I don't know the background of the cop. Assuming him to be from a white, working class, local background (the first is true, the next two I don't know, but neither is unlikely), is it unreasonable that he would dsilike Harvard, an institution that he would see as elitist?

If that is true (I don't state it as a fact, merely as a possibility), then what we have here is not a race issue, but a class issue, with Gates standing in for the upper middle class elites and the cop for the working class. The story at least makes more sense to me seen through this lense.