Legal Commentary

Paul and Dave have both written very interesting posts on the Gates incident, and they have me wondering about policing and class. In particular, I'm interested in how police interact with middle and upper class citizens (and vice versa). My own interactions with police officers have sometimes been quite unpleasant --- not because the officers were wrong to stop me or because I had been subject to any sort of profiling --- but rather because the officers treated me with such a lack of respect that I felt angry and humiliated. As someone who ordinarily encounters, if not respect, than at least politeness, these experiences with police officers have been quite difficult to forget.

I know that police officers have difficult and dangerous jobs, and I'm sure that they have to deal with plenty of rude citizens whoay have engaged in some (not always minor) wrong-doing. But it is easy to conclude that the behavior of some officers is designed as an overt show of authority, thus a citizen's response of "do you know who I am" seems to me a response to the show of that authority -- especially once the officer's authority is no longer necessary for law enforcement reasons.

I don't pretend to know how to solve policing tensions --- sadly, I don't think even Gates and this officer having a beer with Obama will accomplish anything. But I do think it is important to remember that the law in this area -- the "consentual stop" doctrine, permitting officers to demand citizens to show ID, the low reasonable suspicion standard, and even defining "disoderly conduct" as a crime -- exacerbates these tensions and has probably led to countless other unfortunate incidents like the Gates arrest.