Democracy for Vancouver

NEW YORK (AP) — Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.
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Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends…

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren’t charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.
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Justice Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict in a packed Queens courtroom…

Cooperman indicated that the police officers’ version of events was more credible than the victims’ version. “The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified” in firing, he said.
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None of the officers took the witness stand in his own defense. Instead, Cooperman heard transcripts of the officers testifying before a grand jury, saying they believed they had good reason to use deadly force. The judge also heard testimony from Bell’s two injured companions, who insisted the maelstrom erupted without warning.
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The truth emerged when the smoke cleared: There was no weapon inside Bell’s blood-splattered car.

I have several problems with this, but the first is legal, and since I’m a maritime lawyer far too many years out of law school to remember, I’ll have to depend on others to correct me.

I understand that grand jury testimony is sometimes available to be read out in court when the witness in question is not available (i.e., dead or otherwise unable to testify). But how is it that in this case the officers were available to testify but chose not to, and yet their grand jury testimony was made part of the court record? Where was the prosecution’s chance to cross-examine the cops?

I understand that the prosecutor would have been present to question the cops at the grand jury, but as the saying goes, “any prosecutor worth his salt could indict a ham sandwich.” The prosecutor does not ask the questions the same way, or necessarily even evince all the evidence (or reveal his prosecutorial strategy) at the grand jury stage. The prosecutor will want to keep his/her powder dry for trial. So a grand jury transcript is as good as letting the cops testify unchallenged.

I can only hope the families have good representation to take the cops and the city to court for civil damages. This has happened far too many times.

And, strangely, it’s never a group of black cops mistakenly shooting a white guy 50 times.

On the actual policing side, I’m not a cop, I don’t know what it’s like. But obviously there is a community policing problem in New York that hasn’t been addressed. If these cops knew the neighborhood and its residents - if they lived there - they would not be so quick to draw their weapons.

Just reading that article, you can smell the acrid mix of sweat, fear and testosterone at work. To empty your gun not once, but twice? How did such a fear-mad person ever pass the psych test to become a cop in the first place?

Abner Louima. Amadou Diallo. Patrick Dorismond. Ousmane Zongo. Timothy Stansbury. Sean Bell.

When will it stop?

Having an African American president won’t be a miracle cure, but it would help reduce the fear of The Other, at least among those whose fears are capable of being diminished. As for the Michael Olivers of the world, we can only try to keep them unarmed - and unbadged.

William Hardgraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem, brought his 12-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter to hear the verdict. “It could have been my son, it could have been my daughter” shot like Bell that night, he said.

He didn’t know what result he had expected.

“I hoped it would be different this time. They shot him 50 times,” Hardgraves said. “But of course, it wasn’t.”