In Massachusetts, the Cambridge police officer who arrested the leading African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., last week is refusing to apologize. Gates was detained in his home after he forced his way in to overcome a jammed front door. A neighbor had called police, thinking Gates was a robber. Gates reportedly presented his proof of residence and said, “This is what happens to black men in America.” He was then handcuffed and taken into custody. Cambridge police have dropped a disorderly conduct charge, but the officer, Sergeant James Crowley, has rejected Gates’s call for an apology. On Thursday, Crowley said that Gates had provoked him and that an apology would “never come.” Gates, meanwhile, appeared on CNN, where he said the experience had sensitized him to the vulnerability of people of color to racial profiling.

Henry Louis Gates: “But what it made me realize was how vulnerable all black men are, how vulnerable all people of color are, and all poor people, to capricious forces like a rogue policeman. And this man clearly was a rogue policeman.”

The Cambridge Police Department has backed Crowley’s refusal to apologize and criticized President Obama for saying they had “acted stupidly.” Obama responded Thursday in an interview with ABC News.

President Obama: “I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement, because I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary, that you probably don’t need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who’s in his own home.”