Powell: Gates, Cops Both at Fault

Speaking to Larry King about Henry Louis Gates’ arrest, Colin Powell said he’d faced racial profiling “many times,” and suggested both the professor and the police were at fault in the incident, the Huffington Post reports. Gates “should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal,” Powell said, while police shouldn’t have taken things so far.

Powell advised “young people” to “cooperate” with police. “Don't make the situation more difficult.” When racially profiled, “you protest, you try to get things fixed, but it's kind of a better course of action to take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse.” As for police, “I would have thought” at the point of arrest that “some adult supervision would have stepped in and said, OK, look, it is his house. Let's not take this any further.”
(More Colin Powell stories.)