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Friday, July 24, 2009
Obama Should Know The Facts First
With healthcare reform seemingly circling down the drain and no new jobs to be found, President Obama has taken the time to talk about an incident that he admits he does not know the entire facts of.
The president said that arresting officers “acted stupidly” when they took black Harvard professor and presidential friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., away in handcuffs.
However, it has now come out that the arresting Cambridge, Mass., officer Sergeant James Crowley was once hand-picked to teach a course on racial profiling at a police training academy.
So Crowley certainly does not seem to be a throwback from the Jim Crow days of law enforcement when it comes to black Americans.
The president did say that there is still racial tension in America and that can be agreed on. Sadly, too many black Americans and other minorities have been subjected to barbaric treatment by police officers.
Yet, with Crowley’s record of training other officers about racial profiling, it does seem unlikely that he arrested Gates just because the Harvard professor was black.
Now there is a case of he said/he said. Gates has claimed that he had to force his way into his own home because the front door was jammed. Someone called 911 to report a break in and Crowley showed up. The details can be found in any media report but Gates said that Crowley was acting rude and the sergeant said that the professor was in a tirade.
And most people know that disrespecting a police officer is a welcome invitation to a world of trouble.
It has been announced today that there will be an independent panel to investigate the arrest. And once that report comes out, then it is best to either blast Crowley or Gates, because then we’ll have all the facts of the case.
But not before hand. The president did a disservice to insult local police nationally and he should have waited until all the facts were presented.
There is racial tension in this country and Americans do not need any more manufactured by a well-meaning but factually challenged elected official.
