Officer in Henry Gates flap tried to save Reggie Lewis
The Cambridge cop prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. claims is a racist gave a dying Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a desperate bid to save the
Celtics [
team stats] superstar’s life 16 years ago Monday.
“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man. I was working on another human being,” Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward’s fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer.
I sure hope Gates gets a lot of negative heat for being a racist. The good people of America should send an email to the
Cambridge PD in support of the officer.
Regardless of whether or not the officer is a racist (I don't know one way or the other), I question the logic of officer Crowley, the Boston Herald, and you by extension for thinking this matters in the larger debate. Just because he performed mouth-to-mouth on a black basketball player as part of his job that doesn't automatically lay to rest any possibility of racism. Crowley's desperate to clear his name (whether the accusation is fair or not) so his motivation is understandable if misguided, but this is one of those comments that can blow back on you - like "see, I'm not racist, I have black friends" - by showing a profound misunderstanding of how racism works.
You can perform CPR on a black man and still mistreat black people during an investigation because of their skin color. You can trust an individual black police officer with your life while on duty yet still think black people in general are inferior. Racism is rarely consistent even from the perspective of the racist himself. If there's a black man in town that you are cordial with and you say "he's one of the good ones," you're still a racist for prejudging the others not on their individual merits but because of their skin color.
I saw a guy with swastika and white power tats picking up Chinese food a while back. Somehow I doubt he considered Chinese people equal to whites just because he enjoys their food and can manage to talk to the employees without making a racist comment (well, other than the tattoos themselves).
As far as the arrest itself goes, it sounds as if Gates might have gotten a bit full of himself and took trying to make a point too far at the scene (he could have done so in the media afterward and still accomplished his goals), but I don't see any justification
at all for his arrest, even if the charges were later dropped. Ooh, he spoke in a "tumultuous" manner. BFD. He produced ID showing that it was his house. Anything that happened after that point other than the cops saying "sorry about the misunderstanding, have a nice day" and walking back to their cars was excessive on their part and the officer in question was either being possibly racist or more likely going on a little bit of a power trip, or both.
Dealing with angry people (justified or not) is part of the job, and having insults or accusations thrown your way is no excuse for arresting anyone unless they are actively stirring up unrest in a crowd and placing lives in danger, which was obviously not the case here. Cops aren't above being insulted or yelled at because of their position. They shouldn't have greater protections than anyone else.
