Obama eases stance on arrest of black Harvard professor

A day after saying that police \"acted stupidly\" in arresting a black Harvard University professor in his own home, President Obama appeared to soften his stance yesterday, spreading the blame more equally between the police and the arrested man, according to a report by The Los Angeles Times.



Obama had previously implied during a news conference Wednesday that Henry Louis Gates Jr., his personal friend and one of the nation\'s preeminent African American scholars, had been a victim of racial profiling by the police.



But the president today praised police officers and couched the incident as an unfortunate clash of tempers.



\"I have extraordinary respect for the difficulties of the job that police officers do,\" Obama told ABC News yesterday in an interview for \"Nightline.\" \"And my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates, and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed.\"



Obama also called the arresting officer in Cambridge, Mass., Sgt. James Crowley, an \"outstanding police officer.\"