Gates Devastated by Arrest, Says Daughter
The daughter of prominent black scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said her father's arrest last week at his Cambridge home has deeply saddened him.
"My father was so sad about this," Elizabeth Gates, told CBS' "The Early Show" Thursday. She said her father may have been "one of the last black men on earth who actually believed in the justice system."
Henry Gates' arrest came after a neighbor reported a possible burglary. The neighbor allegedly saw Gates force open front door and called the police. The arriving officers demanded that Gates show identification. Gates was arrested shortly afterward for disorderly conduct, a charge that was dropped Tuesday.
Gates said the officer, Sgt. James Crowley, walked into his home without permission and arrested him as the professor followed him to the porch, after repeatedly demanding the sergeant's name and badge number.
Elizabeth Gates, a writer for the Web Site The Daily Beast, described her father as a law abiding citizen upset over his treatment by the Cambridge police.
"My father has always been on the right side of the law," she said. Elizabeth Gates added, "he believes in following the rules."
The incident has drawn lots of attention the past few days with even President Obama weighing in on the case.
"Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof he was in own home," Mr. Obama said during a prime-time news conference that otherwise focused on the health care debate.
"What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately," Mr. Obama said. "That's just a fact."
As for the arresting officer, he defended his actions saying he followed procedure.
"There will be no apology," Crowley said outside his home Wednesday.
Gates, the 58-year-old director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, author of several books on race and host of a popular PBS program "African American Lives" will undoubtedly view race relations in a different way after the experience, his daughter said.
"It changes the tone."
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