Quote:
Originally Posted by MelBridgeman
Again if you read the actual report, you would notice that the 911 caller told the officer AT THE SCENE she saw 2 black males...so I am not sure what "error" you are suggesting...also the 911 caller seems to expose Gates notion that he entered through the back door with his key...
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Sigh. I will never understand why people feel the need to speak to one another like that. You don't have to be rude--especially when what I was actually saying is that it would be an understandable error under the circumstances, not that it exposes Crowley as a racist. However, you apparently wish you were debating with a shriller, less rational poster. I can't oblige you there.
More to the point, your objection is nonsensical on two counts.
Crowley wrote the report, not the
dispatcher, not the witness at the scene. The person at the scene, when she called, told the dispatcher that she didn't get a good look at the two men, and couldn't identify their race when she was looking at them--why would she suddenly be able to say definitively that they were black
when she could no longer see them? EDIT: More importantly, Whalen denies ever having said this to Crowley.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/reg...icleid=1187224
However, I refuse to believe that you didn't already know that. Is it possible that the error is the dispatcher's and not Crowley's? Sure--but that takes some serious mental acrobatics. Essentially, what you're saying is that the dispatcher
out of nowhere assumed that the people breaking in were black and passed that information along to Crowley. I think you'll agree that this doesn't make much sense. However, it is the only way the error could have been the dispatcher's and not Officer Crowley's. Is it also possible that the 911 caller changed her story before Crowley got there, and told him something different from what she told the dispatcher? Again, sure. However, this means that in her comment after the fact,
she is lying about never having said that they were black. This is definitely possible, though I personally find it unlikely. EDIT: after listening to the tape, the dispatcher clearly says that the race of the men is unknown.
However, it's not confirmed by the facts, and Crowley's report clearly
doesn't include some information that she DID give the dispatcher--quite notably that she wasn't even sure it was a break-in--that she thought it possible Gates might live there, and not be a burglar. Now either Crowley forgot to include it, or the dispatcher didn't tell him--who knows? Either way, it's a minor but important detail. EDIT: Sounds like the dispatcher didn't tell him.
Also, the call
in no way contradicts Gates' testimony about entering through the back door after attempting to enter through the front and finding the door jammed.
If you want to be reasonable and have a reasonable debate, let's do it. I'm getting awfully tired of the "if you read the report" nonsense. I did read it--but I'm not particularly interested in proving it to you. If you want to keep playing "gotcha," go ahead--but do it with somebody else.