Sean Bell Case

 

The Sean Bell shooting episode took place on November 25, 2008. According to McFadden 2006, Sean Bell 23 was leaving his bachelor party in New Yolk city held at club Kulua in the Jamaica part of Queens when he met his death in the hail of detectives’ bullets. Bell’s shooting could have been triggered by the fact that at the time of this incidence, Club Kulua a strip club in Queens was under detective surveillance on claims of promoting prostitution and drugs. Inside in the party before Bell came out to meet his death, there were gun claims where a woman had threatened to get a gun and someone in Sean’s company said get my gun.

These utterances made police to fear of a possible shooting and when Sean and his friends got in the car and police followed them. “Mr. Bell drove the car half a block, turned a corner and struck a black unmarked police minivan bearing several plainclothes officers. Mr. Bell’s car then backed up onto a sidewalk, hit a storefront’s rolled-down protective gate and nearly struck an undercover officer before shooting forward and slamming into the police van again, the police said” (McFadden, 2006 para 4). In suspicion that the people in the car were criminal, police ordered Bell to raise his hands but Bell decided accelerate his car instead of adhering to police order. “The undercover police officers who shot at Bell and two of his friends said that he identified himself as a police officer but that Bell drove into him anyway, one of the possible reasons why the police shot at him” (Chung, 2006 para 2).

In the bid to identify why Bell behave in such reckless and tried to threaten detective’s life, toxicology report indicated that his blood contained alcohols level twice higher the legal limit according to Chung 2006. His behaviors before the shooting made the police to identify Bell and his friend to be criminals hence firing at them. Although the question of firing more than fifty bullets to people who were later found in possession of no guns is wrong and inhuman, Bell and his friends’ behavior could have triggered police to fire in suspicion that they were dangerous criminals. The detectives linked to this case were Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnoral who has been acquitted manslaughter recklessness causing death and assault. Verdict in this case attracted criticism especially from the black community making it to look as a racial discrimination issue. A mistake was committed but in judging the whole episode the public is not putting consideration of the fact on the ground and the circumstances under which this killing happened.

In this situation, what police did was right and the verdict drawn by the court to acquit the detective prosecuted over this case was the most justified. The issue where a section of public is viewing this case as a case of injustice towards the blacks is wrong. “Nothing in these facts suggests that racial animus lay behind the incident. Though this detail should be irrelevant, the undercover team was racially mixed, and the officer who fired the first shot was black” (Mac Donald, 2006 para 3). The public should realize that as we judge detective harshly on this killing and pegging it to racial tag, it is important to remember since 1993, more than 10000 people have been murdered in the New Yolk city. Investigations to these murders have shown that majority of the victims as well as perpetrators are blacks. All this deaths have not attracted the demonstration from the black community which in this case of Bell feels aggrieved and called for mass demonstration. There has been no call for peace as well as justice from the victims earlier killed in the cold blood by New Yolk street gangs.

Therefore the association of Bell murder case to racism is unfortunate because the community is not analyzing the circumstance in which it happened. People should realize that having active detectives in the street in attempt to control crime is a good story to the society. Black community should realize that they have been the major victims of New Yolk thugs and presence of detectives should be viewed as a way of protecting them and not to victimize them. In doing the role of protecting the public, people should realize that police can do mistake like any other person can do in his/her working place. When we do mistakes in our place of work no one wish to be victimized and therefore, public should view police justice like human beings who are also prone to mistakes and accidents. Bell murder an open mistake where anybody ready to understand it this way would analyze the situation under which it happened and conclude police were not in wrong but the situation called for what they did. When police die in course of the duty from gang’s guns no one demonstrates but when police shoot in the course of protecting the public the community jump on them with accusation that they are partisan, oppressive, racist even in a case like Bell’s case where the killing was done by a black detective.

People who feel that the verdict on Bell’s murder case was unfair and those detectives was in a mission to kills an innocent civilian are wrong. To be realistic in judging this case the people aggrieve by this verdict should ask themselves how many times the police are reported in such killings. Honestly speaking these kinds of instance are rare and this make people feel that the case of Bell’s killing was just mistake. “The instances of an officer shooting an innocent, unarmed victim are so unusual that they can be counted on one’s fingers. Last year, of the nine suspects fatally shot by the police, two had just fired at a police officer, three were getting ready to fire, two had tried to stab an officer, and two were physically attacking an officer” (Mac Donald, 2006 para 6). The police therefore, would act the way they did in Bell’s shooting as they were convinced the victim were dangerous and could harm them. This is because even after telling Bell to raise his hand he defied the orders. The other factor which could have made the police to conclude they were dealing with a dangerous group is that in Bell’s company there was a jail bird and a serious criminal who could have made detective to conclude that the were dealing with a lethal gang.

Our community do not realize that police work every day to save lives and should remember that in 1990s New Yolk city murders were high and it was police effort to protect live that the murder incidences have reduce. “If New York City murders had remained at their early 1990s highs, instead of dropping from 1,927 killings in 1993 to 540 in 2005, 13,698 more people—most of them black and Hispanic—would have been dead by last year” (Mac Donald, para 9). In there effort to giving New Yolk sanity, people should realize that fighting crime is a deadly venture because criminal are lethal. In the case where Bell was killed by the police bullet it is important to ask ourselves where the police had purposely come in strip club in Queens purposely to kill Bell. What came true from the investigations is that the police were in the mission to fighting crime and demonstrations due to the verdict the court made over Bell case is just undermining police effort to root out crime in New Yolk city. “The undercover officers who killed Sean Bell over the weekend were working the strip club in Queens where the incident occurred at 4 AM because of its record of illegal guns and drug sales. Their intentions that night were to protect the residents of Jamaica and the occupants of the club from violence”(Mac Donald, para 10).

Sean Bell case has attracted a lot of biasness from the public with New Yolk people viewing this case in a racial angle an aspect making people not to come up in terms with the court verdict. This is a very dangerous tread when our society is being reduced to be seeing solution to important thing like people’s protection like racial discrimination an aspect which a can jeopardize our security. People should realize that that wrath of the gangs do not consider race and protection of police is very important and their effort in ensuring we are safe should be supported.

References:

Chung, Jen 2006, Queens Shooting: Sean Bell Was Drunk When Shot By Police. Retrieved on 8th September 2008 from; http://gothamist.com/2006/12/23/queens_shooting_13.php.

Mac Donald, Heather 2006: No, the Cops Didn’t Murder Sean Bell. Retrieved on 8th September 2006 from; http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-12-04hm.html.

McFadden, Robert D. 2006: Police Kill Man After a Queens Bachelor Party. Retrieved on 8th September 2008 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/nyregion/26cops.html