CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The attention of the nation and the world was drawn to the arrest of prominent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Wednesday night when President Barack Obama accused the Cambridge police of acting "stupidly."

Obama said he doesn't know all the facts about the arrest last week, but during a prime-time news conference, Obama said blacks and Hispanics are still singled out for arrest disproportionately.

"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home," Obama said.

The president, the first black man to hold the nation's highest office, said he's a testament to the progress minorities have made.

However, he said Gates' arrest shows that racism "still haunts us."

"I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact," Obama said.

Obama's criticism adds fuel to the swirling controversy about race that the arrest has evoked.

It culminates a day in which the Cambridge police officer who arrested Gates said he would not apologize to the Harvard scholar.

"There are not many certainties in life, but it is for certain that Sgt. Crowley will not be apologizing," Sgt. James Crowley told NewsCenter 5.

Gates was arrested after trying to budge open his broken front door last week.

Gates, one of the nation's pre-eminent black scholars and the director of Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, said Crowley owes him an apology.

"He should look into his heart and know that he is not telling the truth and he should beg my forgiveness," Gates said in an interview on Tuesday night.

Bill Carter, the man who snapped a photograph of Gates being led away in handcuffs, said police officers were calm and that Gates was "slightly out of control" and "agitated" when he was arrested.

"The officers around kind of calmed him down," Carter said. "I heard him yelling -- Mr. Gates yelling. I didn't hear anything that he was saying so I couldn't say that he was belligerent."

Cambridge police superior officers came to Crowley's defense after Gates accused the officer of lying and fabricating a police report that detailed Gates' arrest on disorderly conduct charges. The report described the incident as a tumultuous and frightening confrontation with police.

The Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association said it reviewed the arrest and expressed its "full and unqualified support for the actions taken by Sgt. Crowley."

Cambridge police dropped the charges against Gates Tuesday, calling the incident "regrettable and unfortunate." However, spokeswoman Kelly Downes said both Gates and Crowley had acted badly.

Harvard University President Drew Faust said she was "gratified" that the charges were dropped and that all parties involved have recognized and reaffirmed his strong reputation and character.

Police had been called to Gates' Cambridge home after a passer-by saw two men trying to get into the house. According to the report, a woman said she saw a man "wedging his shoulder into the front door as if to pry the door open."

Gates, 58, who had just returned from a trip to China, was attempting to open a door that was broken. Crowley said when he arrived to question him, Gates called him a racist and told him, "You don't know who you are messing with."

"I said, 'What is this about? I want your name and your badge number,'" Gates said.

"He wouldn't answer me and he just stood and stared at me. I said, 'Are you doing this because I am a black man in America? Are you doing this because you're a white police officer and I am a black man?'"

According to the police report, Crowley repeatedly tried to answer Gates, but was interrupted when Gates started yelling at him and making threats.

"I was recovering from a bronchial infection which I contracted in China. It's impossible for me to yell even now," Gates said.