(no subject)

[merrily]

From sparkymonster's post today

So. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Skip Gates when he's being casual, is a prominent african-american intellectual. Former chair of the African-American studies department at Harvard, founder of the W.E.B. DuBois institute at Harvard, creator of multiple PBS documentaries and basically a "public intellectual." He's into blackness, and is also is non-threatening which people like. The man is about 5'5", soft spoken (though he can project like crazy) and walks with a cane. He's dapper.

And... he got arrested for breaking into his home and causing a disturbance. At 12:30 in the afternoon. In broad day light. The police report is EPIC (link to PDF). To sum up. Someone calls the police on a "black people acting suspiciously." They go to tell some kid to move along. They get Prof. Henry Louis Gates (who allegedly shoved at the door while getting in). They get someone who is very familiar with his rights, and is not amused about being asked for ID in his own house. Eventually the cops find out he is a Harvard Prof. The Harvard police are notified, go "OH SHIT!!" and run over. After what I think is best described as shenanigans, Gates is arrested for being loud and disorderly. His lawyer... Charles Ogletree.

Read the rest of her post here, and the Boston Globe article here.

It probably makes me a bad person that I'm kinda gleeful about this. Not gleeful about what happened! but gleeful because the ijits who arrested him are going to get royally pwned, in public, with high visibility. I am looking forward to their just desserts, and I am also hopeful that the visibility of their just desserts will help lessen the number of times this stupidity happens in the future.

Comments

[merrily]

you know it's bad when the report written by the actual arresting officer still makes him sound like a total douche.

Seriously. Way to fail, man.