Last week’s comments by President Obama completely derailed his White House press conference on healthcare. Rahm Emanuel must have been pulling his hair out watching this train wreck in motion; every politician knows that you never allow a potentially toxic topic to derail and end your press conference.  What had been intended to drum up ratings and support for Obama’s healthcare package ended up as a public relations disaster. The message everyone got, after OBAMA’s disastrous healthcare discussion, is that he thinks the Cambridge Police “acted stupidly”.

Nice.

So just to be sure you caught it, the comment was directed at a police officer who showed up at the Ware Street, Cambridge home of Harvard Professor Gates last week; he was responding to a call of an alleged break-in.  What ensued was that Professor Gates was arrested by Sgt. Crowley of the Cambridge police force and this act was characterized an incident in racial profiling rather than law enforcement simply doing their job.

Without an investigation concluded, without all the facts in hand, and without all parties completely debriefed, POTUS simply said, and I repeat:  The Cambridge Police “acted stupidly”.

To make matters worse, our own Governor chose not to defend his own law enforcement folks.  Rather than repudiating the insults POTUS tossed up the Northeast coast line, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick decided to snuggle up a little further to Obama, stating that a mistake was made in the arrest.

What the President forgot, too, albeit briefly, is that words matter.  Having preceded his statement with an admission that he did not know all the facts he threw a stone in the direction of the Massachusetts Brotherhood of Police, and chimed in on an issue about which he was completely uninformed.

He was dead wrong.

He quickly realized the next day that his words were political malpractice and insulting.  To call the police stupid is unforgivable.  His subjective opinion was based not on fact, but arose from his friendship with the Professor “Skip” Gates.  But, it would not be a news conference or so later before he threw his friend Gates under the bus.

Summation of POTUS statement:  Crowley and the rest of his band of brothers are bigots and stupid.

Sgt. Crowley should be quite angry.  His brothers in the police union have a right to be asking for an apology.  Crowley, fully credentialed, has successfully taught at the Lowell Police Academy for five years, and is seen as a very qualified and respected professional according to the former Cambridge Police Commissioner who happens to be African American.

The Police Report which was made available on line for a brief period of time is attached here.  It no longer exists, I am told, on line, perhaps because those in the liberal bastions of our state are more interested in protecting the pervasive liberal bias.  Note that the Boston Herald is the only major daily reporting the incident and the Boston Globe is pretty much hands off any news story that depicts a liberal democrat in a “not so pretty” position.  Such media bias here in Boston does not go unnoticed.

Think before you speak.  Words matter.