Gates’ case dropped, blame debate goes on

updated 9:59 p.m. ET July 22, 2009

BOSTON - The disorderly conduct case against renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. lasted less than week. The heated public debate over his arrest, and the role race played in it, promises to be much more enduring.

Gates was accused of "tumultuous" behavior toward a white police officer, who had responded to the home near Harvard University 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.

In a region with a tortured racial history, two overarching arguments have emerged about what happened next. Police supporters charge that Gates — director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research — was responsible for his own arrest by overreacting. Those sympathetic to Gates counter that the white officer should have diffused the situation and left the home as soon as he established Gates was the resident, not a burglar.

Police offered no apology
The charge was dropped Tuesday, with a statement from the city of Cambridge calling the incident last Thursday "regrettable and unfortunate." Police offered no apology, and the white police sergeant who arrested Gates insisted he won't apologize.

But President Barack Obama said Wednesday during a White House press conference that police had "acted stupidly," and there was plenty of blame being spread around by the public, through talk shows, blogs, newspaper online forums and watercooler chats. Even the hosts of a sports radio show in Boston spent much of Wednesday morning faulting Gates.

Thousands of readers posted comments over the past few days on the Web sites of Boston's two major newspapers.

On The Boston Globe site, one reader accused Gates of playing the race card, demanding an apology to the police and the public for his erratic behavior. Another defended him, charging that the incident never would have happened if it were not for his race.

Officers responded to the home Gates rents from Harvard after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks" trying to force open the front door, according to a police report. Gates, who had returned from a trip overseas with a driver, said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed. He was inside, calling the company that manages the property, when police arrived.

Exactly what happened then between Gates and the Cambridge officer, Sgt. James Crowley, is in dispute.

'Outraged' by the arrest
Police say the 58-year-old Gates yelled at the officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after the officer demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home. Gates denies that he yelled at the officer, other than to repeatedly ask his name and badge number, and says he readily turned over his driver's license and Harvard ID to prove his residence and identity.

Gates said he was "outraged" by the arrest and has demanded an apology. He said he wants to use the experience to help make a documentary about racial profiling in the United States.

He has repeatedly declined to discuss the arrest with The Associated Press, saying in an e-mail Wednesday: "I am all done on this cycle. I will give you a call." Crowley has not responded to repeated attempts for comment, but he told WCVB-TV off-camera that he would not apologize.

"There are not many certainties in life, but it is for certain that Sgt. Crowley will not be apologizing," Crowley said.

Cambridge police and the police officers' union have declined comment.

Gates' supporters cite Boston's history as a city plagued by racism as an underlying reason why this could still happen to an esteemed scholar, at midday, in his own home.

"That stain on this city — as far as persons of color are concerned — is a real one," television and radio commentator Callie Crossley said. "Now you're talking about the town of Charles Stuart, when black men were stopped indiscriminately."

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