Special to CNN
Editor's note: Maria (Maki) Haberfeld is a professor of Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
Commentary: Obama's rush to judgment on police
PresidentBarack Obama said on Friday he should have chosen his words more carefully when he said police "acted stupidly" in arresting a prominent black Harvard scholar, touching off a debate over race.
Obama made his comments after talking on the telephone to Sgt. James Crowley, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer who made the arrest, and discussing inviting Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to the White House for a beer.
"Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama said. "And I could have calibrated those words differently."
How about instead of "calibrating" your words, you say things in a direct manner.
ReplyDeleteYou need a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to understand what Obama really means half the time.