"Herring,

If you read the report, the officer disengaged himself from Gates and Gates followed him out of the house berating him."

I get that--but remember that police reports are just as one-sided sometimes as any other biased report would be. And nothing in a police report would even begin to show whether the officer was actually hoping & wanted to be followed outside, to "arrestable" territory. There are subtle ways to rile people that a practiced manipulator could easily employ, which would never be written into any report. If the officer wanted to be clear, why not state, "you are yelling at me in your home, which is okay, but if you do it on the porch, I will place you under arrest"?

"Now, yesterday, I read where a black officer, a sgt, stated Gates was acting strange and deserved to be arrested."

Sometimes it is a good thing if "blue is the only color an officer sees." Other times . . . well, one never knows.

"Lastly, what a lot of people don't know is when things like this happen and the upper supervisors know shit is going to hit the fan, it is very typical for them to tell those involved to write very detailed and thorough reports. I'm pretty certain that that is what happened in this case."

No matter how detailed and thorough, a report can always be bent one way or another, even through subtle phrasing. The truth can actually rest on what your definition of "is" is.

"Also, people keep wondering why the officer kept trying to get Gates out of his house - I have not heard the reason why, but recall, the original call came in with TWO people seen trying to break in. If so, it is very possible for officer safety issues, Crowley was trying to get Gates out of the house in case there were two suspects unaccounted for."

Good point--it's possible the officer had the safety of Gates in mind. I suspect otherwise, obviously, but I don't claim to truly know. At this point, I'm comfortable letting the matter rest at least until Gates and Crowley join Obama for a beer in the White House.

Glug! :) Herring405