Police Commissioner Robert Haas speaks to reporters at Cambridge, Mass., Police headquarters,Thursday, July 23, 2009, about the actions of Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley, who was criticized by President Barack Obama after arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Massachusetts home. Also pictured is Cambridge Sgt. James DeFrancesco. |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is standing by his assertion that police did not need to arrest a Harvard scholar who was trying to get into his own home.
Obama said in an interview with ABC that he has "extraordinary respect" for the challenges and hardships that law enforcement officers face every day in their line of work. But at the same time he said he didn't think it was necessary to arrest Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Obama said "cooler heads should have prevailed" in the incident. But he did not retract his initial statement that he thought police had "acted stupidly" and said such incidents "get elevated in ways that probably don't make much sense."