The Cambridge, Ma., police commissioner has strongly defended the actions of the sergeant who arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., says the Boston Globe. At the same time, Commissioner Robert Haas announced that an independent panel will review the confrontation between the black professor and the white officer, an incident President Obama criticized for a second straight day.
Officer James Crowley “tried to move away from the situation, and, when he wasn't successful, he used arrest as a last resort,'' Haas said. “I do not believe his actions were in any way racially motivated.” International Association of Chiefs of Police President Russell Laine said he was “disappointed” at Obama’s criticism of Crowley and said the case showed the need for a National Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice that the IACP has been advocating.