Barack Obama regrets his “Stupid” Comment

US President Barack Obama has told the press he should not have described the arrest of a black Harvard Professor as “stupid”, the BBC reports.

The president makes a surprise appearance at the daily White House press briefing and said he should have chosen words more carefully at this Wednesday news conference.

Alex Spillius, the Daily Telegraph Correspondent in US wrote that he had spoken to Sgt Crowley on the telephone and described him as an “outstanding police officer and a good man”.

In an attempt to diffuse the row over Professor Henry Gates Jr who was arrested at his own home, and followed by the president Obama himself commenting on the Cambridge police officer acted “stupidly” afterwards, the President said that “in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impressive that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically – and I could have calibrated those words differently. And I told this to Sergeant Crowley”.

He then said he continued to believe that Professor Gates’ arrest was “an overreaction”, but “Professor Gates probably overacted as well”.

The comments came as the president faced calls from American police unions to apologies after he accused an officer of “acting stupidly” for arresting Mr Gates, as well as from attracted criticism in conservative circles.

Police representatives queued up at a press conference to insist race had played no part in the incident and the president should retract his “disgraceful” comments and apologise to Sgt James Crowley, said Alex Spillius in the Daily Telegraph.

The arrest of Prof Henry Louis Gates happened in the middle of July at Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to the top university where he leads the African American research centre, said the BBC.

Police were called after a woman reported she saw two black males with backpacks trying to force entry.

Indeed it was the Prof and his driver who had just returned home from an overseas trip, and found his front door jammed.

When Sgt James Crowley arrived, Professor Gates presented his identity card and indicated that he was the owner of the property, and he reportedly began accusing Sgt Crowley of racism.

Sgt Crowley then arrested him for disorderly conduct, prompting Professor Gates to allegedly start shouting: “This is what happens to black men in America.”

However, study shows he may have a point indeed.

A recent study by Professor Ian Ayres of Yale University found that African-Americans are nearly three times as likely to be stopped by the Los Angeles Police Department as whites.

“These disparities are not justified by crime rates in different neighborhoods where people of color live,” Professor Ayres writes. “Nor do the disparities arise because more police are assigned to black or Latino neighborhoods.”

Anther state-sponsored study in Illinois, revealed that black and Hispanic motorists were more than twice as likely as white motorists to be subjected to "consent searches" by the police, yet white motorists were twice as likely to be found with contraband as a result of the searches.

According to the BBC, President Obama has a personal connection to the Illinois statistics.

He sponsored the Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics Act that empowered the state authorities to collect the data on traffic stops.

It is apparently an issue that Mr Obama feels strongly about. During his presidential campaign, he pledged to "ban racial profiling", and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, has indicated that ending the practice is a "priority" for the administration.