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Crowley gave Gates the handcuffs he used in arrest

E-mail|Link|Comments () February 13, 2010 01:02 PM

Alex Brandon/AP

President Obama, Vice President Biden, Gates and Crowley met for the beer summit. Gates says he and Crowley met for another beer in Cambridge, and Crowley gave him a gift: the handcuffs he had used during the arrest.

By Globe Staff

The Cambridge police officer who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates gave him the handcuffs he used, and the academic has donated them to the Smithsonian Insititution, Gates said in an interview with the New York Times.

Gates said he and Sergeant James Crowley "had a drink at my favorite pub in Cambridge. We met at the River Gods cafe several months ago, and he gave me the handcuffs."

"I donated them to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian," Gates said said in an interview that will appear in the newspaper's Sunday magazine but has already been posted on the newspaper's website.

Gates also discussed his new PBS series, "Faces of America," in which he researches the ancestry of a dozen mostly white celebrities.

The arrest of the prominent black professor last year in his own home in Cambridge by the white police officer generated headlines worldwide and sparked a heated debate over police treatment of minorities. President Obama at first criticized Cambridge police, then invited the two men to the White House for a "beer summit" in an effort to reduce tensions.