Police

Like Henry Louis Gates Jr., they are professionals, men of status and achievement who have excelled in a nation that once shunned black men. And for many of them, their only shock -- upon learning of the celebrated scholar's recent run-in with police -- was the moment of recognition. They know too well the pivotal moment Gates faced at his Massachusetts home.

You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you're African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it -- at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime.

Covina Police Chief Kim Raney was relaxing at home with his family around midnight on Christmas Eve. Lt. Tim Doonan was making late-night preparations for the holiday morning. And Det. Dan Regan was in bed, just starting to doze off. Then their phones started ringing. "Units are responding to a shooting in progress," the caller said.

President Obama on Wednesday injected himself into the national debate over how law enforcement treats minorities. Responding to a question during his news conference, Obama said that the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department had acted "stupidly" in arresting his friend, prominent African American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Harvard University professor was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct last week after police responded to a possible break-in at his home.

A self-described anarchist from New York City has been accused of sending Twitter messages with the location of police officers so that protesters could evade them during the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania State Police arrested Elliot Madison, alleging he used Twitter to direct the movement of protesters and inform them about law enforcement actions at last month's summit. The New York Post reported the arrest in Saturday editions. Court papers filed by Madison's attorney say that FBI agents executed a search warrant at the 41-year-old's Queens home.

Valery Kazakov was almost to the prosecutor's office when the killers caught him. He was shot as he cut through an alleyway, and when he stumbled bleeding into the street, a man bent down to stab the final breaths out of him. It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon, in the heart of the sleepy town of Pushkino. As far as the townspeople were concerned, it was a public execution.

For some defense lawyers, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was less about racial profiling than about how persons can be arrested simply for speaking angry words to a police officer. The laws against "disorderly conduct" give police wide power to arrest people who are said to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the neighborhood. In Massachusetts and elsewhere, courts have said the "disorderly acts or language" must take place in public where others can be disturbed.

A day after saying that police "acted stupidly" in arresting a black Harvard University professor in his own home, President Obama appeared to soften his stance Thursday, spreading the blame more equally between the police and the arrested man. Obama had previously implied during a news conference Wednesday that Henry Louis Gates Jr., his personal friend and one of the nation's preeminent African American scholars, had been a victim of racial profiling by the police.

A referee accused Pakistani police of abandoning the convoy carrying Sri Lanka's cricket team as a deadly militant ambush began this week, and video showed gunmen apparently escaping on an empty street as other attackers casually walked away. The allegations by Chris Broad were denied by Pakistani cricket and government officials, who pointed out that six police officers died in the attack by up to 14 assailants.

Alarmed by the rise in Latin American drug traffic in West Africa, nations including Colombia, Brazil and the United States are establishing or increasing their police presence in that unstable region. Racked by internal strife that has left them poor, crime-ridden and institutionally weak, several West African nations in recent years have become key transit hubs for Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine headed to Europe. In an interview last week, Colombian National Police commander Gen.