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Obama remark on Gates’ arrest angers cops
President reasserts view that black scholar should not have been cuffed
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Cops bristle at Obama's 'acting stupidly' remark July 23: President Barack Obama's remark that Cambridge, Mass., police were "acting stupidly" when Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates was arrested during a suspected break-in at his own house ignited an emotional response from the arresting officer, who said Thursday he would not apologize to Gates. NBC's Ron Allen reports. Nightly News |
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BOSTON - Many police officers across the country have a message for President Barack Obama: Get all the facts before criticizing one of our own.
Obama's public criticism that Cambridge officers "acted stupidly" when they arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. could make it harder for police to work with people of color, some officers said Thursday. It could even set back the progress in race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first African-American president, they said.
"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 represents 15,000 public safety officials around the country. "The president's alienated public safety officers across the country with his comments."
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama stood by his assertion that police did not need to arrest Gates after he had proved it was his own home.
'Acted stupidly' comment
Obama said in an interview with ABC television that he has "extraordinary respect" for the challenges and hardships that law enforcement officers face every day in their line of work. But at the same time he said he didn't think the arrest was necessary.
Obama said "cooler heads should have prevailed" in the incident. But he did not retract his initial statement that he thought police had "acted stupidly" and said such incidents "get elevated in ways that probably don't make much sense."
Asked on Friday whether Obama regretted commenting on the matter, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that the president probably would regret distracting the media with "obsessions."
Gibbs says Obama has "great respect" for police officers and understands what a hard job they have. He also says Obama has said most of what he's going to say on the matter.
Gates was arrested July 16 by Sgt. James Crowley, who was first to respond to the home the renowned black scholar rents from Harvard, after a woman reported seeing two black men trying to force open the front door. Gates said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed.
Police say he yelled at officer
He was charged with disorderly conduct after police said he yelled at the white officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after Crowley demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home. The charge was dropped Tuesday, but Gates has demanded an apology, calling his arrest a case of racial profiling.
Obama was asked about Gates' arrest at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care Wednesday night and began his response by saying Gates was a friend and he didn't have all the facts.
"But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry," Obama said. "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 — 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."
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Still supports president
Crowley said he still supports the president, who attended Harvard Law School in Cambridge and garnered 88 percent of the vote there in last year's presidential election.
"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.
Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas said Obama's comments hurt the agency.
"My reponse is that this department is deeply pained," Haas said at a news conference Thursday. "It takes its professional pride seriously."
Fellow law enforcement officers across the country sided with Crowley.
"To make the remark about 'stupidly' is maybe not the right adverb," said Santa Monica, Calif., police Sgt. Jay Trisler, who has been in law enforcement for 24 years. "When an incident occurs with a police department, we're not quick to judge."
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