Obama: Cambridge Police "Acted Stupidly" in Arrest of Harvard Scholar Henry Louis Gates

by via Democracy Now

Thu, Jul 23, 2009 7:26AM

Thursday, July 23, 2009 :In his fourth prime-time White House news conference, President Obama was asked about last week's arrest of the famed African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates inside his own home last week by a white police officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts who was responding to a report of a possible burglary. Obama criticized the arrest, placing it in context of "a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

President Obama held his fourth prime-time news conference last night and spent much of the hour arguing in defense of his plan to reform the nation’s healthcare system. In a moment we will hear Obama discuss why the plan before Congress will still leave some Americans uninsured, but first we turn to the question that ended the press conference. It dealt with the famed African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates, who was arrested inside his own home last week by a white police officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts who was responding to a report of a possible burglary.

President Barack Hussein Obama, speaking at the White House.

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For more information: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/23/obam...

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