WE ARE ALL SEAN BELL—
THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY

Hundreds and thousands of people have been in the streets in New York, outraged and determined that the not guilty verdict on the cops who killed Sean Bell cannot stand. Beautiful outpourings of hundreds of young people from high schools and colleges near where Sean Bell lived and died have marched several times now through the busy shopping area in Jamaica, Queens, stopping traffic and drawing in passersby everywhere they go. They have faced off with riot-clad police at the hated 103rd Precinct and spoken out against the murder of Sean and the way the police harass, jack up, bust for bullshit reasons, brutalize, and even murder people all the damned time and nothing ever gets done about it. Some—but not enough—activists and others of all ages and from all over the city have joined the people protesting in Queens.

On Friday, May 2, dozens of young people drove through Jamaica, Queens, on a flatbed truck decorated with announcements of the march later that day, handing out flyers, stopping for short rallies on street corners and outside the high schools, challenging people to act now to stop this. One of the first young people who jumped into the truck that morning left his job on the spot when he saw the truck getting ready. At one point the truck stopped in front of a mosque where services were letting out and hundreds of mainly South Asian immigrants, at first hesitant, began gathering around to grab up and read the flyers and hear what the youth had to say about the police murder of Sean Bell and how the police treat them every day. By 3:00, dozens more young people, mostly young women, were marching from one of the high schools to meet the several dozen already at the gathering point.

The march grew to several hundred as it marched through the busy shopping area. A lot of people had heard about it on the radio or had gotten a text message or a flyer in the days before. Participants called relatives and friends on the spot to tell them to get their butts out there. Many more joined on the spot. Traffic stopped, drivers honked in support and jumped out of their cars to get flyers and see the march. Fists shot into the air, people joined chants from the sidelines, the sound of the honks and the chants boomed and echoed for blocks. People chanted: “NYPD go to hell, justice for Sean Bell,” and “We are all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell.” “Fifty shots—fuck the cops.” Demonstrators counted off from one to fifty, for the fifty shots the cops fired. Many in Queens and in the demonstrations all over the city have taken up signs from the Harlem Revolution Club saying “We Are All Sean Bell—The Whole Damn System is Guilty!”

On Wednesday, May 7, hundreds of people of all ages and nationalities stopped traffic at five different entrances to bridges and tunnels around Manhattan and Brooklyn. Over 200 were arrested in civil disobedience. Reverend Al Sharpton, Sean Bell’s surviving fiancée Nicole Paultre Bell, and Sean’s friends Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, who were almost killed along with him that night, were arrested as part of the protest near police headquarters, on an entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Hazel Dukes of the NAACP, City Councilperson Charles Barron, and Reverend Herbert Daughtry were also among those arrested.

Around the city, smaller groups of dozens have organized themselves to go into the street. One church group of 50 people blocked traffic outside Madison Square Garden and a few days later marched through Jamaica, Queens. Twenty artists marched from their regular meeting to the local precinct. Several dozen people marched in Washington Heights, an area with a large Dominican population. More actions are planned.

The anger among people is deep. Many, many people are not accepting that business should continue as usual when a court has given a green light to the cops to shoot any Black or Latino young person in this city, for any reason or for no reason at all. As one young West Indian woman pointed out during the demonstration outside One Police Plaza on Wednesday, the police used to plant “throw-down” guns on the people they killed to make it seem like they were threatened. Now the judge in Sean Bell’s case has said that all they have to do is say they “thought” they were in danger.

A lot of people expected some small scrap of justice from the judge after he had heard the testimony about Sean’s wedding morning. Michael Hardy, Nicole Paultre Bell’s lawyer, said, “Now it is clear what the answer is to this family about what the value of the life of an innocent person is in our community.”

A basic reality of how ages-old oppression and exploitation are enforced in America has been starkly revealed. People are talking about how to put an end to a system that murders our youth and crushes the lives out of people around the world. As a flyer from the Harlem Revolution Club put it, “Police murdering Black and Latino youth and getting away with it again and again and again must stop here. What must start here is spreading the understanding that this system is the problem, and it needs to be gotten rid of through revolution—building a revolutionary movement and forging a revolutionary people. People who know we need revolution and are determined to fight for it. We have to keep fighting for justice for Sean Bell, taking it to the streets and keeping it in the streets. More people, from different walks of life and of different races and nationalities, have to join this fight. It has to get better organized and stronger. The whole world is watching.”
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Steven
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  • ☼Sun...
    ☼Sunshine☼
    offline 202

    Re: Protests: Sean Bell, The Whole Damn System is Guilty

    Mon, May 12, 2008 - 11:54 AM
    Yes..... The system is the issue......................!

    Not Race.
    Not anything else.

    We, are ALL apart of this F'd up SICK system.

    The System is the issues, when will PEOPLE finally realize this and unite to do something about it as it affects us ALL, no one left out, no matter the color.
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  • Brent
    Brent
    online 176

    Re: Protests: Sean Bell, The Whole Damn System is Guilty

    Mon, May 12, 2008 - 12:03 PM
    www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24314919/


    Opinion: Justice served in Sean Bell case
    Filan: The verdict was not based on color — black or NYPD Blue
    LEGAL ANALYSIS
    By Susan Filan
    Senior legal analyst
    updated 2:19 p.m. CT, Fri., April. 25, 2008

    I know it sounds bad — 50 shots fired, a groom is dead, two friends seriously wounded and the cops who fired the shots were acquitted of everything by a judge after a seven-week trial.

    People I know, like and respect have said that justice was denied, that cops have a license to kill, and that this is legalized murder.

    While I understand this point of view, I disagree. I think the verdict was fair and justice was served.

    In order for the judge to have found the three detectives charged with Sean Bell’s murder guilty, the judge would have had to find that there was no justification for the shooting. But that just does not square with the testimony and evidence introduced at trial.

    Justice Arthur Cooperman indicated that he did not find the prosecution witnesses credible and found the police officers' version of the facts more credible. He also said at times, the testimony just didn’t make sense.

    What likely happened
    While no one really knows just what happened that night, here is what seems to be the most likely scenario:

    Sean Bell and his friends had been at the Kalua Cabaret Strip Club as part of a bachelor party the night before his wedding. At that time, the Kalua Club had been under investigation for suspected prostitution and drug offenses.



    According to newspaper accounts, undercover officers were at the strip club that night, which was the last night of their two-month long investigation. Around 3:30 a.m., the undercover officers thought they saw the start of an altercation involving a man with a gun.

    They radioed their backup unit to tell them there was a man inside the club with a gun and that a fight was about to break out thinking it was getting “hot” and that something was about to happen.

    Police testified that they thought they heard someone tell one of his buddies to go and get a gun.

    Fearing a shooting was about to break out, they followed Bell and his two friends to their car. Bell then pulled away, and bumped and rammed an unmarked police van. A detective said one of the passengers made a sudden move, as if going for a gun. In the officer’s mind, he thought, “gun” and fired. Once the shooting began, it was hard to stop and became chaos. According to an AP report, “with tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying,” the officers thought they were the ones being fired upon.

    One detective thought his gun jammed so he reloaded. But by this time, he had already fired 15 rounds, and then fired 16 more. One officer fired 31 bullets from his weapon, another officer fired 11 shots, and a third fired four. Two other officers on scene did not discharge their weapons.


    But why fire so many times?
    The question becomes, why fire so many times? What were officers thinking? Did they panic or overreact? Were they in fear for their safety? Did they violate police policy and procedure? Did they commit manslaughter?

    The officers thought they were justified in using deadly force believing they were in mortal danger. In order for the officers’ use of force to be justified, they would have had to reasonably believe deadly force was about to be used against them, in other words, that someone had a gun and was about to use it. But no weapon was recovered from the scene and it appears that no one was armed. Even if it turns out the police were mistaken, if their belief at the time was reasonable that someone was armed and was about to shoot, they were justified in firing.

    But why so many times? Because officers are not trained to shoot to wound, they are trained to shoot to kill.

    Interestingly, of the five officers involved in the shooting, according to police sources, none have ever discharged their weapons while on duty.

    The deceased had been arrested three times, twice for drugs and once for a gun. The second victim had nine arrests including one for armed robbery. The third has a juvenile record, sealed, but according to the New York Post, it is for gun possession and robbery. Their records alone clearly do not justify the excessive use of force. But if those records were known to law enforcement, it may have reinforced the belief that the men were armed and about to fire.

    I believe that the district attorney’s office conducted a thorough, fair, honest, and dispassionate investigation and prosecution.

    I also believe that law enforcement must review this incident and respond accordingly and appropriately without prejudice or favor in terms of training and procedure.

    And I believe that even though the officers cannot yet express their remorse, they are saddened by this incident and by Sean Bell’s death. No officer ever wants to take a life, even when the shooting is justified. Clearly, even if mistakes were made, the officers did not engage in deliberate and intentional misconduct. I know they grieve.

    No one 'won'
    Law enforcement is a difficult and dangerous job. The stress of putting one’s life on the line every day must take its toll. While New Yorkers deserve to be served and protected by NYPD’s finest, New Yorkers also need to know that NYPD will not condone, enable or tolerate any unlawful shooting by law enforcement. Police officers must always act lawfully and appropriately, must always help not hurt, must always serve and protect, and can never shoot to kill unlawfully or inappropriately.

    Fifty shots sounds like an awful lot of shots fired, but a judge heard all the evidence in this case and found reasonable doubt. The state did not prove its case and the officers were acquitted. This case does not come down to a license to legally murder if you are a cop, or a racist judgment that if the race of the victims were different, the verdict would have been different.

    I think this case comes down to the simple bare fact that the state did not meet its burden of proof. This case was decided with reason, based on facts and evidence, not on color, either black or NYPD Blue.

    Whatever the outcome of this trial, no one would have “won.”

    A groom was shot dead hours before he was to wed his high school sweetheart, his bride’s heart was broken, and two children lost their father. And these officers’ lives are irrevocably marred by their action and reaction that dangerous night in the line of duty.

    It was a tough case. It was a tough call. It is a tough verdict. But I think it is fair. I do believe justice was served.

    Susan F. Filan, Esq. is an MSNBC senior legal analyst. Prior to joining MSNBC, Filan worked as a prosecutor and trial lawyer for the state of Connecticut.
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