Legal Commentary

I have been thinking for a few days about the Gates incident, trying to decide if I wanted to comment.  I am somewhat astounded at the number of people who are willing to be triers of fact on pretty sketchy evidence; my take on the world is more things like this arise out of fear, miscommunication, confusion, pride, and escalation than racism or bad intent.  In short, we all get a chance in our lives to do something stupid - whether it's in public or at the wrong time is a matter of luck.  My charitable interpretation is that everybody would prefer to take something back.

What I really wanted to comment about, however, was my unrelated experiences with the Cambridge Police Department.  Cambridge is one of the densest cities in the U.S. - it's very diverse economically and racially, and there is far less correlation between neighborhoods on those indicia than any place we've ever lived.  We live on a street off Porter Square that has expensive private housing, public housing, low income housing, and a hybrid "co-housing" (which is a kind of cross between a really nice condo and a kibbutz).  It is a semi-urban environment.  You don't know who all your neighbors are.  There are problems from time to time that are typical of cities - property crime (our house was robbed last year and we were unimpressed with the reaction of the detectives), drugs, etc.  Near the end of last year, there were two incidents of muggings on our street (one alleged perp was white, one alleged perp was black - it was equal opportunity street crime), and several of us began organizing a street association.  We had wonderful support from the Public Affairs Department of the Cambridge Police, the neighborhood sergeants and officers, and Commissioner Robert Haas himself, who has showed up at every event, including our "health and safety walk," in which about 50 neighbors did an inspection of dark areas, broken lights, and other safety issues.

Neither I nor anybody else is going to be able to make credible generalizations about individuals on the force, but on far more solid evidence than has come to fore on this incident, I have the impression that Commissioner Haas espouses a progressive kind of leadership that emphasizes a solid relationship between the department and citizens who want to take some responsibility for their own well-being.  That's not to excuse an officer who made a poor judgment (I suspect) about not just walking away from somebody who sounds like he was very agitated but not dangerous, nor does it minimize the real concerns about the presumptions black men have to face every day, but I just wanted to put in an unsolicited plug for the Cambridge Police Department on my little shred of evidence.