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Around 12:31 PM, after the Massachusetts Municipal Police Coalition held a press conference defending Sgt. Crowley’s conduct in the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Harris spoke to the CNN reporter on the scene, Don Lemon. Having been informed that one of the reasons the union decided to hold the press conference was a sinking morale among officers after President Obama’s remarks on the matter, Harris said:
HARRIS: I don't know why I was under the impression that this news conference, that by the end of it we would be closer to resolving this. I don't know why I thought that, but clearly, it looks like we may be more entrenched at this point with Cambridge police unions. The legal counsel for Cambridge police saying very clearly that they support the actions of the officer in this case and want an apology from the president.
It’s easy to see in the transcript alone that Harris was shocked at the tone of the press conference, wherein a request was issued for President Obama to apologize for his comments about the Cambridge Police Department behaving “stupidly.” The story here is not about the union’s response to President Obama; the story is the incredulity with which their response is received by Harris.
Even after Lemon goes out of his way to explain the reasons why the union decided to hold a press conference, Harris still does not acknowledge the external factors which led to the response. Lemon clearly noted that the police department was not allowing its officers to respond to Gates’ allegations – but that when the President of the United States became involved, the damage to police morale became too much to ignore.
Despite this fact, Harris calls the union’s press conference “incendiary.”
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