The Sean Bell Tragedy

[julia]

The Sean Bell Tragedy
Kevin Powell April 25, 2008

I am sick to my stomach and I really do not know what to say right this second. My cell and office phones have been blowing up all day, and people have been emailing me nonstop, to let me know that Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper, the three New York City police officers accused of shooting 50 times and murdering Sean Bell, were found not guilty on all counts: Oliver, who fired 31 times and reloaded once, and Isnora, who fired 11 times, had been charged with manslaughter, felony assault and reckless endangerment. They faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Cooper, who fired four times, faced up to a year in jail if convicted of reckless endangerment.

And that's it: Sean Bell, a mere 23 years of age, out partying the morning before the wedding to the mother of his two small children, dead, gone, forever. Sean Bell and his two friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, all unarmed, ambushed by New York's finest. His last day, November 25, 2006, is marked as another tragic one in New York City history. How many more? I once heard in a protest song. How many more?

But I knew this verdict was coming. I have lived in New York City for nearly two decades and, before that, worked as a news reporter for several publications throughout the city's five boroughs, and I cannot begin to tell you how many cases of police brutality and police misconduct I covered or witnessed, more often than not a person of color on the receiving end: Eleanor Bumpurs. Michael Stewart...Amadou Diallo...Sean Bell.

This is not to suggest that all police officers are trigger-happy and inhumane, because I do not believe that. They have a difficult and important job, and many of them do that job well, and maintain outstanding relationships with our communities. I know officers like that. But what I am saying is that New York, America, this society as a whole, still views the lives of Black people, of Latino people, of people of color, of women, of poor or working-class people, as less than valuable. It does not matter that two of the three officers charged in the Sean Bell case were officers of color and one White. What matters is the mindset of racism that permeates the New York Police Department, and far too many police departments across America. Shooting in self-defense is one thing, but it is never okay to shoot first and ask questions later, not even if a police officer "feels" threatened, not even if the source of that "feeling" is a Black or Latino person.

That is a twisted logic deeply rooted in the America social fabric, dating back to the founding fathers and their crazy calculations about slaves being three-fifths of a human being. And in spite of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, and other successful Black individuals, by and large the masses of Black people, and Latino people, are perpetually viewed through this lens of not being quite human. William Kristol of the New York Times wrote what I felt was an incredibly ignorant and myopic March 24th column implying, strongly, that we should not have conversations about race in America, that such talk was dated. This piece was in response to Barack Obama's now famous meditation on race. But Kristol, like many in denial, had this to say: "The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race... Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn't necessary to end what Obama calls the 'racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years'-- because we're not stuck in such a stalemate... This is all for the best. With respect to having a national conversation on race, my recommendation is: Let's not, and say we did." Well, Mr. Kristol, what, precisely, do you think Black New Yorkers are feeling this very moment as we absorb the Sean Bell verdict? Or do our thoughts, our feelings, our wounds, not matter?
...

Kevin Powell: The Sean Bell Tragedy - Politics on The Huffington Post

[Kanadesaga]

In 21st century Amerika get used to this.

I, pledge alliegance to the corporation of the United States of Amerika. and to the totalitarian state it has become. One nation, under Cheney. Reprehensible, with profits and tyranny of the few.

[TrueBlueAmerican]

This is interesting.

The father of Sean Bell's Fiance apparently received a crank phone call after the not guilty verdict that came from a police unions office in New York.

So basically murdering cops get away with their crime and their buddies have to rub it in.
_ _ _ _ _ _

MyFoxNY.com -- Police are investigating a crank call to Nicole Paultre Bell's father -- that originated from a police union's office.

Sean Bell's fiancee told The New York Post that someone dialed her dad after Friday's verdict, laughed into the receiver -- then hung up.

The call came from the Manhattan office of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

SBA president Ed Mullins denied the allegations.

Paultre Bell called the taunting phone call horrible.

Three detectives were cleared Friday in the 50-shot killing of Bell and wounding of his two friends.

MyFox New York | Father of Bell's Fiancee Got Crank Call From Police Number

[cheapseats]

Irrespective of our feelings about the acquittal, are we all feeling hunky dory equality-for-all confident that the verdict...complete exoneration...would have been no different if it had been a handful of mainly black Enforcers who fired 50 rounds into a white groom?

[julia]

Most likely, yes.

This is an issue of Human Rights violations.

But hell, what can one expect of a govt that has disregard of soldiers' lives to throw them in to police a civil war.

[cheapseats]

Most likely, yes.

For real? You think that if black officers had unleashed a hail of bullets on a white man on the day of his wedding, those black officers would most likely also have been acquitted?

I stridently disagree.

[W.M.DEEEZ]

For real? You think that if black officers had unleashed a hail of bullets on a white man on the day of his wedding, those black officers would most likely also have been acquitted?

I stridently disagree.

This is a tragic case, that I've been following since it began.

And, several of the officers were "non white".

There are some unfortunate circumstances, which led to this horrid affair.


For one, the strip club was under surveillance for drug, and prostitution suspicions.



The Many Truths Found After the Racially Charged Police Shooting of Sean Bell -- New York Magazine



Club Kalua had opened three years earlier, just another cut-rate market for vice, on a quiet side street around the corner from the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road station. Pimps and hookers cruise the front door, lit by the fluorescent glow from the JFK AirTrain terminal down the block. Inside, the girls don’t offer lap dances so much as just plop onto your lap and demand drinks. Hookers pay the bouncers for the right to waitress and meet johns there; some of the girls are said to be as young as 13. The tricks take place in cars, or in a cheap hotel a block away, or right there on 94th Avenue. Getting customers drunk seems to be club policy. White laser-printed notices are taped to the walls: MUST HAVE DRINK ALL THE TIME. Drunk johns mean more tips for the bartenders (whom the hookers are also paying off) and less of a chance that the johns turn out to be undercover cops.



The cops knew all about Club Kalua. The vice squad had racked up enough arrests to close it back in 2005, though it reopened just two months later. But this was 2006, the year of the girl killings: Imette St. Guillen, raped and murdered after partying at a bar in Soho, and Jennifer Moore, raped and murdered hours after partying in a nightclub in Chelsea. The police had formed a new Club Enforcement Initiative, transferring detectives from vice and narcotics to crack down on nightspots. New teams of cops had worked undercover in Chelsea for a few months. By the fall of 2006, they were branching out to the outer boroughs.



Club Kalua was an obvious target. In the year since reopening, it had been the subject of more than two dozen 911 calls, an average of one every two weeks, and four arrests, including a weapons charge. On November 25, 2006, the police needed just another collar or two—a drug buy, a hooker landing a john, someone flashing a gun—to shut the place down again.


__________________________________________________ _________


Now, one of the undercover officers claimed to have heard one in Bell's crowd say..."go get my gun", after a disagreement with another patron.

We'll never know if this is the truth, but the real problem arose out of Bell's fear of an undercover cop, who apparently didn't make it clear enough that he was indeed a cop.

Bell, fearing trouble, evidently drove his car toward this cop, and that's when all hell broke loose.



This is such a sad story, but I don't think it should get neatly lumped in with the plethora of injustices that have taken place in NYC over the years.

[ibex]

I personally know of a case that took place in a small ,predominantly white town in central New Jersey in which a white police officer who had been stalking his estranged wife shot her Columbian lover in bed and claimed self defense against an indictment of second degree murder. The cop was six feet four and weighed over 200lbs and the victim was five four and about 140lbs. The jury voted to acquit the cop on all charges. Along with the racism and xenophobia that were factors in the case I've mentioned here, the tendency of too many Americans to never question authority that is so deeply ingrained in our national character can't be ruled out as a factor. As appalling as the NY case is, it's hardly unique. The location and circumstances guaranteed more publicity than dozens of other similar uses of excessive force that happen elsewhere in the US every year.

[julia]

Irrespective of our feelings about the acquittal, are we all feeling hunky dory equality-for-all confident that the verdict...complete exoneration...would have been no different if it had been a handful of mainly black Enforcers who fired 50 rounds into a white groom?

Most likely, yes.

This is an issue of Human Rights violations.

But hell, what can one expect of a govt that has disregard of soldiers' lives to throw them in to police a civil war.

For real? You think that if black officers had unleashed a hail of bullets on a white man on the day of his wedding, those black officers would most likely also have been acquitted?

I stridently disagree.

I misunderstood your question.
Thought you were speaking of the reaction.
There were African-American officiers involved in the Sean Bell shooting.

[Ptech]

Being a proponent of jury rights and responsibility, I am very disappointed in the verdict in this case.