D.
Gates Police Confrontation Ends With Charge Dropped
July 21 (Bloomberg) -- Police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dropped a disorderly conduct charge against Harvard University African American studies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., calling his arrest last week
“regrettable and unfortunate.”
“This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department,” said a statement today issued jointly by Gates, the police, the city of Cambridge and the Middlesex County district attorney. “All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances.”
Gates, 58, director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African & African American Research, was handcuffed and hauled away in a police car July 16 at 12:44 p.m. in front of his home in Cambridge, where Harvard is located, according to a police report. Police responded after a woman caller reported a man trying to force open the door of the Ware Street home with his shoulder, according to Officer Carlos Figueroa’s arrest report.
With stories appearing in The Times of London and newspapers across the U.S., the arrest drew international attention and rekindled some Harvard faculty members’ concern that police may be singling out black men for harassment, said S. Allen Counter, a university neuroscientist who was stopped by Harvard’s campus police in 2004. A panel commissioned by university President Drew Faust earlier this year said the school should create an outside ombudsman to review how its officers interact with students, faculty and staff.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=anupUHzw.F0Y
Let's see the hands of all the knuckleheads who believe that a department will call the proper actions of one of its officers "regrettable and unfortunate."