I saw this growing up in NOLA— it is the politics of payback—pure and simple. Gates was tired, pissed, frustrated and probably justified in that a neighbor called it in and did not recognize him trying to break into his own house. (of course Gates could have knocked on a neighbor’s door—if he lived in the kind of neighborhood where one takes the time to know the neighbors). And he head the bad sense to take it out on the poor cop responding to the call.

And if Gates was pitching a hissy on the lawn and waking the neighbors—that’s called disturbing the peace.