Here's to President Obama, Professor Gates, and Sergeant Crowley when they meet at the White House for that beer tomorrow. Cheers!
After oceans of ink analyzing the racial aspects of the unfortunate encounter between Crowley and Gates at the latter's home, I will add my two cents from the vantage point of an American expat. American cops often inspire the creeps, even among those of us who are the most law-abiding of citizens. Other than police in totally corrupt places or in what used to be known as "police states," encounters with police in most reasonably stable countries (they don't even have to be full-fledged democracies) tend to be benign, even reassuring. Many times, police are unarmed.
Consider your typical American cop, decked out with sidearm, nightstick, Taser®, cuffs, mag flashlight, walkie-talkie... the list goes on. Add the above to an often generous waistline, and you have the stuff of caricature. Superimposed against a background of racial relationships where "driving while black" (or existing while black) predated post 9/11 instant suspicion of people of color, you have the makings of daily Gates/Crowley-type episodes that pass beneath the radar. "Contempt of cop," or being insufficiently obsequious to an officer of the law, can, as Prof. Gates' case shows, get you into trouble. And handcuffs.
Colin Powell ("Don't Argue With Cops"), who knows something about race and power relationships, said this to the NY Daily News:
I would have thought at that point some adult supervision would have stepped in and said, "Okay, look, it is his house. Come on, let's not take this any further. Take the handcuffs off."
Yes, the whole thing did go too far, and President Obama's "brewski diplomacy" (NYDN) is to be commended. But can we talk about the other aspect mentioned by Powell: the handcuffs?
Cuffing, frog-marching, or otherwise restraining even the most inoffensive of arrestees may be so routine and commonplace in the United States that people think it's a matter of course. Check out CopQuest.com (above photo: Peerless handcuffs) for the entire panoply of restraints, including one with particularly horrible overtones for African Americans, the "spit mask" or "transport hood," which has been compared to the masks used by 18th century slavers when abducting people for the plantations. For many people, a black man in handcuffs is not a racially-neutral image.
I refer you to the Human Rights Documentation Centre (HRDC) of India:
Humiliation and intimidation... Put aside Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley for a moment, and consider Susan McDougal.
In 1996, white, middle-class McDougal, former business partner of then-President Bill Clinton, was jailed in connection with the Whitewater controversy. Her crime: contempt (not of cop, but of court). Her treatment: handcuffed and in leg shackles, shuffled out of court in her miniskirt (she was later put in an orange prison jumpsuit) for the press to duly document. There was absolutely no doubt at the time that the extreme restraints for a wayward businesswoman were for any reason other than humiliation - in this case, hope on the part of the vindictive Special Prosecutor to humiliate both Ms. McDougal and, by association, the Clintons.
So beyond the race relations "teaching moment," let's use the Gates arrest to reconsider the almost automatic use of handcuffs, shackles, or worse for anyone other than violent criminals or suspects. Their use for people arrested in their own homes for forgetting their keys - and myriad other instances of peaceful confrontation - is the stuff of police states, not the State of Massachusetts.