Ethics

Claybourn on the Gates Arrest

By Ed Brayton

My former colleague at In the Agora, Josh Claybourn, has an excellent post that gets it pretty much exactly right in regard to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. The problem is not that the officer went to the house and demanded to see identification and confirm that Gates was not breaking into the house; that was exactly what he should do under the circumstances.

Nor is the problem that Gates probably berated the cop for being a racist when there's really little to indicate that he was motivated by racism. That is many things, but it is not criminal. The problem is the arrest for doing something that is only against the law if you define the law so broadly that it means "annoying a police officer."

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on July 27, 2009 (boomark / email).