Crowley had 8 prior racial bias complaints

what administration? what Mistake?

be specific. cowards hide behind generalizations.

Edit:oh you mean being "picked for tv" with that title. i see you point now.

"The article doesn't tell the full description that Crowley matched the suspect to."

then i guess there should be no reason to include it in the article.

what makes this thread so upsetting?

your right complaints are not convictions, but they could lead to one. someone has to complain if they want justice.

well if it brings lite to any kind of abuse of authority than i dont mind even if the intent was to incorrectly focus on the race issue. thats why it is important to express your opinion when you have one, even if it means making one to police internal affairs.

the article was "spin".

yup, his smugness is not helping the boston PD. that is most likely why the story came out at all. to make him look better. that is most likely why they did not print the other complaints, because he IS a major douche bag.

You are obviously less literate than those "crack heads". Read the article and know that only 2 of those were racially based complaints.

There have been abuses of authority against white men, women, and children by policeman that have been dismissed without the cop losing his job. Those were "obviously nothing" too right?

One of those "crack heads" states- "As a young African-American male, I am especially concerned by the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation," wrote the driver. I am curious if the description of 'black male' immediately suspends the rights of all brown skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.'' - Typical CRACK HEAD just like Gates

Ignorance is bliss, so I wish you a HAPPY afternoon!

You are so enlightened. And 'PO-lice'...that was a brilliant representation of a darky. Your knowledge of those blacks is truly extensive..I mean all you have to do is watch Cops right and you have it figured out...blacks are crack heads and whites are trailer trash... why didn't I see that before now!

for every complaint there is probably another incident that did not get reported due to the lack of confidence, by minorities, in our judicial system.

definitely a good point imaman, but i think for every one complaint there are SEVERAL from ALL races because of lack of confidence in and fear of the police. As many have pointed out the large number of taser and trigger happy and power hungry policemen negate the good work of the great cops who work to make America safer. I have so many stories, one of which I shared in another comment, that I have either personally been involved in, witnessed, or been told of by reliable friends and family (of multiple races, I feel I have to add) of police abuses of power. As far as I know, none have filed complaints.

i doubt very much, if at all.

It is a legitimate question, though I doubt that terminology would be used. Self-hate is rampant in MOST marginalized cultures and it would not be uncommon for a black policeman to try to be a Good Ole Boy and abuse a weaker person of his own race.

well if "nurseratchet" were a black police man i would give her statement A LOT more credibility.

bill hicks punchline stealer.

And the head line here is wrong, too. It was two racial complaints. Not 8!

She's right, people need to read the article; it was only two racially based complaints. They did, in my opinion,seem legitimate though. The officer had black defenders and a little known fact is that Gates has been married to two white women and has several white colleagues, friends, and even family members. Much of his geneology research focuses on race in an effort to dispel race myths and bring all of us together. Neither one of them are probably the evil racists they are painted to be...what is more likely is that they are both victims of the prejudices and stereotypes ingrained in the majority of Americans (black, white, red, and other) even well meaning ones. Wrong is still wrong, however.

How is one "supposed" to act in one's own home?

The officer did not go to the house to intimidate Gates, he went there to protect Gates' home. The man acted like an asshole. The ride downtown was to settle the man down he was screaming and freaking out, because the cop didn't know who he was (some rich, liberal proffessor that had friends in high places)
His college ID didn't have an address on it .
When people act the way Gates did and they don't calm down they can't just leave them there freaking out.
Hell. he could have had a coronary. Then we'd be fighting that they left him there freaking out because he was black and it's the cops fault he died of a heart attack.
Black's have a higher risk of coronaries because of the higher rate of hypertention.
Enough is enough, zufeil ist zufeil!

Racial profiling is the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or an illegal act or to behave in a "predictable" manner. It is often confused with the more comprehensive Offender Profiling (wikipedia)

racial profiling is prejudicial and only became more recognized after 911. for years prior, minorities have been complaining about being singled out of a group of speeding cars by the mere fact police are allowed to pratice the tactic.

anyone who advocates racial profiling advocates prejudicial behavior.

this time the prejudice was between cop and citizen.

i doubt crowley will be getting any advancements in rank any time soon. he created a PR disaster.

No, it's worse when you think racism doesn't exist because you're privileged, white, black, Asian, Arabic, or all combination of the five.

its worse when you think you are not a racist because you are poor and ignorant.

Ouch! Nothing became of these peoples complaints either.... Don't think that makes you feel any better lol

internal affairs takes all complaints seriously when there is clear evidence of a rouge cop. they might not admit it but they do.

How many times have the cops come into YOUR HOME and disrespected you?

Nurse, I want to tell you about an experience I had but not on the board. The guy was definitely either psyco and I am glad it was on a busy road with lots of cars going by.

Actually, one time. It was very inappropriate and was in front of my daughter who started hollering at the policeman. I had to sit on her to shut her up or it would have gotten ugly.
A close friend of hers was at our house. Her mom and her were having some difficult times between them and mom's live-in boyfriend.
She came over to our house to vent and get her head straight. After talking with her boyfriend the mom called the police and exaggerated the circumstances to have the daughter removed to juvie.
The police knocked on my door and asked for this 14 y.o. girl, who was already crying from the mean things her mom and boyfriend said to her.
They proceeded to handcuff this child, and I stepped in and said, "is that really necessary?" And I was quick dressed down verbally and that got my 13 y.o. very upset. She took offense at his verbal threat to me that if I stepped into the situation again they'd have to cuff me. Whoa!
I'm not sure what the mom told city hall but it was way over blown. I felt helpless for the poor kid. I couldn't stop them from taking her.God only knows what could have happen to the her. She wasn't a bad kid just questioning some of the stuff that was going on at home.
If I hadn't calmed my daughter down she'd have been whisked off, too.
Her mother later appologised to her daughter and to us for overrecting and no longer is with that crazy manipulative boyfriend.

That must have been quite the ordeal. Not to take anything way from your experience but consider Prof Gates was one lone elderly person in his own home. Not really seeing the need for cuffs or police action there.

if he was just an average person none of this malpractice of justice would have been exposed on the media.

thats why the article was PR "Spin".
i wanted to see the rest also, they might have shown a problem with anger management or abusive conduct to even whites..

yup

How about reading the story first, THEN making a snap judgement?

God forbid the white cop EVER being wrong about ANYTHING... [/sarcasm]

Its a probability not a possibility. In N.O. the police often beat the *********** out of poor whites and Blacks. Recently one even beat up a lady bartender and it was on the bars security camera.. He was having off duty fun. He is not even doing jail time...........if he had been an ordinary citizen, he would be doing time for assult and battery.

Yep, one of the complainers was CLEARLY "pulling a Gates" when he was pulled over after fitting a vague discription of "black man"-- "As a young African-American male, I am especially concerned by the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation," wrote the driver. I am curious if the description of 'black male' immediately suspends the rights of all brown skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.''Those blacks and their race cards. This also happened to my fiance who was pulled out of his car by the police with a gun pointed at his back. His 3 YEAR OLD nephew was in the back seat and Dora the Explorer sing-a-long was pumping in the stereo (typical Black Thug), His cute nephew probably fit the discription of "black male accomplice" lol. He didn't "pull a Gates" though...just took being marginalized and stereotyped, swallowed it and went home like 99% of us do when BS happens.

Hey I think that's a pretty tough accusation to level against a guy we don't even know. With the amount of bias in the media outlets and stuff I think we should hold off on passing judgment as we can never really know.

I'm not accusing him of anything. I just said he probably doesn't like black people that much.

Do you think all police officers like black people? Perhaps they just look down on them because of police stereotypes, and instead of beating, shooting, and arresting them have a secret desire to hold their hands and sing "We Are The World"?

I get it. They only do it to keep up appearances of racial bias in the media.

well, unfortunately, it had to take the O>J> trial to expose Mark Fuhrmen's (LAPD detective) true identity as a racist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fuhrman

- from wikipedia-

"During cross-examination, Fuhrman, when asked by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey whether he had used the word "nigger," said he hadn't used the word in ten years. The defense produced four witnesses to establish that Fuhrman had used the word "nigger" nine and one half years previously; as well as an audiotape contradicting his testimony. This testimony eventually resulted in a perjury conviction. In one 1985 recording, Fuhrman gave a taped interview to Laura Hart McKinny, a writer working on a screenplay about female police officers. In another interview, Fuhrman talked about gang members and was quoted as saying, "Yeah we work with niggers and gangs. You can take one of these niggers, drag 'em into the alley and beat the shit out of them and kick them. You can see them twitch. It really relieves your tension." He went on to say "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us." He said that he would tell them, "You do what you're told, understand, nigger?"[3]

Only limited excerpts of the tapes were admitted as evidence in the Simpson trial, but the content of the admitted portions were strong enough to cast doubt on Fuhrman's motives and credibility with the jury.

With the jury absent on September 6, 1995, the defense asked Fuhrman whether or not he had ever falsified police reports or if he had planted or manufactured evidence in the Simpson case. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination."

that caused the reasonable doubt for most of us. not the fact that he used the "n" word.

cops are not super heroes.

Yep, one of the complainers was CLEARLY "pulling a Gates" when he was pulled over after fitting a vague discription of "black man"-- "As a young African-American male, I am especially concerned by the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation," wrote the driver. I am curious if the description of 'black male' immediately suspends the rights of all brown skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.''
Those blacks and their race cards. This also happened to my fiance who was pulled out of his car by the police with a gun pointed at his back. His 3 YEAR OLD nephew was in the back seat and Dora the Explorer sing-a-long was pumping in the stereo (typical Black Thug), His cute nephew probably fit the discription of "black male accomplice" lol. He didn't "pull a Gates" though...just took being marginalized and stereotyped, swallowed it and went home like 99% of us do when BS happens.

i dont think you've swallowed it all, you seem to have spilled some on to the internet...

Haha, read the comment...never said I 'swallowed' anything..I said my fiance did. Well, I guess I swallowed by not filing a formal complaint for him. I realized that nothing would come of it; just like nothing came from those complaints filed by blacks AND whites.

it creates a track record so its unfortunate he did not file one. the more a person gets away with abusing someone elses rights, the more they think they were justified by their victim's compliance.

Only 8 citizen complaints, which represents less than 1 percent of his interactions with the public, doesn't seem that bad.

Really? Most people have NO compalints.

And most people do not deal with the public under the circumstances that police officers do.

police officers represent authority. that means they represent the laws we all (try to) abide by.whenever police abuse that authority it diminishes the respect people have for law.

this article is spin from the boston PD and boston media

""It is noteworthy that despite Sergeant Crowley's numerous arrests and citations, only eight citizen complaints have been filed against him, which represents less than 1 per cent of his interactions with the public,'' Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas said in a letter that accompanied the release of the records.

i dont thnk it was racial as much as it was Crowley being culturally insensitive and abusing his authority. every police officer who read the arrest report should know that the charge for the arrest was more than weak and would be thrown out and dismmissed as soon as a DA looked at it. cops usually do this when they just want to "inconveniece" someone back. it was real ignorant of him to be culturally incensitive to a black history professor that is a celebrity and an associat of Oprah.

this is not an example of racial profiling.

"In another complaint filed in 2002, a driver and a friend claimed that Crowley wrongly detained them because one matched the suspect of a black man wanted for a video store robbery."

'As a young African-American male, I am especially concerned by the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation," wrote the driver. "I am curious if the description of 'black male' immediately suspends the rights of all brown skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.'

-Racial profiling is the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or an illegal act or to behave in a "predictable" manner. It is often confused with the more comprehensive Offender Profiling (wikipedia)

racial profiling is prejudicial and only became more recognized after 911. for years prior, minorities have been complaining about being singled out of a group of speeding cars by the mere fact police are allowed to pratice the tactic.

anyone who advocates racial profiling advocates prejudicial behavior.

this time the prejudice was between cop and citizen.