this “loud and tumultuous behavior” that led Sgt. Crowley to arrest Dr. Gates on a charge of disorderly conduct.

If all this is true (and it may not be), Dr. Gates is guilty of nothing more than being a first class jerk, an offense that should not be a crime in a free society. A great deal has been said in the week since then about the role race did or did not play in this incident. But the real issue is not race; the real issue is police power.

Bonnie Rochman, writing on Time.com (“When Disorderly Conduct Is a Cop's Judgment Call”, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1912777,00.html) was one of the few commentators to touch on it. “In law enforcement,” she begins, “there are few situations that are clear-cut, and disorderly conduct is one of the fuzziest. As Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. now knows all too well, the misdemeanor charge can be used to corral people who are simply uncooperative or rude. State statutes are designed to help police officers maintain authority, and they are so broadly worded that divining what constitutes disorderly conduct is left up to the discretion of individual officers. ‘It's probably the most abused statute in America,’ says Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.”

The United States is rightly proud that it protects its citizens from arbitrary abuse by the constabulary by means of a “government of laws and not of men.” A statute that is “fuzzy”, “used to corral people who are simply uncooperative”, “broadly worded”, and “abused” has no place in such a government and should be revised. The Logic Critic gives Bonnie Rochman…

4 Blades - Flawless.