A judge in New York has acquitted three police officers who shot dead an unarmed man hours before his wedding.
Sean Bell, 23, who was black, was shot as he left a strip club in the suburb of Queens in November 2006.
Two detectives, Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora, faced charges of manslaughter. A third, Marc Cooper, had been accused of reckless endangerment. ( Photo: Detectives Marc Cooper, left, Gescard F. Isnora, center, and Michael Oliver after their acquittal.)
Sean Bell, 23, who was black, was shot as he left a strip club in the suburb of Queens in November 2006.
Two detectives, Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora, faced charges of manslaughter. A third, Marc Cooper, had been accused of reckless endangerment. ( Photo: Detectives Marc Cooper, left, Gescard F. Isnora, center, and Michael Oliver after their acquittal.)
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Anyone with a lick of common sense knows what happened here. It wasn't racism, it wasn't self defense, it wasn't murder. It was three out-of-control cops with insufficient training, macho blue mystique and piss-poor judgment who made a grievous mistake and killed somebody.
What do you do with guys like that? You certainly can't throw them to the Sharpton wolves, but neither can you acquit them of all wrongdoing. A Solomon like judgment was needed here, and it wasn't forthcoming.
Some thoughts: They should not be allowed to continue their careers, and their dismissal should be explicitly for the reaons cited above. Great care should be taken in the wording, so that the vast majority of honest, hard-working police don't feel that their jobs and responsibilities have been restricted or compromised.
They should all pay stiff reparations to the involved families. They should NOT be arrested and charged with crimes, but they should be punished with some form of restricted freedom and imposed accountability.
There may be better answers than these. Our judicial system should've found some of them.
The NYPD needs to send a strong message here about proper conduct and procedure. To not do so would be tacit approval of the officers' brand of police pursuit -- go out to a sleazy bar that you are trying to shut down, see if you can entice someone into a drug or prostitution situation, then, if that fails, go into the parking lot and pick a fight. BTW, what ever happened to cops identifying themselves in a difficult situation?
ReplyDeleteA Pandora's Box, but we might as well open it... This country needs to rethink its entire police recruitment and training strategies, right down to the jack-booted, Nazi-esque uniforms most police forces affect. 'To protect and to serve' has become a hollow aphorism; the vast majority of daily police activity has little to do with John Q. Public. We fear the police, and the Sean Bell verdict did nothing to assuage that fear.
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