Al Sharpton: "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell"

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... were found not guilty by a jury of their peers.

Actually (and I didn't notice this before), but they were found not guilty by a judge. Not by a jury of their peers. They (the defendants - the cops) waived their right to a jury trial.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

... were found not guilty by a jury of their peers.

Actually (and I didn't notice this before), but they were found not guilty by a judge. Not by a jury of their peers. They (the defendants - the cops) waived their right to a jury trial.

Still. They had their day in court. I'd wager a guess that not many of the outraged folks - including the Rev. Al Sharpton - are prepared to walk the beat.

[Jack and Barbara 0]

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[*JG* 2]

... were found not guilty by a jury of their peers.

Actually (and I didn't notice this before), but they were found not guilty by a judge. Not by a jury of their peers. They (the defendants - the cops) waived their right to a jury trial.

I feel sorry for all cops who have to make snap decisions in the heat of the moment and then live with the consequences. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

However, in this case, I do have issues with the excessiveness of it all......50 shots.....that thought just boggles my mind. In my head, I just can't justify that for any reason.

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[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

They are damned if they do and damned dead if they don't.

There, fixed that for you.

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Hipster Liberals Excuse Sean Bell's Lynching

I have always had a love-hate relationship with The Gothamist. On the one hand, it's one of a few blogs that's had its finger on the rapid-fire pulse of New York City. On the other, it openly panders to the class of gentrifying hipster colonists and their "Love me, I'm a liberal" politics. As such, it's outdone the Village Voice in both its good and bad aspects.

Case in point: Gothamist's coverage of the Sean Bell murder case. Gothamist breathlessly repeats the racist Daily News's story on toxicology reports from Sean Bell's autopsy that supposedly demonstrate Sean Bell was drunk when murdered... On the whole, the article stinks of liberalism and its excuses, enough so that you can play it out in your mind: some hipster from Gothamist seated at her Mac (in a converted loft, of course), trying to figure out how to be as inoffensive as possible, concluding "You know what? I'll be fair and balanced! Let me show how both sides were equally drunk!"

This hipster liberal willingness to bend the rules of the game lets them show moral equivalence in any number of ways, by comparing X-vice cop with Y-member of Sean Bell's clique -- thus letting liberals play the game of "a pox on both houses" in which they stand for nothing. The problem, of course, is that they bend the rules exactly the way the pigs want them bent: to show that the late Sean Bell wasn't a saint, etc.

This has been a part of the liberal press game that has been played since the Emmit Till lynching, in which the press renders everything a Shakespearean tragedy -- complete with tragic character flaw in the victim. Emmit Till whistled at a white lady, and should have known that was wrong. Rodney King was high on PCP and should have known better. Patric Dorismond struggled with a vice cop who tried to entrap him, but he shouldn't have done that.

The problem with this aspiration to make Shakespearean tragedy out of racist attacks is that it is always immaterial to the case. What is material to the case is this: an undercover pig pulled a gun on Sean Bell. Bell, justifiably fearing for his life, attempted to drive away. For this simple act of self-preservation, Bell and everyone else in the car were sprayed by bullets from a number of undercover pigs.

If blood-alcohol levels mattered at all to this case, Bell would have gotten a breathalyzer exam rather than sprayed with bullets. There are no excuses here, no matter how hard you look for them. This was a lynching, pure and simple.

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Delores Jones-Brown of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice says the case has drawn attention because it's part of a larger pattern of police shooting unarmed suspects.

Jones-Brown, a former prosecutor, directs the college's Center on Race, Crime and Justice. She cites a string of acquittals of police officers around the nation who killed civilians while on duty.

...

The professor says the sheer number of bullets matters, in this case and in past ones, like the police killing of Amadou Diallo in New York in 1999. The unarmed Diallo died in his apartment doorway after officers fired 41 bullets at him.

...

The bullets fired in the Bell case amounted to nearly 10 percent of those fired by the entire New York Police Department that year.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...ft=1&f=1001

[Scott & Lai 12]

Hipster Liberals Excuse Sean Bell's Lynching

I have always had a love-hate relationship with The Gothamist. On the one hand, it's one of a few blogs that's had its finger on the rapid-fire pulse of New York City. On the other, it openly panders to the class of gentrifying hipster colonists and their "Love me, I'm a liberal" politics. As such, it's outdone the Village Voice in both its good and bad aspects.

Case in point: Gothamist's coverage of the Sean Bell murder case. Gothamist breathlessly repeats the racist Daily News's story on toxicology reports from Sean Bell's autopsy that supposedly demonstrate Sean Bell was drunk when murdered... On the whole, the article stinks of liberalism and its excuses, enough so that you can play it out in your mind: some hipster from Gothamist seated at her Mac (in a converted loft, of course), trying to figure out how to be as inoffensive as possible, concluding "You know what? I'll be fair and balanced! Let me show how both sides were equally drunk!"

This hipster liberal willingness to bend the rules of the game lets them show moral equivalence in any number of ways, by comparing X-vice cop with Y-member of Sean Bell's clique -- thus letting liberals play the game of "a pox on both houses" in which they stand for nothing. The problem, of course, is that they bend the rules exactly the way the pigs want them bent: to show that the late Sean Bell wasn't a saint, etc.

This has been a part of the liberal press game that has been played since the Emmit Till lynching, in which the press renders everything a Shakespearean tragedy -- complete with tragic character flaw in the victim. Emmit Till whistled at a white lady, and should have known that was wrong. Rodney King was high on PCP and should have known better. Patric Dorismond struggled with a vice cop who tried to entrap him, but he shouldn't have done that.

The problem with this aspiration to make Shakespearean tragedy out of racist attacks is that it is always immaterial to the case. What is material to the case is this: an undercover pig pulled a gun on Sean Bell. Bell, justifiably fearing for his life, attempted to drive away. For this simple act of self-preservation, Bell and everyone else in the car were sprayed by bullets from a number of undercover pigs.

If blood-alcohol levels mattered at all to this case, Bell would have gotten a breathalyzer exam rather than sprayed with bullets. There are no excuses here, no matter how hard you look for them. This was a lynching, pure and simple.

Trying to run someone down with a car isn't attempting to drive away, it's vehicular homicide.

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Trying to run someone down with a car isn't attempting to drive away, it's vehicular homicide.

Grazing someones leg is trying to run them down?

[Jack and Barbara 0]

if people had guns drawn and didn't identify themselvves as police as the witnesses swear, I would drive outta there before you could say "Stop."

[chnst 6]

I don't understand why these cops are called racists- 2 of them were black. I think the media let this spin totally out of control. If Sean Bell was white, nobody would have cared! I'm sick of these people pulling the racist card. My husband and I are the only white people on our street and I lost count how many times we've been discriminated by black people- throwing bottles at us, harrassing me on the train (My white butt apparantly doesn't deserve a seat on the subway anymore)

and I don't even want to get into the name calling.

My husband has to justify every friggin' speeding ticket he writes in court, because a perp is more credible than a police officer in NYC.

He's out there right now risking his neck, for idiots like Sharptons safety, and I hope he'll never be in a situation where he will have to make the decision to either shoot and face 25 years in jail or not shoot and die.

Sean Bell and his buddies were not lynched. It's a tragedy how he died, but police officers have the right to shoot if they believe their life is at danger. How many rounds they shoot is completely irrelevant. Sean Bell tried to run one of the cops over.

They had a long criminal record, they were out at a bar notorious for guns, prostitution and drugs and it was clearly stated by more than 1 witness that they were mentioning to get guns.

The groomsmen's testimony contradicted itself from the get-go. It was a fair trial and these cops should have never been charged with manslaughter in the first place.