The Smoking Gun has the Cambridge Police Department report.
The media spin on this story by the Washington Post is interesting as it said about his house:
Gates was arrested outside his house in Cambridge, Mass., after a neighbor reported seeing two black men in the middle-class, predominantly white area pushing against the front door.Gates lives on Ware Street. I went to school in Boston and spent a lot of time hanging around Cambridge and I know Ware Street. Here is Ware Street:
He Teaches Racial Profiling
The white police sergeant criticized by President Barack Obama for arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Massachusetts home is a police academy expert on racial profiling.
Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class on racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.
"I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy," Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The course, called "Racial Profiling," teaches about different cultures that officers could encounter in their community "and how you don't want to single people out because of their ethnic background or the culture they come from," Fleming said.
In reading the police report, and understanding that Officer Crowley is an expert in racial profiling, I have to say that President Obama's statement that [the police] "acted stupidly" was an accurate assessment. Surely, from the first second of the encounter he should have been fully aware that Gates considered the situation a racial incident. The moment he was convinced that the man was in his own house he should have apologized to him and left. Instead, his "gotta take control, gotta be respected" police instinct led him to elevate a situation that could have been diffused. Mr. Gates was accusing him of being a racist police officer. There were other non-white officers present, and he could have easily taken himself out of the incident by turning it over to another. I don't believe it was a case of racial profiling, but I do believe he acted foolishly.
I can empathize with the man... after all from his perspective he was in his own house doing nothing wrong. It is true that white folks have little concept of what black men in America are frequently subjected to, intentional and otherwise.
I am a middle-class, middle aged, white guy who is opposed to just about everything else that Obama has done in office.
@ Jon McDonald
"Reverse-discrimination" at the highest level?
Obama was very clear, because he didn't know the facts, that he wasn't commenting on any racial aspects of the case when he said infamously "The Cambridge Police acted stupidly".
Rather, he was remarking on a man (of any race) being arrested for "disorderly conduct" from his own home, in a situation beginning with an erroneous police tip.
That you would take Obama's comments and instantly categorize it as "reverse-discrimination" is very disappointing and I would ask you follow your own advice.
Obama 'Acted Stupidly' In New Judicial Role
"I don't know the facts"
"The Cambridge Police acted stupidly..."
Very, very disappointed in Obama. Reverse-discrimination at the highest level. Let's wait and hear the facts, before we condemn any person, of any race.