Obama stokes racial passions, police anger

By Jason Szep – 7/23/09 10pm EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama plunged his presidency into a charged racial debate and set off a firestorm with police officers nationwide by siding with a prominent black scholar who accuses police of racism.

Saying he was unaware of "all the facts" but that police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "acted stupidly" in their arrest of Harvard's Henry Louis Gates, Obama whipped up emotions on both sides of an issue that threatens to open old wounds.

"The President has alienated public safety officers across the country by his comments," said David Holway, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, which represents 15,000 public security officials.

In a letter to Obama, he sought an apology. "You not only used poor judgment in your choice of words, you indicted all members of the Cambridge police department and public safety officers across the country."

Obama's comments, made at a news conference on Wednesday evening, marked his biggest foray into the hot-button issue of race since taking office in January and underline how racial issues remain very much alive despite advances embodied by his election as the first black U.S. president.

"Unfortunately, the racial divide is still there. It's still very raw. I think he was trying to let the majority of non-minority Americans have a sense of what it is like to a black or Latino," said Boston University professor of politics Thomas Whalen.

CROSSED A LINE?

But many in Massachusetts said he crossed a line by passing judgment on police while acknowledging he did not have all the facts. Online polls in Massachusetts show strong support for the white arresting officer. A police union and his department's chief also came out strongly in his defense.

"Based on what I have seen and heard from the other officers, he maintained a professional decorum during the course of the entire situation," Cambridge Police Department Commissioner Robert Haas told a news conference.

Gates, 58, director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African & African American Research, is a potent cultural force, listed as one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997 and friend of talk-show star Oprah Winfrey.

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