The police DID act stupidly. They arrested a man in his own house for yelling at them. Those facts do not support a charge of disorderly conduct, no matter what the yelled words were. The prosecutor dropped the charges because there's no lawful basis for the arrest.

You cannot arrest someone in Massachusetts because he yells at you and calls you names.

Lawrence O'Donnell wrote about it in TIme magazine. Here's an excerpt and then a link:

“Unless you confess to a crime or threaten to commit a crime, there is nothing you can say to a cop that makes it legal for him to arrest you. You can tell him he is stupid, you can tell him he is ugly, you can call him racist, you can say anything you might feel like saying about his mother. He has taken an oath to listen to all of that and ignore it. That is the real teachable moment here: cops are paid to be professionals, but even the best of them are human and can make stupid mistakes.”

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,…

So the charges were dropped because they are not legally valid. No strings had to be pulled. No Presidential phone calls were made. There's just no basis for the arrest. The officer knew that, or he damned well should have.

It's a rather obvious fact that you cannot be arrested for yelling at a police officer, one that even I knew about before this event and I don't have special expertise about police (beyond just being a black guy of course).

It may not be racism. Just ego. You can't talk to me that way! Can too. You don't know who you're messing with! Neither do you. I'll call your boss. You're arrested.

It was a battle of two egos. Officer Crowley had to win the pissing contest. Doesn't make him a racist. (I doubt that he's a racist.) It makes him an officer who ignored his training. Officers, including Crowley, are trained in “command presence” and are taught to control hostile people and diffuse tense situations. We expect them to respond to domestic violence calls where alcohol or drugs may be involved. Can we not expect them to be able to walk away when Grampa is yelling at them because he's had a 20 hour flight?

Couldn't Officer Crowley have just said “sir I was called here by my dispatch officer, and since there's no burglary taking place, I will be on my way” or something like that?

Sure, if his ego wasn't making the decision for him.

America should use these sorts of racial flare-ups as an opportunity to discuss things and take away some big-picture commonalities, since the subject has been raised. It may be a good opportunity to check-in with each other and do minor course-corrections if necessary.

I would say this is an opportunity for everyone to learn the value of calm interaction even when you feel wronged (Gates), being the bigger person when someone blows their top at you (Crowley), and getting to know one's neighbors and using solid judgment in non-emergency situations (Whalen). Of course, it's also a lesson about not putting yourself in a position to be misinterpreted or distorted, by simply being more careful when making off-the-cuff statements (President Obama).

Had this been some sort of perceived emergency, I would not be so hard on the 911 caller.

But this would make the O.J. Simpson low-speed chase look like a Concorde flight. She had time to use judgment.

You've got two old guys walking up the steps carrying suitcases and backpacks. They fumble with a key. Doesn't work. Jiggle it a little. I TRIED that, I live here remember. Yeah okay. Hey let me see if maybe the sliding door in the back is unlocked sometimes the housekeeper forgets. Ok I'll go too I really gotta take a leak. Oh, down the stairs again, where's my cane? So they walk around the back and after some moments pass, they limp back around the side of the house. One is still using a cane. They have to come back and hustle up the stairs again. Nope still stuck. You try it Henry. Oh hell. Ok. Lemme set down my cane and my Famous Black Man medal. Ow. My hip. Ok. Lemme put my shoulder into it….

Are you kidding me? You called 911? Should've called all the neighbors to come watch Skip Gates, world's smartest man, unable to figure out how to unlock his own door. That would've been funny, and wouldn't have caused racial tensions to flare up, and would have resulted in the sales of even more beer.

In the topic of “decent human being” what do you think of the comment from “JACKTHE BEAR” in this article?

SGT. CROWLEY ACTED CORRECTLY IN ARRESTING THE PROFESSOR WHO OBVIOSLY IS A RACIST.

MY ADVISE TO SGT. CROWLEY IS DO NOT MEET WITH THE PROFESSER AND OBAMA IN THE WHITE HOUSE. IT WILL ONLY HURT YOUR CASE.

Your Mombasa Messiah has conned millions like you. Once you've learned better about him, however, the culpability is yours and yours alone.

If, by some chance, a reader here is either a cop or has some degree of “insider” experience of cops (as those of us who have worked in emergency medical services and firefighting tend to have), it would be worthwhile for some honest informed commentary to be added on this thread about how the police tend – for quite explainable and not necessarily malign reasons – to view the great, sweating, complaining public as a perpetually culpable “them” against the “thin blue line” of our self-selecting paid government proctors.

Though I don't doubt that Dr. Gates gave the police officer in question plenty of Harvard Yard arrogance in addition to a bit of “your momma!” anger.

But then, as a householder in his own domicile, I'm in sympathy with him against that cop. There are limits to what an officer of civil government can be allowed to do, damnit, and much though it pains me to support an academic on staff at the Cambridge campus of Patrice Lumumba University (or to agree with Barry Soetoro on anything), there was a helluva lot of “stupidity” on the cops' part that day.