Cop’s racist e-mail further exposes true colors of police force

Since July 16, there has been a media firestorm surrounding the question of racism in the “post-racial” age of Obama. The smoldering ember that lit the dry grasses of controversy was officer James Crowley’s arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a distinguished Harvard faculty member whose only crime was standing up to racist police profiling.

The racial profiling of Prof. Henry Louis Gates has become a lighting rod for racist hatred.

Mr. Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct when a neighbor called the police after witnessing Gates trying to open his own jammed front door. Gates identified himself to the officer prior to being taken into custody.

Columnist Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Globe wrote an editorial describing the arrest of Gates as a “dunderhead move.” Boston police officer Justin Barrett e-mailed a written response to Abraham, spewing virulent racist and sexist hatred:

“… [Abraham’s] defense of Gates … is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and will always be a suspect.” Presumably, as a Black man, Mr. Gates “will always be a suspect” and his constitutional rights will therefore “always” be subject to violation by the police.

Barrett goes on to state that had he been the responding officer at Gates’ home, he would have “sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper gas] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.” Four times in his e-mail, Barrett refers to Gates using the racist and obscene name “jungle monkey.”

Barrett then launches into a sexist assault on Yvonne Abraham, asserting that she is nothing but a “hot little bird,” who has “no business writing for a U.S. newspaper” and should instead “serve [him] coffee and donuts.”

The two-page e-mail was—sort of—condemned by Tom Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association in an ABC interview: “He is not representative of the men and women of the Boston Police force. Justin Barrett has done more to hurt the police force than Gates did.” (Emphasis added.)

Nee’s statement—which still holds Gates responsible for his own arrest—is nothing but a save-face move before the media and the public. It lays the blame on the individual officer, not the racist institution that trains them—and that is only if any blame is laid at all.

Even after Barrett admits that he would brutalize a man who broke no law and posed no threat, there is still a debate in the media and the police department over whether he should be fired. If the capitalist police institution were not inherently racist, Barrett would have been fired immediately.

As a matter of fact, Barrett does represent the Boston police, and police across the country. So does Crowley. Police brutality and racial profiling are deeply rooted in the system. It is up to us to stand with all communities targeted by police repression and to fight with all our strength for the rights that every human being deserves.