News from Barack Obama
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Cambridge, Mass. (USA) - On July 16, a woman had phoned the Cambridge police to report she had seen two black men attempting to force entry into a home. 42 -year-old Sergeant James Crowley was in the area and was the first officer to respond to the call. After the witness informed him of her observations, Crowley saw a black man inside the home. This man revealed to be the resident of the house, the prominent black Harvard scholar professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (above), who refused to do so when Crowley made the request for Gates to step out onto the porch for identification, and insulted the officer. Consequently, Gates was arrested because of disorderly conduct and carted off to the jug for a few hours. Later on, Gates said the door of his home was jammed, and he and his driver were trying to force it open. Black men make up about 4 percent of the US population, but they account for 35 percent of its homicide victims, and the great majority of these black victims are killed by other black men.

Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts (mid) said that you ought to be able to raise your voice in your own house without risk of arrest. President Barack Obama (below), a friend of Gates, responded to a question about the case at a nationally televised news conference Wednesday, in saying: "But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry, - No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home". A multiracial group of police officers stood with the white officer who arrested Gates and asked Obama and Patrick to apologize for their comments called insulting. Both Obama and Patrick are black.