On the Gates Controversy
by JS
I don’t have anything to add to the debate, which seems to have died down quite a bit. I will say that I’m puzzled by the apparent power dynamics of the entire episode. Presumably the Cambridge Police Department answers to some sort of civil authority, and when an officer wrongly arrests a prominent (and well connected) member of the community, I sort of imagined that (I’m going to be crude) shit from the resulting storm would roll downhill. Instead, there seems to be quite a bit of insulation between the officer involved and the local political power dynamic prevailing in Cambridge.
Maybe Cambridge isn’t the kind of city for back room reprisals. Or maybe the budget for the Cambridge Police Department will be DOA when the next fiscal year rolls around.
Comments
I wonder if there would be a strong connection between the university and the city. I would guess that they might be in separate universes and may even compete for power. Maybe the civil authority would be more likely to retaliate if the officer had wrongly arrested a prominent local business leader.
The incident raises all kinds of other questions like town vs. gown and economic class differences that did not get nearly as much play as the race issue. But I’d be surprised if someone who knows POTUS personally and is a superstar faculty member at Harvard doesn’t also have some degree of local political power. But maybe I’ve just been watching too many television dramas.