https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/With-less-than-a-second-to-decide-1046.php
With less than a second to decide
It was the dead of the night. Three a.m., maybe, and I was with two Bridgeport police officers in an alley behind an apartment building on Central Avenue in Bridgeport's East End.
They were responding to the report of a possible break-in in progress.
This was many years ago, a time when things, particularly in Bridgeport, ran a little looser, before reasonable concerns about liability issues might prevent a reporter from spending a Friday night shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., in a patrol car.
The alley was long and at 3 a.m. could just as well have been underground for all the light there was, except for a dim glow at the other end, where stray street light gathered.
There was no visible evidence of anything going on.
But then a silhouette appeared in that faint light at the other end of the alley. Someone yelled. Hands reached for holsters. But, no. Wait. Stop.
It was two more officers coming into the alley the other way.
Split-second decisions. We expect police officers to make them every day.
With the luxury of hindsight, the response of Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley to a possible break-in in progress at a home in Cambridge has been parsed oh so minutely.
When all the pieces are laid out, start to finish, and the whole picture is clear, it's easy to make judgment.
But the pieces are not all visible when a cop has to walk into murky circumstance.
And they are forever walking into murky circumstances.
In Crowley's case, it was early afternoon and he arrived at the house where something had prompted a caller to report the possibility of a break-in.
He was on patrol nearby and responded. He was alone.
The woman who had made the call was in front of the house. Crowley asked her to stay while he approached the house, anticipating the arrival of other officers.
Crowley goes up on the porch and sees through the panes of the front door what he described as "an older black male" standing inside the house.
It turns out, of course, that the man was Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor, a friend of President Barack Obama, and, more importantly, the resident of the house.
Crowley asked Gates to come out to the porch to talk. You'd have to wonder if Crowley, figuring this old guy didn't fit the break-in demographic, might have thought maybe someone else was in the house.
So let's put Gates' shoes on for a minute: He's standing in his foyer, around 1 o'clock in the afternoon and there on the porch is a police officer asking him to step outside.
What's going on, he's got to be thinking.
Gates, according to Crowley's report, refused, but opened the front door and a dialogue ensued.
By the account of Crowley -- and that of Officer Carlos Figueroa, who had responded just minutes behind Crowley -- Gates was flipping out, accusing Crowley of being a racist.
A little over the top? I'd say so.
The tirade continued out on the porch. "You don't know who you're messing with," Gates said.
That is not Sgt. Crowley's claim. That is in Officer Figueroa's report.
"While on the porch, the gentleman refused to be cooperative and continued shouting that the Sgt. is racist police officer," Officer Figueroa reported.
Officer Figueroa reported Gates yelled (I'll assume the yelled, because in Figueroa's report the letters are all upper case.) "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO BLACK MEN IN AMERICA!"
Should Crowley have just walked away? Well, I don't know about that.
With the luxury of hindsight, and with the photos of Gates with his cane and his suit, it's easy to say that the sergeant could have walked away and left the screamer in the hands of the other officers that had subsequently arrived.
But, there you go. In another one of those split-second decisions cops are asked to make every day, Crowley said to himself, "That's enough," and took Professor Gates into custody.
There's no question that there are bad cops and cops that make bad decisions. You put a hundred bishops in a room -- or newspaper editors -- and you're going to find a few unsavory ones.
Professor Gates is a man who's studied and written about racial abuse in America. I'm not sure a lone police officer walking onto his porch at 1 o'clock in the afternoon in what started as an effort to protect him and his property fits the bill.
Michael J. Daly is editor of the editorial page of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6394 or by e-mail at mdaly@ctpost.com.