Black officials speak out on Gates case

Hartford (WTNH) - If you never heard of Harvard Professor Henry "Skip" Gates before this week chances are you know who he is now.

And virtually everyone at the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials meeting here in Hartford knows who he is and is talking about the circumstances surrounding his run in with the Cambridge, Mass. police.

"Oh absolutely, I think, it just, it brings your focus that we need to deal with racism," Blango, on the New Haven Board of Aldermen, said.

"I want to say thank you to the Cambridge Police Department for giving us this opportunity to talk about some issues that impact many people throughout the United States of America," Yancy said.

"It's kind of strange to me, and probably strange to most people of color, that someone would say, 'What's your view of it?' We live it everyday," rJo Winch, Hartford City Council Majority Leader, said.

In case you don't get it - they're talking about racial profiling, something everyone here says is a fact of life.

"We are livid here, we are angry, as elected officials because sometimes we lose our voices, thinking, just because we're black it's okay - it's not okay," Daisy Lynum, president of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, said.

No one here denies that police risk their lives to protect the communities they serve but say the Gates incident just shows there are still problems.

"We still have a lot of work to do, in terms of insuring that the police departments work in the best interest of all communities, irrespective of colors," Yancy said.

And everyone at the conference understands what the president said about the incident the other night.

"He did not call the Cambridge Police Department stupid, nor did he call the officer stupid. He said it was stupid to arrest someone in their home after they have proven that it is their residence," Lynum said.