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Details About 911 Call in Cambridge Emerge
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 27, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — The woman who called the Cambridge police on July 16 about a possible break-in at the home of Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard scholar who was arrested in his home when the police went to the scene, told the police dispatcher several times during the call that the men she saw on the front porch had luggage with them and might simply have had trouble with the front door.
In the recording of the call to 911, released Monday, the caller, Lucia Whalen, is heard saying that she and another neighbor saw two men pressing on the door of the yellow wood-frame home, but that she was unsure whether the men were trying to break in. Ms. Whalen said she saw two suitcases on the porch.
“I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key,” Ms. Whalen said. “But I did notice they used their shoulder to try to barge in, and they got in. I don’t know if they had a key or not, ’cause I couldn’t see from my angle.”
Ms. Whalen did not mention the race of the men she saw until pressed by the dispatcher to describe them. At that point, she said that one of the men may have been Hispanic and that she could not describe the other.
Ms. Whalen was vilified by some bloggers and other commentators last week after it was incorrectly reported that she had reported two black men trying to break into a home.
A recording of the radio transmissions between police dispatchers and the Cambridge police officer who went to the scene was also released on Monday. In it, the officer, Sgt. James M. Crowley, is heard telling dispatchers that Professor Gates was being uncooperative and to “keep the cars coming.”
Another voice can be heard in the background of the transmission, but it is unintelligible. It was not clear whether the voice belonged to Professor Gates or someone else.
Cambridge police released the recordings on Monday after more than a week of controversy over the arrest of Professor Gates on a charge of disorderly conduct. The charge was dropped, but the encounter sparked a national debate about racial profiling.
Professor Gates’s supporters called his arrest by Sergeant Crowley an outrageous act of racial profiling. Sergeant Crowley’s supporters say that Professor Gates was arrested because he was belligerent and that race was not a factor.
Interest in the case intensified when President Obama said in a news conference last week that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates in his home after he had shown the officer identification. Mr. Obama later tried to quell the uproar about his comments and invited both Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley to the White House for a beer, a meeting that could happen this week.
In the radio transmissions, Sergeant Crowley is heard telling a dispatcher that he is at the home where the possible break-in was reported.
“I’m up with a gentleman, says he resides here, but was uncooperative, but keep the cars coming,” the sergeant said.
In his written police report, Sergeant Crowley said Professor Gates became angry when the sergeant told him he was investigating a report of a break-in, then yelled at him and called him a racist.
nytimes.com |
