Report: Charges Dropped Against Henry Louis Gates
CNN is reporting that the Cambridge Police Department has dropped all charges against Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, who was arrested last week outside his home for disorderly conduct.
A neighbor snapped this photo of Gates in handcuffs during the arrest. Interestingly, one of the officers on the scene was black.
UPDATE: It's official. The charge has been dropped, and the city of Cambridge released a statement calling Gates' arrest "regrettable and unfortunate." That should have been clear on Thursday of last week. Why it took until today, a full four days after the arrest, for Cambridge to do the right thing remains a mystery to us. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the press picked up on it yesterday?
Gates had been spotted by a white neighbor forcing his front door open on Thursday because the lock was broken. She called 911 assuming that he was breaking in. When the cops arrived, Gates understandably raised a fuss about racism, and was inexplicably jailed for four hours.
The Cambridge Police Department refused to confirm or deny the report.