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Jul 23, 2009 04:45 PM
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The Cambridge, Mass., cop who arrested (black) Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the same guy who tried to resuscitate a dying (and black) Reggie Lewis 16 years ago and is therefore in no way a racist, OK?
Reports the Boston Herald:
The Cambridge cop prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. claims is a racist gave a dying Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a desperate bid to save the Celtics superstar's life 16 years ago Monday.
"I wasn't working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn't working on a black man. I was working on another human being," Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward's fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer.
It's a date Crowley still can recite by rote - and he still recalls the pain he suffered when people back then questioned whether he had done enough to save the black athlete.
"Some people were saying ‘There's the guy who killed Reggie Lewis' afterward. I was broken-hearted. I cried for many nights," he said.
Crowley, 42, said he's not a racist, despite how some have cast his actions in the Gates case. "Those who know me know I'm not," he said.
So, because a black guy was dying in front of him, and because he was so broad-minded as to give this dying black guy mouth-to-mouth, Crowley is demonstrably not a racist. Got it. He may think summoning the shade of Reggie Lewis will absolve him, and perhaps in certain corners of the Commonwealth it will, but to these ears it sounds like a desperate version of, "Some of my best friends are ..." I dread the movie Hollywood will make out of this.
Officer in Henry Gates flap tried to save Reggie Lewis [Boston Herald]
Send an email to Tommy Craggs, the author of this post, at craggs@deadspin.com.
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