Obama's Lack of Respect for Law Enforcement Nothing New

By Michael G. Mickey

As a retired police officer, I have to tell everyone, at the outset of this commentary, that President Obama's reaction to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by the Cambridge Police Department fumed me from the outset.

The president, having no idea what had taken place leading up to Gates' arrest, reacted precisely the way I would expect a friend of a domestic terrorist like William Ayers and a racist pastor like Jeremiah Wright Jr. to respond - with immediate, thoughtless disrespect toward the police.

In case you missed it, the police, our ill-informed commander-in-chief said, acted "stupidly" in arresting his friend, a man I've since learned is obviously every bit as mean-spirited as Obama's other aforementioned buddies.

After reading Sgt. Crowley's arrest report, it's clear to me that Gates got exactly what he asked for. To be certain, there is no chance I wouldn't have arrested him just as the Cambridge Police Department did had he behaved in the manner he did in my presence if I had responded to a similar incident and he had gone ballistic on me with a group of onlookers growing outside his residence as he did in the incident in question.

Show Me Your I.D.

It is standard practice, particularly in situations like the one the Cambridge Police responded to, to identify the party inside as a resident of the home and document it. This, to me, should be obvious to even the most clueless of people when it comes to how the police operate and why they do the things they do.

From a police officer's perspective, taking Gates at his word that he was a resident of the home, even when Gates admitted breaking in because he lost his door key, would be unwise. A mistake like that could've proven to be quite costly if the officers had driven away and later, lo and behold, they found themselves in front of their superiors struggling to explain why the guy who said he was Mr. Gates had stolen everything that wasn't anchored to the floor right after they gullibly drove away without identifying him.

Putting myself in their position for a moment, even as a back-up, I would've ensured he was ID'd before I left, which probably would've led to the same outcome because Gates, not the police, had a race relations problem and I would've had none of it. Yes, I would've taken Obama's buddy to jail. Not only that, the last thing I would do in response to both Gates' and Obama's deplorable conduct, would be to offer to have a beer with them as the arresting officer apparently has based on news reports. I would accept their apologies, sure, and I'd be kind in my conversations with them but to socialize with them purely to help them save face? No way! They made that bed for themselves and they should have to figure out how to untangle the covers, in my humble opinion.

In conclusion, purely on the issues of Gates cursing the officers, slinging racial accusations, acting as though the police had no cause to identify him at the scene of a reported burglary during the course of their investigation, Gates became disorderly, created a public nuisance and went to jail. The end. But what about the much bigger issue? What about Obama, the liberal media's paragon of greatness and our nation's leader? Perhaps it's just the cop in me bleeding back out, but his use of the word stupidly to describe the actions of law enforcement smelled familiarly like contempt of authority to me as soon as I heard it, an odd tone coming from a community organizer, a 'visionary' like Barack Obama.

Twas Blind But Now I See

This morning, as I read the news, I happened by WorldNetDaily.com where I discovered some tidbits of information that have, in my mind, revealed why Obama acted the way he did upon hearing of the arrest of his friend. It turns out the president had problems of his own with the Cambridge Police Department - problems he never chose to make right until two weeks before he ran for president!

An excerpt from WND that paints a picture of both our president's moral character and his disrespect for the law:

According to the Somerville Times in 2007, as a Harvard Law School student, Obama got 17 parking tickets during 1989-1991 from the Cambridge Police Department that he left unpaid until just weeks before he announced his bid for the presidency.

"In other words, as a practicing lawyer in Chicago, he allowed these tickets and penalties to remain unpaid; as an Illinois state senator he allowed these tickets and fines to remain unpaid; and as a United States senator he allowed these almost-two-decade-old signs of his disdain for the law to remain unpaid," commented John LeBoutillier on Newsmax.com.

The Washington Post said two years ago that the tickets included parking without a proper permit and parking in a bus stop.

The Associated Press reported in 2007 that Obama's "healthy stack" of parking tickets was finally paid, including late fees, "two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign."

Now, people, I want you to wrap yourself around what you just read for a moment and breathe in what we can learn about President Barack Hussein Obama from all of this.

For Obama, immediately prior to running for president, to pay off the 17 parking tickets he'd refused to pay for almost two decades he had to know they existed, naturally. Not only that, he knew that having refused to pay them was wrong and could bring his character into question. What does that make abundantly clear? He didn't pay off those parking tickets because he suddenly developed a conscience; he paid them off to serve his political ambitions! It was convenient for him to be a law-abiding citizen so he did the right thing at last. Isn't that special?

What kind of person, when cited for a violation of the law, any law, refuses to pay their debt or go to court to defend themself against the violations cited, which is the right of every citizen? In my opinion, it's someone whose moral compass is broken - or never worked right to begin with.

Closing Thoughts

I wonder how the press would've reacted if Sarah Palin had accused the police of acting stupidly in a scenario similar to this instead of President Obama? Late night comedians and every news anchor at MSNBC would've gone into a feeding frenzy for at least two weeks you can be sure, but because a liberal messed up and his true colors bled through, the mainstream media has begun the process of brainwashing us into believing the corny lines Obama used to apologize to the Cambridge Police Department without actually apologizing. He wishes he'd "calibrated" his words more carefully?!?! Give me a break! That's not an apology; that's a cleverly-worded excuse and no one who is presently wearing (or has ever worn) a badge should accept it until he genuinely says he is sorry, which is something I don't believe our narcissist in chief is capable of.

While I hope this incident, in totality, helps our nation to have a dialogue on race relations that sadly continues to need to be held, I hope it will also cause people who rush to judgment concerning why the police do the things they do to take a deep breath and gather the full facts in the future before rushing to judgment. Being a police officer isn't an easy job and, as this incident illustrates, a good officer can sometimes be harassed, critiqued and mocked ad nauseum for doing precisely what circumstances dictated he should.

Rant over.

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