Tale of Two Cities:

In Houston last December a young black man was shot in his parent’s driveway after parking his parent’s car by members of the Bellaire Police Department. The finding released in February confirms the facts in this racially motivated shooting. Robbie Toland is to me a case of over reaction by police that should have been punished with jail time. Not only were the officers involved not charged they were not disciplined in any way.

Now we have the case of a Harvard professor returning to his home in Cambridge Massachusetts. This nationally honored personal friend of our president was arrested and taken to jail after he had proven that he was standing in his own living room. As of this writing the arresting officer refuses to apologize to the professor for his erroneous and racially motivated actions. On the Henry Louis Gates matter even the President of the United States of America has commented.

I think we have to seriously consider what has happened. In the case of Robbie Toland a young man’s promising baseball career was destroyed. Robbie will carry a bullet in his liver for the rest of his life which was surely shortened by what this arresting officer did. Pain and suffering do not even begin to describe what has happened to this young man and his family.

While the Harvard professor was not shot the very fact that a man could be arrested in his own home for no reason other than the color of his skin should bring every American to their feet protesting. Yet no such thing has happened. Once again the spin doctors are attempting to justify the arrest. How successful will they be? I fear that this incident like so many before it will be whitewashed and forgotten. Driving while black in America in and of itself has become hazardous.

The Massachusetts statute defining "disorderly conduct" used to have a provision that made it illegal to make "unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display," or to address "abusive language to any person present." Yet the courts have interpreted that provision to violate the Massachusetts Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. So police cannot lawfully arrest a person for hurling abusive language at an officer. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/obama-was-right-about-the_b_244888.html ). The charges were dropped because there was no offense committed. If no offense was committed it was in fact “pretty stupid” to arrest Professor Gates as the president so rightly observed.

Both of these events happened in affluent neighbor hoods. Both of these incidents involver persons of color that represented less than 1% of the neighborhood’s population. Police records in Bellaire show that even though less than 1% of the population is black 30%+ of the drivers stopped in this city are black. I cannot prove it yet but I expect the same can be said of Cambridge. Surely the police do not think that their city is being targeted by the criminal element of Houston. Yet I can sense this argument will be put forward.

America for the love of God wake up and begin to correct these injustices.