The Sean Bell Verdict Ignites My Students' Fury
The young black student who appeared at my office this morning was practically in tears. "Hey Professor Ricci," she said. "Did you hear?"
"No, Jahqueena, what's wrong?" She just shook her head.
"Sean Bell. Those three cops just got acquitted on all counts."
"Oh my God Jahqueena," I moaned. "It can't be true."
But of course it's true. Why should I be surprised? We all lived through the Amadou Dialou case back in 1999. Dialou was the West African immigrant leveled in a hailstorm of 41 police bullets. The four officers in that case were exonerated by a jury trial. In Bell's case, it was a single judge's ruling.
I'm an English and Journalism professor at a state university in upstate New York, where I teach in a program called Educational Opportunities. EOP caters to low-income students, mostly from inner-city neighborhoods in New York City. The way it works out, most of those indigent students are African American or Dominican or Haitian or Jamaican or Puerto Rican. Often I'm the only white person in the classroom.
Jahqueena, a freshman I've been mentoring since she took my literature class last fall, walked me to class this morning and all the way there, she poured her heart out, carrying on about how unfair and racist the legal system is. I would have loved to disagree, but honestly, what other conclusion can we draw? Those three cops pumped 50 bullets into Sean Bell, who died just hours before he was supposed to head to the altar.
In Queens, people are up in arms. (Jahqueena was on her cell phone, getting on-site reports from her mother, who phoned with the bad news.)
Is it any wonder people are enraged? That 23-year old bridegroom had just emerged from his bachelor party. He had no gun. The cops brought him down, and then, reloaded their guns and filled him with bullets.
I got to class and before I could begin a discussion of the memoir we are reading, a second student, Joely, who hails from Panama, yelled out. "So what do you think of the Sean Bell decision?"
I inhaled. I knew where the class was headed. I told her I thought the decision seemed incredibly unfair. I asked the students - this particular class is about 50-50, black and white -- if they wanted to discuss the verdict. I told them they were free to express their opinions - one by one, by raising their hands in turn - to say what they think.
"Cops are the most despicable people on earth," called out the young black woman sitting next to Joely. "They are the lowest of the low."
Just when I thought she was finished, though, she added: "So I am going to take the test to become a corrections officer. I'm going to change the system, all by myself."
Curiously, there were some students in the classroom - mostly whites - who had never heard of Sean Bell. We in the "know" briefed them on the details. Bell: Bridegroom. Bachelor party. Bullets galore.
A young white woman, blonde and blue-eyed, raised her hand.
"I don't understand," she began, and for a moment I tensed, wondering what she was going to say. "My father is a cop," she went on, "and I know how it works. When somebody has a gun, the cop is just supposed to shoot to disarm. You aim maybe for the leg, or the arm, just so you get the shooter to drop the gun."
I nodded. I waited for more comments. Suddenly I recalled a classic book by a fellow English professor, noted feminist Judith Fetterley. Called The Resisting Reader, the book offers a feminist approach to literature. Fetterley suggests that you can test for sexism in a work of literature simply by flipping the gender of the characters. If the situation makes no sense with the gender flip, then you've probably got a case of sexism on your hands.
I decided to try the Fetterley strategy, modified slightly, to test for racism in the Sean Bell case. "Ok, class," I said, "I have a question for you: would the Bell verdict have come down the same way if the victim of the shooting had been a 23-year old white man?"
The chorus swelled up. "Hell no," some of them yelled.
And then, Nadine, who today was wearing her hair neatly corn rowed, made the final statement.
"If it had been a white man, the cops wouldn't have gone after him in the first place," she said, "and then none of this ever would have happened."
Amen, Nadine.
Amen.
Follow Claudia Ricci on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RicciCJ
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People of New York, you need to get yourself some new Judges. The ones you got ain't working. Whatever you decide to do, don't forget the "petition to unseat a judge"....
"People of New York, you need to get yourself some new Judges. "
No kidding.2 New Senators and a new governor too.
Meanwhile, we live in a country where the cops can shoot an innocent young man 50 times (and pause to reload) witth impunity and the pseudo-macho NRA types lecture anyone who objects.
What are you teaching your students?!?
Sean Bell was killed because he RAN FROM THE COPS-----NOT BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK!!!! He was a PERCEIVED THREAT, therefore, the officers used legitimate force to protect their own lives, and the lives of their fellow officers.
Empathy deficit. Did you even read the story? BLACK FOLKS DON"T TRUST THE COPS! And for good reason.
White folks really have no clue what it's like being black in America. None. And it seems the dumber you are the less likely you are to empathize. Empathy takes both will and imagination and I fear many Americans lack both.
Empathy should be a two way street. How about feeling some for the cops.
I got a slight taste for it, getting a semi-bogus ticket probably owing to where I was driving with an Obama bumper sticker. I call it now the "Obama tax." Driving with it thru rural TN seems to not been a good idea.
When is running FROM cops a threat? And if you were black, wouldn't you run from cops given their reputation for shooting with a flimsy reason at best?
Again Lisa...nex
Sorry but eyewitness testimony shows that the cops DID NOT identify themselves before they attempted to stop Mr. Bell.
"Sean Bell was killed because he RAN FROM THE COPS-----NOT BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK!!!! He was a PERCEIVED THREAT"
Do you know how pathetic and stupid that sounds?
Nobody with an ounce of common sense believes the cops were threatened. They shot him because they could, they shot him 50 times because they took the time to reload. They were innocent of criminal charges because he was just a black kid .
Cops, racist?...
You've got to be kidding me. You have to be out of your mind to think such a thought. I mean, come on. The guy was celebrating his wedding, and though he was at a strip club, he had nothing on him, no guns, no drugs, so what reason is there to kill the guy? And on top of that, talk about over-kill. I mean they shot him 51 times, and even if they felt threatened, why shoot so many bullets? This is just stupid. Those cops should have been fired and spent jail time. I mean, Michael Vick is spending time in FEDERAL PRISON for killing dogs, and these guys just get to walk off with no punishment. Where's the justice? Where's the common sense?
What are you teaching your students?!?
The cops shot Sean Bell because he was a perceived threat----NOT BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK!!!!!
Never mind that MOST OF THE COPS WERE FROM SOME MINORITY GROUP. Forget that the cop who fired the first shot WAS BLACK.
If you were in the officer's situation, you would have shot too.
Get your facts straight before you start foaming at the mouth. Two of the three tried were black, but they were the only 2 black officers on the scene. How did that happen. Could you possibly grasp the possibility the 2 blacks did what they did in order to fit in with all the white cops? Don't know much about peer pressure do you. In fact, you don't know much at all!
I doesn’t should like there was a lot of teaching going on in that classroom. You present all facts in the light most unfavorable to the officers and then claim that the only reason for the outcome was racism. That is not teaching it is indoctrination.
The truth is that the police were put into a very difficult situation where they had to make a life and death decision in an instant. In hindsight it is easy for us to conclude that they made a terrible mistake with tragic consequences. It may be that these officers do not have the skills necessary to do the very difficult job of law enforcement. But does that mean they are criminals? I think the court made the only reasonable decision. We need to tell these officers to find a new line of work, not put them in prison.
"where they had to make a life and death decision in an instant. "
They shot a guy who was trying to get away from them 50 times; they took the time to reload. This is the dictionary definition of 'excessive force' . The cops did not identify themselves. The cops belong in prison and their apologists are disgusting
People seem think that Sean Bell and company where boy scouts.
Sean Bell was arrested twice for selling crack cocaine to an undercover police officer. He was arrested one other time for firearms possession.
Joseph Guzeman was arrested nine times, including once for firearms possession.
Benefield had three arrests on his record including one for firearms possession. Since the Bell shooting, Benefield was arrested 2 more times and pled guilty to charges araising out of hitting the mother of his baby.
These three men are exactly the kind of men that I want the police to protect me and my family from. We want to go back and second guess what these officers did. We are asking them to be perfect when they are only human. In my mind, the officers are heros for trying to protect the vast law abiding citizenry from people who want to live outside of societies rules. These police officers acted to protect us and maybe they didn't do things 100% the we why would have liked but they did their best in the circumstances.
Maybe its time we thought about the kind of society we would have if the drug dealers had free run of our communities. Maybe its time that we as communities stand up and say that we will not allow lawlessness to exist in our communities, instead of turning a blind eye and expecting the police and government to deal with the problem.
I think cops that kill first (50 Bullets!) are worse than drug dealers!
So you want the police to protect you from a Grooms stag party?
God bless those cops and you.
So you want wild west style justice? Okay. Now again next time a white kid is driving in the ghetto looking for some crack. And a cop notices that the mercedes does not belong there. Let them pull them over, search the car and if so much as a reaching under the seat happens rip a clip into them.
I know if a girl who was caught with possession of narcotics. She was sent to a school out west to rehab. Her family is very well off and I care for her a great deal. I am a minority. I would not want several black cops firing into her car because I heard she was so mad she should get a gun.
"These three men are exactly the kind of men that I want the police to protect me and my family from."
It's difficult to know what to say to someone who feels protected by incidents this barbaric and savage.
This is a discussion about the sort of society we have when we allow the police to execute innocent civilians in the streets with impunity. There's no evidence whatsoever that these young men were dealing any sort of drugs and public executions without the benefit of trial aren't usually a feature of our justice system.
The daughter of a cop had a great point. How do 50 bullets and reloading to get to that total constitute disarming? If the issue is a vehicle, why not shoot the tires ONLY? The obvious overkill here reeks to high heaven. I do not understand how any story from policemen explains or justifies the clear use of lethal force. It seems like a "shoot first, ask questions later" view that automatically labeled Mr. Bell as a suspect, though what he did, other than be a black man exiting a strip club seems pretty murky to me. Can the prosecutor appeal?
I know the fed won't do squat, since we're talking about Bu$hco and they think voter suppression counts as minority justice. How do these cops sleep at night?
Condolences to Mr. Bell's surviving family and friends. What an ordeal.
The daughter does NOT have a point! She is flat wrong! I carry a 9mm and an AR-15 at my job everyday. You had better believe we are not trained or even advised to aim for an appendage. Here is how use of deadly force works:
You must believe there is a danger of death or serious bodily injury to yourself or another person.
Period. If you watched the NBC Nightly News when this first happened, they did an animation of the events outside the club. The car had hit a police vehicle and was attempting to evade. There were officers in the path of the vehicle when police opened fire.
Cops are going home to their families at the end of a shift, people. That Mr. Bell didn't realize that his automobile was considered a serious threat is his own fault. Not that it doesn't make this whole thing a tragedy. It just means the cops were likely justified in their actions.
And again. if you are trained that you are not identifiable as a cop and three dudes approach with guns towards a person's car. It is your advice I sit there and let myself get carjacked, killed, robbed, or raped? So what do they teach us in society when this happens? We carry our own guns and when threatened with force from unidentifiable people we fire back in self defense. then when we go to court, we can say he had a gun, failed to id himself, placed a foot on my car, and I ran his butt over and shot the other two as i fled for my life. I get no jail time.
Is that fair?
Then why wasn't the shooting aimed to defuse the threat.? No, they shot to kill all 3, hence the 51 firings with NO return of fire and no menancing mvts. Yeah, really worth a reload. On its face this is insanity and applying the race reversal (as suggested by Prof. Ricci) really underscores this.
I am all in favor of cops and think that a good cop is worth his/her weight in GOLD. I am against BAD or incompetent cops who use the badge as a shield against their mistakes or crimes. That is what happened here. From all the reports I have read and heard, the prosecutors did their best to destroy their case against the cops. Having a sham prosecution is NOT justice The judge did right with what he was given.
The police have to be put in prison when they use their guns in this fashion. Shooting somebody just because of a suspicion that there is a gun is outrageous. In Texas there are MANY citizens who legally carry concealed firearms. They do NOT deserve to be executed like Bell. The fact is that it was winter, dark, windows were up in the car, probably the radio was on, and it made it impossible to know that plainclothes cops were the ones outside. The people sure as hell could not hear anything the cops may have said. Any decent prosecutor could have shown it was impossible for a cop to see a gun in those circumstan
Is there a difference between being an incompetent police officer and being a criminal. Should all officers who make mistakes of this nature be put in prison?
Sorry. An incompetent police officer would shoot an innocent man in the arm or leg, or shoot out his tires.
A competent officer would not get into that situation in the first place.
A criminal is someone who kills an innocent man.
BrighterStar wrote >>>>Should all officers who make mistakes of this nature be put in prison?
Yes.
"Should all officers who make mistakes of this nature be put in prison?"
Shoot an innocent man 50 times because he was (quite reasonably) trying to get away from you? Yes. That's murder. Murderers belong in prison.
The vehicles was the deadly weapon, not the gun. While the officers had very good reason to believe there was a firearm in the vehicle, it is not necessary to justify deadly force.
Seems you only post comments that you agree with......
We instruct juries that it is expected that multiple witnesses to the same event may vary in their recounting of minor aspects of what had been observed. However, where there are significant inconsistencies related to important facts, they should be considered.
Reference was made earlier to the credibility of witnesses. The court has found that the people's ability to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt was affected by a combination of the following factors: the prosecution witnesses' prior inconsistent statements, inconsistencies in testimony among prosecution witnesses, the renunciation of prior statements, criminal convictions, the interest of some witnesses in the outcome of the case, the demeanor on the witness stand of other witnesses and the motive witnesses may have had to lie and the effect it had on the truthfulness of a witness's testimony. These factors played a significant part in the people's ability to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and had the effect of eviscerating the credibility of those prosecution witnesses. And, at times, the testimony just didn't make sense.
Hey Eileen1, what's 'inconsistent' about 50 bullets going into one man? Use all the big words you like, I know them too, just a smoke screen. Black, white or blue -- emptying that many bullets into one suspect says something about the cops involved. I'm curious, were they tested for the presence of drugs or alcohol in their system???
Hey Soonerdru, where did you come by the info "about 50 bullets going into one man"? When I read this article and comments, I went back and read some of the newpaper accounts, and found no such fact. Do you suppose your perception could have been skewed by Ms. Ricci's statement? -- "The cops brought him down, and then, reloaded their guns and filled him with bullets." Eileen1 has obviously enraged you further, by READING THE OPINION and confusing you with facts (and "big words"). Sorry about that.
A student named "Jahqueena" with her obvious emotional baggage affecting her thought process influenced you?
And you are supposed to be a fair and balanced teacher?
What are you talking about? This class was literature, not criminal justice, and what was recounted in part concerns statements the student made on the walk to class. Then you have to consider the racial flipping test. That's a great move to make something relevant to the discussion in terms of what the students already learned. They were applying info and using their brains. The intructor did not predetermine the response.
Fair comments were made, which are not necessarily balanced. But of course, Fox Noise is neither fair nor balanced, GOP talking points hardly counts as either.
What does Fox have to do with any of this? I see your blind liberalism coming from a mile away.
They were only applying the information they wanted to use. According to the blog no one in the class knew many basic important details about the incident. And Ricci responded with emotional outrage to her student; "Oh my God Jahqueena," I moaned. "It can't be true."
No one ever entertained the idea that the cops might have felt justifiably threatened in that class. Don't talk to me about fair and balanced.
Why are undercover cops hanging out in strip clubs????
I bet you the cops girlfriend / stripper worked there and they guys were talking trash to her while she was dancing.
Why else would they be so agressive towards they guys. So many people in the strip club why pick out them?
How many bullets does it take to kill a man? and if after one officer has emptied his gun, didn't the other oficers see Sean on the ground? With the amount of bullets used, told us all we need to know.
Sean died and others were shot almost to death. What did the drime scene say about the shooting? Why was it compromised. Any police officer knows this is the first thing that goes on. Do not disturb the crime scene. What kind of justice was that? The judicial system should stop insulting the public's intelligence.
I'm standign up to them but they're targeting my son now. He's a good kid, 25 still plugigng away at Hofstra. But they arrested him a couple years ago for soemthign he never did. He was chosen from a photograph 3 months after the crime. If it was a crime. More like an overzealous kid afraid his father was going to castrate him for whatever he got himself into. His fathe rprobably had connections in the Police Dept......
Its not always blacks being targeted. WOMEN ARE TOO! I am a middle class single parent homeowner (for more than 31 years) and I feel my rights are so violate i have to muster up strength just to decide what I'm doing every morning when I awake!
Whats going on is old fashioned mafia type stuff. Stalking, phone tapping and yea internet watching too. Jeesum Cripes whats happened when i can;t find anyone to adress MY CIVIL RIGHTS?
Whoever wrote "We've come a long way baby" was full of bull.
Are you familiar with the cases of LaTanya Richardson, Eleanor Bumpurs, and Yvonne Smallwood?
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