Care, this is stupid.
How else is Officer Crowley supposed to determine if Gates is who he claims to be?
Take his word for it???
just an fyi i come from an era, where we did not have id's with pics on them or any kind of id at all that was carried on us if you didn't drive....my mother in law was 65 before she got her first id, a drivers license....that's when she learned how to drive....65!!!!
i begin with this, because the answer to your question seems very easy to me....
all he had to do, is take the name mr gates gave him and run it through their computers to see if a mr gates lived at the address on ware street...
THE ROBBER would NOT have opened the door for the uniformed police officer....
The robber would not have traversed the house to his telephone to call his boss at harvard university....
his harvard id did not have an address on it, i looked it up on the internet...so when he called in the name from the id, there was NO address either, so what could he have gathered from that....? just a name missourian.....right?
WITHIN 1 MINUTE of crowley knocking on the door of mr gates to when officer crowley placed the call to dispatch giving them mr. gates' full name and for them to call harvard university police because he was a professor there.....
1 MINUTE ELAPSED before crowley had the gates id in hand....according to the police recordings released....that doesn't seem uncooperative to me, does it to you? i mean honestly?
i couldn't have found my own drivers licence in that short of a time...!!!! but i don't work anymore so it's not like i keep my purse at breast....but still!
so again, to answer your question, by law we only have to identify ourselves by name to the police in 12 states only, massachusetts is not one of them....
my era believes the police are the GOVERNMENT and the government has no right to question us or demand anything from us,
unless they legally have probable cause to believe we are committing a crime....
such is not the case with mr gates....he was not suspect....no one even established any crime and there were no signs of a crime....story over....the cop leaves....period.
otherwise, any cop can have any person call in a possible break in of any residence so they can send cops to insist on your id, when you are absolutely doing nothing wrong and are in your own home....?
what i am trying to say, is what is to stop cops who have been watching someone, setting that person up, for them to enter his home without warrant, by having someone call in a fake B and E? or an angry neighbor calling it in....?
the cop has to go to the scene, i understand, but the cop HAS TO USE HIS JUDGMENT in assessing the situation looking for signs to confirm the witness's concern or debunk it in the first few seconds....Crowley did this in less than 60 seconds....he is
''led'' to believe that mr gates lives there....according to his call in to dispatch....he should have never entered the home and left right then....that is, after he showed gates his official state identification card that gates asked for...which is REQUIRED under massachusetts law in this kind of situation... imo.