From:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/25/in_risky_field_suspicion_is_key_tool_officers_say/
In risky field, suspicion is key tool, officers say
The most terrifying confrontations often erupt out of the most mundane
scenarios. An Arlington patrolman working a construction detail is suddenly
confronted by a suicidal man who lunges for the officer’s gun. A Quincy
sergeant trying to help a troubled man becomes his victim when the sergeant is
pinned against a wall. A Wellesley officer is tackled by two men after he
walked to their stopped car to see if they needed help.
Race has been the prevailing theme in the wake of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s
arrest at his Cambridge home, an incident that has triggered a national debate
about whether the officer overreacted when he placed the prominent Harvard
University professor in handcuffs. But for many police officers, the encounter
highlights a difficult balancing act they must perform each day as they try to
bring the appropriate level of force to bear on inherently unpredictable
situations.
Underestimating a seemingly routine call can be deadly. Overreacting can lead
to accusations of civil rights violations, litigation, and physical harm to an
innocent person.
>From the busiest departments to the sleepiest towns, patrol officers,
>sergeants, and lieutenants all had similar stories of the times they relaxed
>too quickly around a suspect or after defusing a tense situation. Officers
>also spoke of the fear that can strike even veteran police officers when they
>respond to a domestic violence call or pull a vehicle over in a traffic stop.
>In an FBI analysis, 19 percent of the 57 officers killed by criminals in 2007
>had either just pulled someone to the side of the road or were trying to.
“There is always that feeling of, ‘Is this going to be more than the soccer mom
late for practice?’ ’’ said Walpole police Officer Jaclyn Hazeldine. “You don’t
know who’s got what in the car, and you can’t let your guard down.’’
Terrence Cunningham was a young sergeant in Wellesley in 1995 when he spotted a
stopped car on Route 9 about 2 in the morning. He saw two men inside and,
thinking they had car trouble, pulled up behind them and began to walk to the
vehicle. Immediately, they ran out of the car and grabbed him, punching and
kicking at him. It turns out that they were the look-out guys for a third man
stealing car parts from a nearby Dodge dealership. An off-duty Boston police
officer rescued the sergeant, but Cunningham, now the department’s police
chief, was reminded of one of the job’s most painful realities.
“You never know what’s going to happen,’’ he said. “You always have to have a
plan. If this thing goes upside down, what are you going to do?’’
One evening in 1994, Deputy Superintendent William Gross of the Boston police
and another officer drove to a Dorchester street to quell a parking dispute
between two neighbors. The fight was quickly resolved, the two drivers shook
hands, and Gross, then a patrolman, and his fellow officer struck up a
conversation with gang unit officers who drove up to the scene. Seconds later,
the new peace was shattered when shots rang out from an apartment building
across the street. Gross rushed to the building, and, as he tried to get
inside, he saw the gunman on the other side of the glass door, pointing a gun
at him. Gross fired at him.
“You have seconds to react, just seconds,’’ said Gross. “That’s often what
happens.’’
Gross missed the gunman, but when he dashed inside, through the smoke and haze,
he saw a mortally wounded man slumped on the floor. Fifteen years later, Gross
remains shaken by how that quiet night grew so violent so quickly.
“We had no idea we’d be involved in a police shooting,’’ Gross said. “We had no
idea that once we gained access in the building, there would be a dead body in
the hallway.’’
Police officers often have more to fear when they are pulling people over or
responding to routine calls than when they are investigating a suspected bank
robber or a killer, said Thomas Nolan, an associate professor of criminal
justice at Boston University and a former Boston police officer.
“You just don’t know how something is going to affect someone or what the
reaction is going to be from someone who is thrust into a situation,’’ Nolan
said. “The frustration, the anger, the sentiment that ‘I’m being oppressed and
discriminated against by this police officer.’ ’’
For their own safety, police must be suspicious of everyone, a quality that
often rubs civilians the wrong way, many of the police officers said.
Hazeldine recalled going to a house after a security alarm went off. The
homeowner was not there, but a concerned neighbor kept following Hazeldine
around as she checked the house.
Worried that he might actually be the burglar, Hazeldine told the man to go
home.
The alarm turned out to be false, and Hazeldine returned to the station, but
soon afterward, the neighbor sent a letter to the department, complaining that
the officer was out of line when she ordered him away.
A few days after the incident, a police officer in Shrewsbury responded to an
alarm at a house and was accidentally shot by the homeowner. The officer
survived the injuries, but Hazeldine was startled by the similarities to her
own case.
“That’s why I did what I did,’’ she said of her reaction to the neighbor, who
may have looked harmless but could have been a deadly threat for all she knew.
“There isn’t a look,’’ Hazeldine said, adding that criminals “don’t have a
brand on their foreheads.’’
"Love will swallow you, eat you up completely, until there is no `you,' only
love."
- Amma
--- On Sat, 7/25/09, It's just a ride <bill.hicks.all.a.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: It's just a ride <bill.hicks.all.a.r...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Racial profiling and the Gates case
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, July 25, 2009, 3:24 PM
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 1:50 PM, authfriend<jst...@panix.com> wrote:
> Absolutely. And he should have refused. My point is
> that there was no reason for Crowley to have asked
> him to in the first place.
I agree
>
>
> I'm saying Crowley *tempted* him, lured him, enticed
> him into being disruptive in public so that Crowley
> would have the legal justification to arrest him.
I passed this by the local sheriff, whom I'm friends with. The
sheriff didn't tell me what I didn't already know. Gates was cruisin'
for a bruisin'. T'ain't racial profiling when there's a report of a
possible break in and you ask for ID to make sure you're leaving the
house in the hands of the rightful occupant or his/her designate. The
black cop said Gates wasn't acting quite right, was perhaps tired from
his trip. Translation: we deal with nuts all day long but Gates was
acting nuttier and more aggressively than most.
The laws and procedure are taught in police academy but the how to's
are taught in less public venues. One how to is in getting someone
who's wasting your time and ticking you off to make a fatal mistake.
Getting Gates out of the house was the best way to handle this
malefactor. Just let him take his rants outside then arrest him for
creating a public disturbance. Standard police procedure to settle a
score or speed up resolution of a problem. Crowley erred in arresting
a noted black scholar with a big mouth (not that a lot of black men
don't have big mouths when it comes to dealing with the law).
There's the unusual turn of events of a black professor/scholar and a
white blue collar guy involved here.
Obama's no fool. He sized up what had gone on. Unlikely Gates lives
in a rundown lean to in a rough neighborhood. I am convinced, as is
my sheriff friend, that had this been a white male (Irish even better)
Crowley would have been a lot more accommodating, perhaps even asking
for backup to get someone to explain to Gates why this was the police
doing everything possible to protect /his/ property. It's not a case
of Crowley acting illegally, it's a case of Crowley acting differently
than he would have with a white.
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