The woman whose 911 call brought a Cambridge police officer to a fateful encounter with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home said today she had undergone an “ordeal” in which she had been called racist, had been a target of scorn and ridicule, and even threatened.
But Lucia Whalen, 40, said she would do it all over again.
“I have had much reflection on that and, yes, I would make the call,” she said in a news conference today at a Cambridge park.
She said the recording of the 911 call reporting a possible break-in, which was released by Cambridge police earlier this week, showed that she had “tried to be careful and honest with my words.”
Now that the recordings are out, she said, “so many people have responded with words of support. I hope now that the truth of the tapes will help heal the Cambridge community as much as it has helped to restore my reputation and integrity.”
The arrest by Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley, who is white, of Gates, a prominent black academic, as Crowley investigated Whalen’s report at the professor’s home on Ware Street on July 16 sparked a heated national debate over police relations with minorities. It also raised questions of whether officers practice racial profiling.
President Obama stepped into the fray last week, saying Cambridge police “acted stupidly.” He later expressed regret for his words and invited Gates and Crowley to the White House to meet with him and have a beer, hoping to turn the case into a “teachable moment.” That meeting is slated for 6 p.m. Thursday.
In a recording of the 911 call released Monday by Cambridge officials, Whalen, 40, can be heard telling a dispatcher that she had seen two suitcases on the porch and wasn’t sure if it was a break-in.
“I don’t know what’s happening. … I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key, but I did notice they had to use their shoulders to try to barge in,” Whalen said
Whalen said Sunday through a spokeswoman she was “personally devastated” by media accounts that suggested she placed the call because the men she saw on the porch of Gate’s home were black.
Crowley, in his report on the incident, said that Whalen had told him on the sidewalk outside the house that she “observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch” of Gates’s house.
But Whalen said today that she had not spoken to Crowley, other than to indicate that she was the person who had placed the 911 call.
Whalen spoke at a news conference at a park in Cambridge’s Fresh Pond area, flanked by her attorney and spokeswoman Wendy Murphy and her husband, Paul. Her body trembled and voice quavered as she spoke to a group of dozens of national and local reporters.
“People called me racist and said I caused all the turmoil that flowed and some even said threatening things that made me fear for my safety,” she said, describing herself as a “target of scorn and ridicule for things I never said.”
“I would hope that people would learn not to judge others and to really base it on facts,” she said.
Gates had just arrived home from the filming of a PBS documentary in China. His front door was stuck shut, and his taxi driver helped him pry it open. The charge of disorderly conduct brought by Crowley was dropped, but that didn’t stop the controversy from gaining momentum last week.
Introducing Whalen, Murphy said that three men — Gates, Crowley, and Obama — had overreacted in the incident, but the one person who had not was Whalen, who made a “measured, thoughtful, and objective call to 911 to report suspicious activity.”
Murphy said Whalen was “someone who cares enough to get involved but is conscientious enough not to overreact.”
While the three men will have a beer at the White House, “The one person whose actions have been exemplary will be at work tomorrow in Cambridge, ” Murphy said. “Maybe it’s a guy thing. She doesn’t like beer, anyway.”
