Why do some people around here always have their dial set on "outrage"?   And why does everything have to be always black and white--(no pun intended--perish the thought? ) Prof. Gates should not have been arrested,--there is absolutely no excuse for his arrest-- but his own conduct was not perfect.   And the police were responding to a neighborhood complaint.   Same thing here, in many ways.

Again the police were responding to a neighborhood complaint, it appears.   Perhaps Mudcatters would prefer to have the police ignore calls from neighbors about suspicious conduct.   In that case, the question arises as to what these Mudcatters think the police role in society should be.   Or maybe they think society has achieved such perfection that the police are no longer needed.

No, ID is not required all over the US to go walking--but if somebody calls in a complaint about your behavior, you'd best have it on you.   And if Dylan had embarked on an anti-police rant, he might have been arrested.   And the police would have again have been wrong, as they were in the Gates case.   Unless he advocated burning down the the police station or something similar and people gathered around to hear his wisdom. In which case he should be arrested. But he didn't.   So the police didn't. Maybe we can all learn something from this--which we should know already.

And it's not that blacks are treated differently from whites.   It's that sensible conduct is better than stupid conduct.

Surprise, surprise.