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Tag: Sean Bell

  • Officer who shot first at Sean Bell is fired

    The departmental wheels of justice turn very slowly, but they do indeed turn. It’s been six years since Sean Bell was killed. Leaving aside the merits of the case against the officers (If I remember correctly, I think my position was that the officers indeed were not criminally guilty, except maybethe officer who fired first), note that Ray Kelly didn’t have to do this. It’s not like this is still much in the public’s eye. It’s not like he’ll gain politically from this (unless, however, he runs for mayor). Maybe he just thought it was the right thing to do.

    From the New York Times:

    Law enforcement officials said word of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s decision came late Friday. Detective Isnora, an 11-year veteran, will not collect a pension, one official said. “He loses everything,” the official said.

  • Sean Bell officers won’t face federal charges

    Nor should they.

    The story from the New York Times.

    You can read everything I’ve written about Sean Bell. This post is probably the best, if you just want one.

    Also, on principle, I’m against recharging people at the federal level. Smacks of double jeopardy to me. The Fifth Amendment is pretty explicit: “[No person shall] be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” That’s what trying somebody at the federal level is. One crime. One trial. Here’s to the Bill of Rights!

    Too bad the Supreme Court begs to differ.

  • Meanwhile, in the NYPD

    The brass is throwing the book at the officers involved in the Sean Bell shooting.

    What’s so unsatisfying about this, is that such discipline makes cops paranoid, and for good reason. What’s the moral? For police, it’s that if the department wants to get you (if Al Sharpton shouts loud enough), they will. Obviously the order had been given that heads must roll. But at the same time the anti-police public won’t be satisfied. Anything less than jail, being fired, and perhaps a public flogging in considered a slap on the wrist.

    The New York Times reports:
    If the charges, known as administrative charges, are upheld, the officers could face discipline ranging from loss of pay to retraining to firing. But the internal investigation has been suspended as federal prosecutors weigh civil rights charges in the case.
    If you think 31 bullets was obsessive, go for that guy. Clearly, as I have said, mistakes were made. Do I think police were criminally guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. No. Do I think punishable things may have been done. Yes.

    But to charge someone with “failing to thoroughly process the crime scene”? That’s bullshit. Don’t go after the guys who showed up after the bullets stopped flying. The idea of crime-scene integrity is a myth. You try and preserve a crime scene with multiple shooting victims. I have. It’s not easy. The O.J. trial set the bar too high.

    CSI it’s not. Police and paramedics have jobs to do and lives to save. Do you order your commanding officer to stay out of the scene? People and cars and belonging are searched. Somebody steps on some blood or kicks a shell casing. I know I have. And you know what, it doesn’t really matter. It’s policing. Policing in the real world with real people. Get real.

  • Sean Bell Verdict May Deepen Mistrust of Police

    You can listen to my appearance on the Talk of the Nation radio broadcast.

  • Regarding Sean Bell

    Clearly something wrong happened because an innocent man was killed,” Peter Moskos, author of Cop in the Hood, and a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told TIME. “But that’s not what the system was testing. They were testing if there was reasonable doubt. I think the verdict is fair, but it doesn’t address that this man was killed. The court system is no place to address these problems.

    The whole article is here.

    The Sean Bell verdict came out at 3pm, Amsterdam time. At 5pm, I got a call on my temporary Amsterdam cell phone from Time Magazine (thanks to John Jay’s public relations and my quick thinking wife for getting my phone number to the reporter). It was an awkward interview, because 1) I don’t like talking on cell phones. And 2) I’m standing in a bar in the Leidseplein with a gypsy band busking outside. I felt a very long way away from the Queens Courthouse. I was very worried about failing to get my thoughts together and being misquoted on such a sensitive topic.

    Madison Gray captured my words and thoughts perfectly (and he mentioned my book).

  • 3 Detectives in Bell Shooting Acquitted

    You heard it here first in my March 6 post.

    My gut knows the police did something wrong because Sean Bell is dead. But what should a reasonable police officer have done? I don’t know. I never had to shoot my gun on duty. My gun was never the only thing between me and an SUV trying to kill me. I have doubts. As long as Justice Cooperman has some of the same doubts, the officers will and should walk free.

  • Cops tell the truth

    If that statement shocks you, you’re a fool. All cops don’t tell the truth all of the time. But cops tell the truth a lot more than many people seem to think. At least in Baltimore there is no culture of lying on the stand or anywhere else.

    Why would I perjure myself and risk my job and my reputation just to convict some teen-age crack dealer? I don’t live in that neighborhood. I’ll do my job, play by the rules, and go home, thank you very much.

    In the Queens trial of the officers who killed Sean Bell, a police officer testified last week that the officers identified themselves as police before shooting. This was largely discounted by many. The assumption was that an officer would always lie to protect a fellow cop.

    Today a person who lives near the shooting testified that the police did in fact yell a lot before shooting… just like the cops said. This is huge for the defense of the officers.

    Maybe they’re both lying, or maybe not. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

    My point isn’t about Sean Bell and his friends. The cop in me is bothered when people reflexively believe the testimony of thugs and their mothers rather than hard-working and dedicated police officers. If a cop says one thing, and a criminal says another, believe the cop!

    Too often TV news, in some attempt to get “both sides of the story,” talk to some thug’s mother. The mother says her son is an angel and couldn’t have been doing anything because he was home asleep at the time, or in church, or helping homeless orphans with their homework.

    Guess what? Mothers always think their son is an angel. That’s their job!

    Here’s a case of a poor mom, seeing the truth. From my Baltimore notes:

    We pull up on 700 N Port St and [my partner] knows one of the kids there. [My partner] says he promised to arrest him if he saw him there again. When [my partner] gets out of the car with cuffs, the guy takes off. [My partner] chases and I follow in the car, calling us out on the radio. I see them run down Madison and up an alley towards Ashland. I turn up Collington and make a right on Ashland and stop in front of Bradford.

    I can’t figure out what’s going on with [my partner], who it turns out lost the trail when the guy booked in a vacant. But [my partner] thinks he’s still in there. Meanwhile I see who I think is him stroll off Bradford. That’s him, I think. So I get out and he starts to take off again, but another car pulls up from the other side on Madison and he stops.

    I grab him, the other cop says, “put him down” and we put him on the ground. [The other officer is] holding his arm back Koga style [a way that doesn’t hurt, but will hurt if the suspect moves or get squirrely]. His mothers appears (as they are wont to do) and starts screaming, “Why you hurting him? Why you holding his arm back. He ain’t done nothing!” I’m waiting for [my partner] to come and say if it’s him or not.

    After a bit [my partner] does show up and says that’s him. We stand the kid up, and another cop (there are many here by now) says, “what’s that in your mouth?” Out of the kid’s mouth pop one coke vial, then a second. The mother, looking on from about ten feet away, sees her angel pop coke vials out of his mouth and falls out [faints]!

    That, indeed, is comedy. We call an ambo for the woman and give the 16-year-old kid shit for doing that to his moms.

  • In the Big City

    The trial of the officers involved in the Sean Bell Shooting continues with lots of interesting testimony.

    The justice department declares that New York City’s auxiliary police aren’t really police. At least when it comes to paying benefits to the family of two officers killed while patrolling in uniform.

    And Governor Paterson, who I seem to like more and more, first admitted he slept around a bit. Now he says he smoked some weed and snorted some blow… you know, back in the 1970s, when it seems like everyone was doing it. This was the man to party with! Too bad I was only 8.

    The governor said, “Most Americans during that period of time tried a whole lot more than that, and then gone on and led responsible lives.”

    Does this mean he thinks people shouldn’t be locked up for drug use? Probably not. Politicians never have problems being hypocrites when it comes to the war on drugs. But maybe Paterson is different. Here’s hoping.

  • Always the narcs getting into trouble

    Too often, almost predictably, undercover vice units are involved in scandal. Even the Sean Bell shooting has a strong narc connection.

    The Night Club Task Force involved in the Sean Bell shooting was formed in reaction to the Chelsea abduction and murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore. These undercover vice and narcotics officers worked to establish patterns of wrongdoings in clubs, such as alcohol sales to minors, to force closure with civil proceedings and nuisance abatement laws. Evidently they did a good job. Perhaps the unit should have been disbanded with accolades. Instead, after three months in Chelsea, commanders sent the 20 or so police officers to Queens. In the killing of Sean Bell, this unit’s undercover vice and narcotics mentality is very evident.

    In a drug arrest, it is important to find drugs on a person. Otherwise there is no case. Vice and narcotics officers are ingrained to work in ways that build strong court cases. But guns aren’t drugs. If the officers believed that Bell and his friends were going to get a gun, they should have stopped the suspects before they got to their car. But they wanted an arrest. If the men weren’t in the car with the gun, no court case would have had a change. But still, any illegal gun would be confiscated and them men would spend a night in jail

    Undercover units should be limited to operations that uniformed officers can’t handle. Because plainclothes police know and feel they are police to the bone, when performing police duties they can too easily forget or fail to convince citizens that they are, in fact, police. Badges can be bought on eBay. The flash of a shield isn’t enough, especially when a gun is involved.

    Uniformed foot patrol can work with bars and nightclubs to alleviate problems rather than sting them out of business. There is nothing about a rowdy bar that a good cop or two can’t handle. Local beat cops know the area. Officers on foot are rarely involved in controversial shootings because they are more familiar with the surrounding and less likely to be afraid. The good old-fashioned beat cop… Nobody is better at keeping the peace. Instead of drug cops trying to make a good arrest, beat cops focused on public safety would have saved the life of Sean Bell and the careers of three police officers.

  • The Trial in the Killing of Sean Bell

    Sean Bell, an unarmed black man, should not have died. But the officers on trial won’t be convicted of anything major. The police certainly make mistakes. We all do. Like it or not, mistakes aren’t usually crimes, especially for police.

    After any high-profile police shooting, there is the hope that time will reveal the truth and truth will lead to justice. This trial won’t bring truth or justice because there is no single truth.

    In the Sean Bell shooting, there are as many truths as there were bad choices. On many different levels the events leading up to Sean Bell’s death were not exactly ideal police work. Yet everybody behaved rationally in their own way.

    Sean Bell left a club and thought a black man with a gun was a robber. Bell drove away, hitting the gunman in self-defense. An undercover officer fired in self-defense when a drunk man he thought was armed hit him with his vehicle. The officer’s partners fired when they thought they were being fired on from the vehicle.

    It only takes one bullet to kill. While the number of shots fired makes the headline, what matters is why police shot at all. The first shot, combined with adrenaline and danger, often causes other officers to shoot. This is the so-called “contagion effect.”

    Police aren’t supposed to shoot at or from moving vehicles. But police are trained to shoot when they think their life is in danger. If that threat exists for 10 seconds, they will fire for 10 seconds. When I was a police officer, my gun held 17 rounds, two more than allowed in New York City. I could fire 50 rounds in 15 seconds. I was trained to reload quickly and “get back in the game.” If you don’t like that, change the training or change the gun. But don’t blame police officers.

    This trial has become a symbol for race and policing in New York City. Are police too quick to see young African-American men as threats? Would so many shots be fired if Bell and his friends were white? Perhaps not, but police kill white people too. You just don’t hear about it because there is no white version of Al Sharpton.

    It’s unfair to unload three centuries of American racial discrimination and police mistreatment onto the backs of these three police officers, especially when two happen to be black. The shame is that short of vigils and riots, our society has no ritualized way to atone for collective sins.

    Sean Bell isn’t on trial. Society isn’t on trial. The New York Police Department isn’t on trial. Three men are. Conviction would mean the loss of their jobs and freedom. But a guilty verdict won’t bring Sean Bell back to life. And acquittals won’t return the police officers’ lives to normal.

    Despite the police cliché, “better to be judged by twelve than carried by six,” police don’t want to be judged by twelve. Police, often for good reason, don’t trust city juries. The officers want a bench trial so their fate is in the hands of a Queens judge rather than a Queens jury.

    Judges are better at deciding cases on facts rather than prejudice and personal experience. Of course judges, especially senior white judges, have fewer reasons to have prejudice against police officers. This senior judge, Justice Cooperman, is certainly no cop hater, but he’s also no pushover. Cooperman actually tried, convicted, and imprisoned two police officers in 1986.

    Still, beyond a reasonable doubt is a tough legal standard to prove. Was there a need to shoot in the first place? Was a threat still present when the last shot was fired? If the answer is yes or even maybe—anything but a strong no means no conviction.

    My gut knows the police did something wrong because Sean Bell is dead. But what should a reasonable police officer have done? I don’t know. I never had to shoot my gun on duty. My gun was never the only thing between me and an SUV trying to kill me. I have doubts. As long as Justice Cooperman has some of the same doubts, the officers will and should walk free.