DON'T PLAY THE DOZENS WITH THE MAN:

Officer Tells His Side of The Story in Gates Arrest (Krissah Thompson and Cheryl W. Thompson, 7/24/09, Washington Post)

Sgt. James Crowley said Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was combative from the moment the officer arrived at his house last week to respond to a call about a possible burglary. As the confrontation escalated, Crowley said he warned Gates that he risked arrest.

"The second warning was with me holding a set of handcuffs in my hands -- something I really didn't want to do," Crowley said in a radio interview. "The professor at any time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or going back inside his house." [...]

When Crowley arrived and questioned whether Gates lived in the home, the 58-year-old academic became upset, eventually demanding the officer's name and badge number so he could file a complaint. Crowley said Gates referred to Crowley's mother as a way of showing his displeasure.

When the officer repeatedly asked Gates to speak with him outside, the professor responded, "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside," Crowley wrote in a police report.

"I'm still just amazed that somebody of his level of intelligence could stoop to such a level, and berate me, accuse me of being a racist or racial profiling," Crowley said in a radio interview Thursday with WEEI-AM. "And then speaking about my mother, it's just -- it's beyond words."

Crowley, 42, said that, when he first saw Gates, in "my mind, I'm thinking, 'He does not look like someone who would break into the house.' " At the same time, however, "from the time that he opened the door, it seemed that he was very upset, very unhappy that I was there."

Of Obama, Crowley said in an interview with Boston's WBZ-AM: "I support the president of the United States 110 percent. I think he's way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts as he himself stated before he made that comment."