[chris]

A 911 recording Cambridge, Massachusetts, police released July 27, 2009, ran counter to Sgt. James Crowley's report on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his own home on Ware Street.

The release, which also included officers' radio traffic, came eleven days after Crowley took the scholar, then 58, into custody. On the call, Lucia Whalen, an employee of Harvard Magazine whose offices sit near the house, told a Cambridge dispatcher she had seen two men on a porch and that one appeared to be forcing the door, but she said more than once that she was not sure a crime was happening. "I don't know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key," she said, according to the released audio.

Race came up once on the call, when the dispatcher asked whether the men were white, black or Hispanic. "Well, there are two larger men. One looked kind of Hispanic, I'm not really sure, and the other one entered and I didn't see what he looked like at all," Whalen answered.

Crowley's report said Whalen spoke with him outside the house and told him she had seen "what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch." Whalen denied giving that description at a news conference two days after the tapes were made public, saying the only words between them were her telling him she was the caller and his telling her to stay where she was. She said people who had never heard the recording called her a racist, and that she had tried to be careful and honest with her words.

The radio traffic captured Crowley reporting that the man inside said he lived there and had identification, describing him as uncooperative, and asking dispatchers to keep cars coming to the address along with Harvard University police.

Gates was charged with disorderly conduct. The Middlesex County district attorney's office dropped the charge on July 21, 2009, and the city called the arrest regrettable. President Barack Obama, who had said the Cambridge police "acted stupidly," invited both men to the White House, where they met with him and Vice President Joe Biden on July 30.

A panel appointed by the city, the Cambridge Review Committee, reported on June 30, 2010, that the confrontation had been avoidable. Its report, "Missed Opportunities, Shared Responsibilities," said Crowley and Gates each passed up chances to defuse the encounter.