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Three men, beer and an explosive issue
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-29 08:26

WASHINGTON: The professor, the policeman and the president are ready to share a beer - and maybe a few thoughts about race and law enforcement in the US.

The gathering set for tomorrow evening may help President Barack Obama write a sudsy but happy ending to an arrest that triggered a fierce debate over race relations and briefly knocked him off his stride.

Three men, beer and an explosive issue

From left: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., President Barack Obama and Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department. [Agencies] Three men, beer and an explosive issue

An administration official said on Monday that Obama is hosting the two main characters in the unlikely Boston-area drama that dominated several news cycles last week: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public.

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Crowley, who is white, arrested Gates, who is black, after an investigation into a suspected burglary found no burglars but escalated into a heated exchange between the men at Gates' home. When Obama said last Wednesday that the police had "acted stupidly," the national debate over racial profiling become so fierce that the president had to intercede again on Friday to get the public's attention back to his health care agenda.

Thus a brief afternoon encounter turn into an ardently debated conflict in which other Americans drew their own conclusions about racial bias, proper deference to police and a president's appropriate role in a local law enforcement matter.

Obama phoned Crowley, who suggested the three men sit down for a beer at the White House. The president said he liked the idea, and Gates reportedly concurred when Obama phoned him next.

But what to serve? Crowley apparently likes Blue Moon beer. Gates favors Red Stripe or Beck's. Don't look for Obama to order a similar high-priced brand, however.

"The president had a Budweiser at the All-Star Game," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, hinting at Obama's likely choice.

Ah, yes, the middle-class, mid-priced working man's brew, for a president who once drew snickers for musing about arugula in middle-America Iowa.

The meeting with Gates and Crowley in the planning stages, Gibbs said the president was hoping for "an increased dialogue between both of the individuals here and their representation of both law enforcement and the minority community."

911 call recordings out

The caller who reported two men possibly breaking into the home of Gates did not describe their race, acknowledged they might just be having a hard time with the door and said she saw two suitcases on the porch.

Cambridge police on Monday released the telephone recording and radio transmissions from the scene in an effort to show they had nothing to hide, but the tapes raised new questions about how and why the situation escalated.

Gates, returning from a trip to China, and his driver had forced their way through the front door because it was jammed, and the charge was later dropped.

In her call to emergency dispatchers, Lucia Whalen, who works at the Harvard alumni magazine, repeatedly tells the operator she is not sure what is happening.

Speaking calmly, she tells the operator that she was stopped by an elderly woman who told her she noticed two men trying to get into a house. Whalen initially says she saw two men pushing on the door, but later says one of the men entered the home and she didn't get a good look at him. She says she noticed two suitcases.

"I don't know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key. But I did notice they used their shoulder to try to barge in and they got in. I don't know if they had a key or not, 'cause I couldn't see from my angle," Whalen says.

In his written report, Crowley said Gates became angry when he told him he was investigating a report of a break-in, then yelled at him and called him a racist.

In a radio communication with a dispatcher, also released on Monday, Crowley said Gates was not cooperating.

"I'm up with a gentleman, says he resides here, but was uncooperative, but keep the cars coming," Crowley said.

Another voice can be heard in the background of the transmission, but it is unintelligible and unclear if it is Gates.

AP