Henry Gates

In response to Mike’s post about Henry Gates and his question of ‘is police bias an increasing predicament that needs more focus?’ After taking several classes regarding this subject I do feel that racial profiling is a major problem in our country. However, the incident involving Henry Gates is not one of these cases. Sgt. Crowley received a call about a burglary in progress, was given a description of the individuals and arrived to find one of the individuals inside the home. He then ordered the individual (Gates) to come outside and provide him with identification at which time Gates began to argue that he was a victim of racial profiling at this point. The argument continued to the point where Sgt. Crowley issued a summary citation for disorderly conduct. Although Gates’ actions did fall under the offense of disorderly conduct, given the circumstances Sgt. Crowley probably would have been better off not issuing the citation (which was later dropped). With regard to the racial profiling aspect, I do not believe the police did anything wrong in this instance. Race was used purely as a descriptor, not a predictor which is how police should view any possible crime involving race.