List of Previous Titles

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Professor and the Police


A Very Good Friend to Have!

Topic “A” this week is that unfortunate incident in Cambridge, Mass, in the United States which blew way out of proportion. To summarise, the police were called to attend what a member of the public thought was a possible break-in in progress at the home of a Harvard professor. In fact, what the witness saw was the professor trying to force open the door to his own home, as the door had become stuck. The professor is black and the police officer who attended is white.

What appears to have happened is that the officer approached the professor as a suspect, and the professor became outraged and saw things that simply were not there.Fundamentally, this was a most unfortunate incident, and past events formed the basis of a bad reaction.

America’s history involving black men and white officers, and even some black officers is very bad. Perhaps even now black professionals find themselves being stopped and harassed if they are driving top of the line cars, just because they are vulnerable. There is a lot of resentment that goes back over many years. If you are a black man going about your business carrying a music case and it’s late at night, the police may well stop you and demand an impromptu mini concert to satisfy themselves that you are a musician on your way home from a gig.

Professionals resent it; and the common man resents being profiled as a possible wrong doer without any basis other than his colour. The Harvard professor had no idea that a call had been made, so he apparently thought that this white officer had taken it into his head to rough him up, for fun. He reacted, as I might have reacted myself. I would have been wrong, and I think that the professor was wrong.

Here we had a distinguished man who had worked hard and who deserved to be respected. But, he was being treated like a common criminal, and I imagine he thought, “How dare you! Don’t you know who I am? I am a respected professional and I will not allow you to treat me in this manner!” And it appears that everything that the officer said only added fuel to that fire, to the point where the officer felt that as a police officer he would not stand for a member of the public treating him and his office in a disrespectful manner.

So the stage was set for a disaster. Two bull-headed men determined not to blink. So, after warnings that went unheeded he arrested the professor for at least disorderly conduct.

I understand the motives of both men and sympathise with them both. The professor was standing up for the dignity of all black men, and the officer was simply trying to do his job under very trying circumstances.

What a mess, you might be prepared to say. Yeah, a real mess, but it gets messier. The professor is a personal friend of the President of The United States, and when the lopsided story got to him he stood before the cameras and opined that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.” The entire world sucked in its breath because we could see that the man who chooses his words wisely had put his foot firmly in the muck up to his ankles.
I understand his emotions but why he would have chosen to speak on a matter of local law is beyond me. President Barak Obama took the sucker punch and his supporters around the world could not believe it. He is, after all, a human, not necessarily a Superman. However, having realised his mistake once he calmed down has tried to correct his faux pas by making a statement that says, in so many words, the he used an unfortunate choice of words, and he phoned the officer and they chatted, and he confirmed that he believes that the officer is a good man. He said that he now believes that both men over-reacted during the incident, and that he did not intend to malign the police department.

Good!

Now I hope that the professor has also calmed down and can see the officer’s point of view, and can accept that in the line of police work black men will arrest white men, and vice versa, and the same thing for women who will arrest both men and women, and it need not necessarily be anything other than law enforcement in progress.

Unfortunately, there are still those rogue cops out there who give policing in America a bad name. I hope that this acts as a wake-up call to such prehistoric creatures that the days of harassment of black men for fun are over. It has been an embarrassment to all the players involved, but if the message gets through to those who need to hear it, that would be a good thing.


Copyright © 2009 Eugene Carmichael