The Wave

UPDATE: The Professor Gates vs. Sgt. Crowley Affair

I got it wrong - apparently , according to an AP account of the incident, Sgt. Crowley did not yell "Police, freeze."  Apparently, they first spied each other through the window. But, I stand by my original premise: both of these guys were at fault.  Gates should not have lost control and started abusing Crowley for doing his job. But, Crowley is supposedly the trained professional here, he should have at least given Gates his name and badge number, let the abuse roll off his back and walked away.  Cops get abuse all the time, including being called racist.  Crowley could have de-escalated this.  I'm not excusing Gates here; but Crowley didn't need to arrest Gates either.

Also, see the comment below from a black San Diego Police Officer.

Folks, as a former specialist trainer for the New York City Police Department on managing emotionally disturbed and upset members of the public, and as a diversity expert, I get to weigh in on the Professor Gates vs. Sgt. Crowley affair.

First, although I haven’t seen the actual police report, here’s what I think happened here. It’s all too familiar; in an honest moment, most cops will tell you so.   Crowley responds to a burglary-in-progress call, and looks through the door and sees who he believes to be the burglars in the home.  He uses his commanding police voice to demand: “Police, freeze,” or “Police: stop what you’re doing and put your hands in the air.”  Gates, I’m sure, is surprised and has a “WTF?” moment.  He then probably says something to the effect of “this is my home! I live here!”  Crowley is trained not to accept that on face value (perps lie all the time) and demands to see ID, again using the stentorian, commanding police tone (cops are real good at that voice; it’s very intimidating and usually results in compliance).

Gates, no longer surprised but now very angry with what he perceives to be a white cop’s invasion of his home, becomes incensed and irrationally fueled by all of the times he, his friends and innocent black men across the country have been stopped by police and questioned for driving while black or being black in the wrong place and time.  So he gets very upset, shows Crowley his Harvard ID and adds in some nasty epithets about Crowley being a racist cop, demanding that he tell him his name and provide his badge number, etc.

This stuff happens all the time when white cops stop minority suspects while a crime is being committed, even when the suspect is caught with the loot in his hands! Even the guiltiest of perps will call a cop a racist during the arrest – the perp has nothing to lose by doing so.  Heck, even obviously guilty black suspects will call black arresting officers traitors and uncle Toms!

I’m sure Crowley felt disrespected, tried to walk out of the house (to protect themselves, cops are trained not to stay in confined spaces with a very upset person) without answering Gates’ questions, probably with the intention of answering them on the porch, and assuming Gates would calm down once out of doors. But Gates didn’t calm down. He followed Crowley onto the porch continuing to hurl insults and accusations that the cop was a racist.  I’m sure Gates was in “high dudgeon,” on a roll, and was determined to run this white “racist” cop out of his home with his tail between his legs.

Then, I’m thinking Crowley saw the crowd outside watching the spectacle, got all macho and decided that he couldn't allow the disrespect of one of Cambridge’s finest to go on in public. So, he arrested Gates for disorderly conduct.  Charges are dropped the next day because they really wouldn’t stick, not because Crowley or Gates did anything wrong. The arrest was purely a means of bringing a messy situation to a close as fast as possible.  If you know a cop, they’ll tell you that this whole incident played out very typically and is pretty common.

So, what I’m saying is…they’re both at fault. It’s understandable how Gates - one of the world’s leading experts on the black man’s experience and knowing in his bones the sordid history of innocent black men being repeatedly harassed by police - could just completely lose it and become irrationally abusive of Crowley.   Unfortunately, Gates’ better judgment about the officer’s intentions of preventing a crime went out the window the moment the cop started yelling at him to freeze.  I think Gates was simply not able to help himself: he’d been railing about injustice against blacks by police all of his life; he interpreted this invasion of his home by a white cop as one more example.

On the other hand, Crowley, who is an expert trainer on how police should NOT racially profile, could have handled the situation much better once Gates became abusive. Police are trained to allow innocent people to vent on them, as long as it doesn’t get physical; I’ve found that 25 year veterans tend to let that kind of verbal abuse roll off them like water.  They walk slowly away without retaliating or saying anything; it all blows over quickly.   I’m guessing that Crowley felt very disrespected and wanted to get away from a screaming Gates as fast as he could once he’d seen the ID; that’s understandable too.  But, if he didn’t apologize for the intrusion, mix-up, whatever – then he should have; police training specifically calls for an apology – mostly to diffuse the situation.  And it’s been proven again and again that a sincere police apology on the spot will usually de-escalate a potentially explosive situation pretty fast.  It seems to me Crowley didn’t try to de-escalate this; instead, once they got onto the porch, he escalated it by making the arrest.  But again, he probably just wanted to get the whole thing over with, understandable.

So, who is the professional here?  Crowley: he’s trained and an expert in dealing with this “racially loaded” stuff.  So, I put a little bit more onus on him for this mess.  Then again, Gates shouldn’t have lost his cool and abused Crowley, it was unnecessary. I guess what I’m saying is, it took two to tango into this pile of poop and smear it all over the place.  It’s going to take both of them to clean it up.  I won’t hold my breath.

I Dropped My Health Insurance

I’ve been thinking about writing about this for a long time, but I guess I was too embarrassed to openly admit it: I no longer have health insurance.  I dropped it, I simply couldn’t afford it.

I’m not like those people whose employer pays for all or a portion of their health insurance premiums.  As a solo consultant and small business owner, I had been buying my own health insurance for many years.  I’ve watched the premiums go up and up and up every year.   I shook my head and paid assuming – like auto insurance – that I couldn’t afford to be without.  It was all OK, while the economy was OK.

But then this past Spring, I took a look at all my debts and bills and projected what my income was likely to be. Then I looked at how much my premiums were about to go up yet again (nearly a 35% increase).  Bottom line: something had to go.  So I swallowed hard and stopped paying my premiums.

You see, I figured that I’m in pretty good health for a 49 year old (the only doctor I ever see regularly is my chiropractor), and besides: the President and Congress are finally going to do something about making insurance affordable, right? So, I thought, I can just do without it for a while.

Well wouldn’t you know it?  About a month after dropping my insurance I started having chest pains while on a business trip.  Crap! Am I having a heart attack? I can’t afford to be ill!  The pain subsided and I went into denial that it ever happened.  Then a week later, the pain came back while I was at home on a Sunday morning, reading the paper.  So, I took myself over to the emergency room, preparing myself to pay through the nose.

Turns out after a blood test, an EKG and lots of questions by nurses and doctors, that my heart is fine; I actually had some kind of chest infection.  After 3 hours, they released me and I steeled myself for the bills. They came in recently.  Total cost including the blood work around $2,750.00 – about $1,000 an hour.  It’s not jaw dropping, but it sure ain’t chump change.  I called the billing department – they said they’d be willing to negotiate if I paid everything right away.  Interesting.

Now, I’m talking about all of this because right up until this morning, I was pretty sure that finally the government was going to do something about the insane cost of health care in this country.  Silly me. Now, they’re saying they won’t do anything before the summer recess.  Who knows if they’ll ever get anything done.

All I know now is that I can’t afford health insurance and there are a lot of politicians (who have terrific health care they don’t pay for) and wealthy Americans with health insurance who don’t seem to give a damn about those of us who can’t afford the premiums.  They’re so worried about America going “socialist” they’ve forgotten about middle-class hard-working Americans who are really struggling.   News flash: Social Security is “socialism,” are they gonna give that up cause they’re against socialism?  Federal employees and active duty military have retirement benefits that are extraordinarily generous – that’s “socialism” too.

Call it socialism, communism, or totalitarianism for all I care – I just want some decent health insurance that I can afford?! Is that too much to ask?