Right. And my understanding is that the police officer disengaged at that point, and left the house. He called in Harvard Police to take it over.
A good step. The right action. At which point Mr Gates followed him onto the porch, and kept yelling. (Not the right action, but maybe not actionable). At which point Mr Gates was warned that he was creating a public nuisance. Repeatedly. Now here is where the cop _maybe_ could have acted differently. He could have ignored Gates, let him rant on his own porch. IF he had the discretion at that point (police procedures covering the incident might have dictated that at that point, he _had_ to place him under arrest. And from my informal discussion with a couple of former and current cops, he probably did not have that discretion at that time.). If he did have the discretion, then I agree the best thing would have been to let him stay on his porch, and rant away. But, truthfully, depending on what Gates was saying in his rants, I cannot truly fault the cop as a person for snapping on the cuffs. He gave Gates repeated chances to walk away. And he had cause for the arrest. And, truthfully, I cannot necessarily fault Gates for being all irate. I probably would be too. Of course, Gates bears responsibility here, too. Had Gates just shut the f up, story over. Overall, I think it was all handled just about right. Gates was charged with disorderly conduct. He made a complaint about his treatment. The prosecutors declined to sustain the charges, the incident is under review. Except for all the public posturing by politicians who don't have the facts, it sounds like 10000 other incidents last year in Mass, and it sounds like the system worked. On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Judah McAuley <ju...@wiredotter.com>wrote: > > On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Jerry Johnson<jmi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Regardless of the job, when your customer starts threatening to go to > your > > boss with a complaint, the relationship HAS to change. > > > > Do you disagree with that thought? > > I agree the relationship has to change. In my experience that means it > is time to walk away and let the boss handle the complaint. When that > tone gets whipped out in a normal customer service interaction (police > work is obviously not normal customer service), there isn't likely to > be anything else to be done to mollify or placate the person > complaining and it is time to hand them off to a new person for a new > interaction. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:300909 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
