The woman whose report of a possible house break-in led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said she never mentioned race during her 911 call and is “personally devastated’’ by media accounts that suggest she placed the call because the men she observed on the porch were black, according to a lawyer acting as her spokeswoman.

She couldn’t tell.

[She] saw the backs of both men and did not know their race when she called 911, said Wendy J. Murphy, a Boston lawyer from New England School of Law. [She] phoned police, Murphy said, because she was aware of recent break-ins in the area.

But the 911 operator would have asked if he or she were worth his or her salt.  [911 tape is out: he did ask, “white, black, or hispanic,” she thought one maybe hispanic, wasn’t sure, couldn’t say about the other]  In Oak Park they ask, as they should.  They don’t want to go looking for a black if a white did it, which they would do, considering the near universal blackness of such perps in Oak Park, most but not all being spillovers from the Austin (city) neighborhood immediately to the east.

You never know.  It could be a white guy “jimmying” (O’s word) the front door or back door or garage door.

A bit of history: Years ago, I told 911 I’d just seen two black kids on a bike, that being the going description of bike thieves on the prowl from Austin.  The operator berated me, I complained to her superiors and got a call from a sergeant apologizing. 

It was relevant to my call-in of suspicious behavior, and everyone but this (tyro) operator knew it.  She sounded white, by the way, and had something to learn.

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Later: See bracketed note above.