By Brendan Loy
I was delighted yesterday to see Glenn Reynolds linking to libertarian writer Radley Balko’s Reason article about the Cambridge kerfuffle (a.k.a. Gates-gate).
Balko shifts the focus away from race, which is really a sideshow in this particular case, to where it rightfully belongs: police abuse of power. And, while acknowledging that Gates seems to have acted boorishly, Balko criticizes Crowley for arresting him when, by all accounts, the only “crime” Gates committed is the non-crime of “contempt of cop.”
Balko also lambastes many conservatives for the “instinctively authoritarian tack” they have taken in response to this and other confrontations between cops and citizens. This is something that desperately needed to be said, and Balko says it well.
Excerpt:
[I]t now seems clear that Gates mistakenly presumed that Crowley had racially profiled him, and hurled a barrage of invective at Crowley in response. … [But] [t]he conversation we ought to be having in response to the July 16 incident and its heated aftermath isn’t about race, it’s about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government.
By any account of what happened—Gates’, Crowleys’, or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. “Contempt of cop,” as it’s sometimes called, isn’t a crime. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The “disorderly conduct” charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest.
He won’t be, of course. And that’s ultimately the scandal that will endure long after the political furor dies down. The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It’s taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights. …
If there’s a teachable moment to extract from Gates’ arrest, it’s that arrest powers should be limited to actual crimes. Instead, the emerging lesson seems to be that you should capitulate to police, all the time, right or wrong. That’s unfortunate, because there are plenty of instances where you shouldn’t.
Much more after the jump, including some well-deserved link love for Carlos Miller’s blog.
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