Dowd also said that "As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police." THAT's the best place to start. It tips us to the certainty that Dowd will never dig to the level where the really dangerous stuff is. Such as an analysis of race that concludes that race doesn't exist, biologically. Or that racism is based in class, and that class is all about power and property, specifically productive property. Those who own productive property want and need cheap labor. Free, if they can get it, and in many places even that is still available. Take the family farm or business as a simple example. So if you own productive property, you will craft and enforce (with money and guns) laws that maximize your power and minimize or eliminate the power of everyone else, especially workers. The race lie will help you do that. The cops will understand, consciously or not, that their interests lie mainly with you. They will help you.
This is the dictatorship we live in. It's called fascism for lack of a better term. And it's what we truly should be talking about, in the Gates context and a thousand others