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Cop accused of profiling taught classes against it

11-year-veteran called principled, 'upstanding man'

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Gates Arrest Report

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 24, 2009

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The white police sergeant accused of racial profiling after he arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his home was hand-picked by a black police commissioner to teach recruits about avoiding racial profiling.

Friends and fellow officers -- black and white -- say that Sgt. James Crowley is a principled cop and family man who is being unfairly described as racist.

"If people are looking for a guy who's abusive or arrogant, they got the wrong guy," said Andy Meyer of Natick, who has vacationed with Crowley, has coached youth sports with him and is his teammate on a men's softball team. "This is not a racist, rogue cop. This is a fine, upstanding man. And if every cop in the world were like him, it would be a better place."

For five of the past six years, Crowley also has volunteered alongside a black colleague in teaching 60 cadets a year about how to avoid targeting suspects merely because of their race, and how to respond to an array of scenarios that they might encounter on the beat. Thomas Fleming, the director of the Lowell Police Academy, said that Crowley was asked by Ronny Watson, the former police commissioner of Lowell and who is black, to be an instructor.

Gates accused Crowley, an 11-year department veteran, of being an unyielding, race-baiting authoritarian after Crowley arrested and charged him with disorderly conduct last week.

Crowley confronted Gates in his home after a woman passing by summoned police for a possible burglary.

Crowley said he arrested Gates after Gates repeatedly accused him of racism and made derogatory remarks about his mother, allegations that Gates challenges. Gates has labeled Crowley a "rogue cop," demanded an apology and said he may sue the police department.

On Wednesday, President Obama elevated the dispute when he said that Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" during the encounter.

Crowley didn't immediately return a phone message left by The Associated Press yesterday.He has said he has no reason to apologize, and yesterday, he told a radio station that Obama went too far.

"I support the president of the United States 110 percent," Crowley told WBZ-AM. "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 added: "I guess a friend of mine would support my position, too."

Later in the day, Obama himself stepped back, telling ABC News, "From what I can tell, the sergeant who was involved is an outstanding police officer, but my suspicion is probably that it would have been better if cooler heads had prevailed."

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas, in his first public comments on the arrest, said yesterday that Crowley is a decorated officer who followed procedure.

The department is putting together an independent panel to review the arrest, but Haas said he did not think that the whole story had been told.

But Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, once the top civil-rights official in the Clinton administration and now, like Obama, the first black to hold his job, labeled the arrest "every black man's nightmare."

Patrick told reporters: "You ought to be able to raise your voice in your own house without risk of arrest."

Some police officers said yesterday that Obama's public criticism of the arrest could make it harder for police to work with people of color.

The comments could even set back the progress in race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first black president, they said.

"What we don't need is public-safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves," said David Holway, the 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."

Obama's comments could diminish work done by law enforcement to deal with racial issues, said James Preston, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Florida State Lodge.

"By reducing all contact between law enforcement and the public to the color of their skin or ethnicity is, in fact, counterproductive to improving relationships," Preston said. "To make such an off-handed comment about a subject without benefit of the facts, in such a public forum, hurts police/community relations and is a setback to all of the years of progress."

Other officers, however, credited Obama with using Gates' arrest to highlight the ongoing national problem of racial profiling.

"It wouldn't make any difference whether it was Barack Obama or John McCain. It's appropriate that the leader of this country should still recognize there are still issues in this country in regards to race," said Lt. Charles Wilson, the chairman of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers Inc. and a 38-year veteran of law enforcement.