Obama Remark Irks US Police!!

It seems the race issue will never be too far behind our man in the States Barack Obama. Only recently, his close friend, a Harvard University don, was arrested in his own house after reporting a burglary. Read the story below from the Associated Press and make up your own mind.

A white police sergeant who arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Thursday he's disappointed President Barack Obama said officers acted "stupidly," despite acknowledging he didn't know all the facts.

Sgt. James Crowley responded to Gates' home near Harvard University last week 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.

Gates was charged with disorderly conduct. The charge was dropped Tuesday, and Gates has since demanded an apology from Crowley.

Obama was asked about the arrest of Gates, who is his friend, at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care Wednesday night.

"I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry," Obama said. "Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three — 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."

In radio interviews Thursday morning, Crowley maintained he had done nothing wrong in arresting Gates.

"I support the president to a point, yes, I think it's disappointing that he waded into what should be a local issue and something that plays out here," Crowley told WEEI. "As he himself said ... he doesn't know all the facts."

In this photo taken by a neighbour Thursday July 16, 2009 Henry Louis Gates Jr. centre, the director of Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, is arrested at his home. Police say they were called to the home of Gates after a woman reported seeing a man try to pry open the front door.

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