Was arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. an act of racism?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Colleagues of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard's most prominent scholar of African-American history, are accusing the police here of racism after he was arrested at his home last week by an officer investigating a report of a robbery in progress.

Gates, who has taught at Harvard for nearly two decades, arrived home Thursday from a trip to China to find his front door jammed, said Charles Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard who is representing him.

He forced the door open with the help of his cabdriver, Ogletree said, and had been inside for a few minutes when Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department appeared at his door and asked him to step outside.

Gates, 58, refused to do so, Ogletree said. From that point, the account of the professor and the police began to differ.

According to his lawyer, Gates told the sergeant that he lived there and showed his Massachusetts driver's license and his Harvard identification card, but Crowley still did not seem to believe that Gates lived in the home, a few blocks from Harvard Square. At that point, his lawyer said, Gates grew frustrated and asked for the officer's name and badge number.

According to the police report, Gates initially refused to show identification.

In the report, Crowley said a white female caller had notified the police around 12:45 p.m. of seeing two black men on the porch of the home, at 17 Ware St. The caller was suspicious after seeing one of the men "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry," according to the report.

A spokesman for the Cambridge Police Department did not return a call seeking comment. But in the report, Crowley said that as he told Gates he was investigating a possible break-in, Gates exclaimed, "Why, because I'm a black man in America?" and accused the sergeant of racism.

"While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence," Crowley wrote in the report, "I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me."

Gates ultimately followed him outside, the report said, and kept yelling at him despite the sergeant's warning "that he was becoming disorderly." Crowley then arrested and handcuffed him.

Gates was held at police headquarters for several hours before being released on his own recognizance.

"He is cooperating now with the city to resolve this matter as soon as possible," Ogletree said, adding that Gates wanted the charges against him dismissed.

Ogletree said that Gates had "never touched" Crowley, but did "express his frustration at being subjected to the threat of arrest in his own home."

He would not say whether Gates believed he had been the victim of racial profiling. But Dr. S. Allen Counter, a black professor at Harvard Medical School, said he and a number of his university colleagues were "deeply disturbed about the actions of the Cambridge police."

"My colleagues and I have asked the question of whether this kind of egregious act would have happened had Professor Gates been a white professor," said Counter, who said he had talked to Gates since the arrest. "We think that it has to be investigated, and we are deeply saddened by what happened."