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Posted July 24, 2009

National

Sergeant Who Arrested

Professor Defends Actions

STEVEN SENNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sgt.. James Crowley said Thursday that Professor Gates had been oddly belligerent from the beginning of their encounter.

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

BOSTON — The police sergeant whom President Obama accused of acting “stupidly” in arresting a prominent black Harvard professor offered his own account of the incident on Thursday, adding a new dimension to a drama that has transfixed the nation.

The arrest of the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was dominating talk shows and dinner conversations even before Mr. Obama discussed it on Wednesday at his news conference. But the president’s comments seemed to further polarize the national debate over whether the sergeant, James Crowley, who is white, was right to arrest Professor Gates for disorderly conduct while investigating a possible break-in at the professor’s home in Cambridge, Mass.

B. CARTER DEMOTIX IMAGES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS.

A photo taken by a neighbor of the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Cambridge, Mass.

Police unions and other law enforcement groups lined up behind Sergeant Crowley on Thursday, calling his actions justified, while the Congressional Black Caucus defended Mr. Obama’s remarks and called on Congress to address the issue of racial profiling.

Commissioner Robert C. Haas of the Cambridge Police Department said he would convene a panel to investigate the incident, but added that his officers were “deeply pained” by Mr. Obama’s comments and that Sergeant Crowley had followed protocol.

At heart, the dispute between Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley centers on two things: which one of them treated the other rudely and whether they properly identified themselves. Professor Gates, 58, says the sergeant repeatedly refused to reveal his name or badge number; Sergeant Crowley, 42, says the professor initially refused to provide identification, then produced only his Harvard ID card, which included no address, to prove he lived in the house.

Sergeant Crowley, a native of Cambridge, told a local sports radio station on Thursday that Mr. Obama “didn’t know all the facts” and that Professor Gates — a prolific scholar of African-American history and one of the nation’s leading black intellectuals — had been oddly belligerent from the start of their encounter on July 16.

“From the time he opened the door it seemed that he was very upset, very put off that I was there in the first place,” Sergeant Crowley told the station, WEEI. “Not just what he said, but the tone in which he said it, just seemed very peculiar — even more so now that I know how educated he is.”

Sergeant Crowley’s visit to the professor’s yellow wood frame home near Harvard Square was prompted by a 911 call from a passer-by who reported two black men trying to force open the front door. The men were in fact Professor Gates, just home from a trip to China, and his cab driver; Professor Gates said earlier this week that his door was jammed and he had asked the driver for help shoving it open.

After getting in and calling Harvard’s maintenance department to come fix the door, Professor Gates said, he saw Sergeant Crowley on his porch. The sergeant was disrespectful from the beginning, the professor said, asking him to step outside without explanation and demanding identification while refusing to provide his own.

But Sergeant Crowley said Thursday that he was only protecting himself when he asked Professor Gates, whom he did not recognize, to come out and identify himself. Daytime break-ins are not unheard of in the neighborhood, he said.

Sergeant Crowley described the woman who reported the possible break-in — who works at Harvard Magazine, on Professor Gates’s street — as “reliable,” and said that while the professor did not “look like somebody who would break into a house,” his tone was troubling.

In the police report he filed, Sergeant Crowley said Professor Gates had refused to step outside and, when told the sergeant was investigating a possible break-in, said, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?” According to the report, Professor Gates also accused the sergeant of being racist and yelled that he “wasn’t someone to mess with.” Sergeant Crowley said he tried to identify himself several times but the professor was shouting too loudly to hear.

“He was arrested after following me outside the house,” Sergeant Crowley said on the radio, “continuing the tirade even after being warned multiple times — probably a few more times than the average person would have gotten. He was cautioned in the house, ‘Calm down, lower your voice.’ ” He added, “The professor at any point in time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or by going back in the house.”

But in an e-mail message on Thursday, Professor Gates rebutted the sergeant’s description of his behavior and said he had “used no racial slurs,” “employed no profanity” and “made no threats.”

“I most certainly don’t consider myself above the law, and am profoundly grateful for all of the services performed by the police,” he wrote. ”But I do not believe that standing up for my rights as a citizen should be against the law.”

Asked about the sergeant’s repeated refusal to apologize for the arrest, Professor Gates wrote: “I think that Sergeant Crowley has backed himself in a very tight corner, and I think that is most unfortunate. My offer to listen to a heartfelt and credible apology is a sincere one, and continues to stand.”

The president commented on the matter again Thursday. In an interview with ABC News that was to be broadcast on “Nightline,” Mr. Obama said he was “surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement because I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don’t need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who’s in his own home.”

He said that he had heard Sergeant Crowley was an “outstanding police officer,” but added that with all that is going on in the country, “it doesn’t make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he’s not causing a serious disturbance.”

The police dropped disorderly conduct charges against Professor Gates on Tuesday.

Joseph Johnson, the investigator for the Cambridge Police Review and Advisory Board, said the board’s members would meet next week to decide whether to investigate the incident. Mr. Johnson said the board had not received any complaints about Sergeant Crowley in the last year, and that it was still trying to determine whether he had been the subject of earlier complaints.

Commissioner Haas said the panel he planned to convene would perhaps “figure out how we can do things in a better way so we can de-escalate situations.” But he described Sergeant Crowley, who joined the department in 1998, as “a stalwart member” of the police force. “I don’t consider him a rogue cop in any way,” he said, later adding,

“I don’t believe that Sergeant Crowley acted with any racial motivation at all.”

Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard professor who is acting as Professor Gates’s lawyer, said he had looked into Sergeant Crowley’s professional record but would not say whether he had found anything troubling.

Mr. Ogletree added that Professor Gates had not ruled out a lawsuit, but that for now, he was focusing on how to keep the country talking about issues of race and law enforcement.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, National, of Friday, July 24, 2009.

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