President Obama plunged his administration into a racially charged controversy yesterday by again siding with a black Harvard scholar who accused police of racism.
LOWRY: PREZ AND PROF SHOULD HAVE HELD THEIR FIRE
Obama’s original comment Wednesday that cops acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates at his home in Cambridge, Mass., marked the president’s biggest foray into the hot-button issue of race since taking office — and infuriated law enforcement around the country.
At a news conference on health care, the president was asked a question about the professor’s arrest. He acknowledged that Gates was a friend — and suggested police were at fault.
“I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they [Gates and his driver] were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately,” Obama said.
He spoke out again yesterday, telling ABC News he was “surprised” by the angry reaction to his comments.
“I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you don’t need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who’s in his own home,” he said.
But Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley, the white cop who busted Gates, told Boston radio station WBZ, “I think he was way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts,”
Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas said the president’s comments offended the agency.
“My response is that this department is deeply pained,” he said. “It takes its professional pride seriously.”
And a lawyer for the Cambridge Superior Officers Association union told ABC that Obama was “dead wrong to malign this police officer, specifically, and the department, in general.”
That view was echoed by cops across the country.
“What we don’t need is public-safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves,” said David Holway, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, which has 15,000 members.
Police say Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct for being uncooperative, refusing initially to provide identification, and “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior” by repeatedly shouting at a cop, accusing him of bias in front of people gathered in front of his house.
Haas staunchly defended Crowley as having followed “proper protocol” that was “consistent with training” during the arrest.
Yet Gates was within his rights to refuse to come out of his house and provide ID, according to a Slate.com report, which cited information from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Police cannot force a person to ID himself or leave his house without probable cause, the ACLU maintains. And if an officer detains the person, then the officer must abide by his civil rights — including the Miranda warnings. The report also stated that political speech is excluded from disorderly conduct, and that alleging racial bias and protesting an arrest represent core political speech.
The commissioner did not respond to a call for comment last night. Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons said she’ll meet with Haas to make sure the scenario that led to Gates’ arrest doesn’t happen again.
“This suggests that something happened that should not have happened,” she told CNN’s “American Morning.”
“This can’t happen again in Cambridge.”
In other developments in the case:
* It emerged that Crowley was an instructor in a racial-profiling course at the police academy and gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in 1993 to black Boston Celtic star Reggie Lewis, who died after collapsing on the court during off-season practice.
* Even as the president stood by his remarks in a TV interview last night, he called Crowley an “outstanding” cop.
* Entertainer Bill Cosby said Obama blew it by weighing in on Gates’ arrest.
“I was shocked to hear the president making this kind of statement,” Cosby told Boston station WZLX. Crowley has taught the racial profiling class for five years at the Lowell, Mass., police academy after being handpicked for the job by former Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black.
“I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer,” said academy director Thomas Fleming.
Crowley had responded to a report of a burglary at Gates’ home — which had previously been broken into — near Harvard and ended up charging him with disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, the racial divide is still there,” said Boston University professor of politics Thomas Whalen. “It’s still very raw.
“I think [Obama] was trying to let the majority of nonminority Americans have a sense of what it is like to a black or Latino.”
Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, tried to lessen the impact of the president’s remarks, saying the chief executive wasn’t calling the arresting officer stupid.
“He was denoting that, at a certain point, the situation got out of hand, and I think all sides understand that,” he said.
With Post Wire Services