Obama’s ‘stupid’ remark annoys police sergeant

A WHITE police sergeant who arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jnr said yesterday he’s disappointed President Barack Obama said officers acted “stupidly,” despite acknowledging he didn’t know all the facts.

Sgt James Crowley responded to Gates’ home near Harvard University last week to investigate a report of a burglary and demanded Gates show him identification. Police say Gates at first refused and accused the officer of racism. Gates was charged with disorderly conduct.

The charge was dropped on Tuesday, and Gates has since demanded an apology from Crowley.

Obama was asked about the arrest of Gates, who is his friend, at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care last Wednesday night.

“I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry,” Obama said. “Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three — what I think we know, separate and apart from this incident— is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.”

In interviews yesterday, Crowley maintained he had done nothing wrong in arresting Gates.

“I support the president of the United States 110%. I think he was way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts as he himself stated before he made that comment,” Crowley told WBZ-AM. “I guess a friend of mine would support my position, too.”

Gates has said he was “outraged” by the arrest.

He said the white officer walked into his home without his permission and only arrested him as the professor followed him to the porch, repeatedly demanding the sergeant’s name and badge number because he was unhappy over his treatment.

“This isn’t about me; this is about the vulnerability of black men in America,” Gates said.

He said the incident made him realise how vulnerable poor people and minorities are “to capricious forces like a rogue policeman, and this man clearly was a rogue policeman.”

Crowley, 42, said he won’t apologise and his union has given him “full and unqualified” support.

The report says Crowley asked Gates to talk outside, to which he responded “Yeah, I’ll speak with your mama outside”.