The white police sergeant criticised by President Barack Obama for arresting the black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr in his Massachusetts home is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling. 9:15PM BST 23 Jul 2009

"I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy," Mr Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Sgt Crowley, 42, has maintained he did nothing wrong and has refused to apologise, as Gates has demanded.

Sgt Crowley responded to Gates' home near Harvard University last week to investigate a report of a burglary and demanded Gates show him identification. Police say Gates at first refused, flew into a rage and accused the officer of racism.

Gates was charged with disorderly conduct. The charge was dropped Tuesday.

Gates' supporters maintain his arrest was a case of racial profiling. Officers were called to the home by a woman who said she saw "two black males with backpacks" trying to break in the front door. Gates has said he arrived home from an overseas trip and the door was jammed.

Mr Obama was asked about the arrest of Gates, who is his friend, at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care on Wednesday night.

"I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry," Mr Obama said. "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 – what I think we know separate and apart from this incident – is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact."

In radio interviews Thursday morning, Crowley maintained he followed procedure.

"I support the president of the United States 110 per cent. I think he was way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts as he himself stated before he made that comment," Sgt Crowley told WBZ-AM. "I guess a friend of mine would support my position, too."
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