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No Rights Charge Against NY Police in 50-Shot Death
NEW YORK - Several New York City police officers who killed an unarmed black man in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day will not face criminal civil rights charges, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.
A man wears a Sean Bell shirt at a demonstration near New York Police headquarters in lower Manhattan May 7, 2008. (Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar)
Sean Bell, 23, was killed and two friends injured outside a strip club after his bachelor party in November 2006. His death outraged New York's black community, who contended that no white suspect would have been shot so many times, if at all.
In April 2008, a New York state judge cleared two of the officers of manslaughter and a third of reckless endangerment. Federal authorities then launched a separate investigation that could have brought civil rights charges against the officers.
"After a careful and thorough review, a team of experienced federal prosecutors and FBI agents determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the law enforcement personnel who fired at Bell ... acted willfully," the Justice Department said.
"Accordingly, the investigation into this incident has been closed," it said.
Civil rights leader Al Sharpton, highly critical of the police, said he had spoken to Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday and expressed his "extreme disappointment" at the decision.
"Even though two of the three officers in question were black, we will not stop our pursuit of justice in this matter until every measure in the criminal and civil arena has been exhausted. Fifty shots on an unarmed man who engaged in no crime is intolerable," he said in a statement.
On the night of the shooting, the undercover officer who fired first, had followed Bell and his two friends to Bell's car believing they went to fetch a gun to settle a dispute at the strip club. The police officer opened fire after being grazed by the car as Bell attempted to drive away.
Several other officers reached Bell's car after the initial confrontation and said they believed the undercover officer was being fired at from inside the vehicle.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by Philip Barbara)
28 Comments so far
Show AllIn Portland recently, a man was shot backing out of a house with his hands behind his back. He was shot with a rubber bullet, and when he reacted to that (immediately reaching for the place he was hit), he was shot dead with an AR-15. The officers involved "believed" their lives were immediately threatened. "Believed" is the operating word here...
That's how American Fasicm works folks. Windows have more rights than the citizens do. Don't believe me break a window and see whose rights are protected by our protectors. I guarentee the window will be made to look like the apotheosis of liberty herself while the vandal will be made out to be an anarchist, terrorist, or both. Either way the pigs can beat the tar out of you for doing it. You break a window, we break your bones and toss you in jail on trumped up charges for your trouble. Gotta love our police state.
Very true! Especially when the window belongs to PNC Bank or Mcdonalds.
If you're one of those kids who thinks that a "license to kill" is the best part of the job, there's never been a better time to join an Amerikan police force!
Given the average Amerikan judge and jury, the worst that can happen is a little spin through the crime-wash of the justice system to confirm that it was a Good Shoot. You don't mind a little chamois wipe-down, do ya?
Hmmm... funny how retired police commanders and police union heads don't ever seem to get around to writing Letters to the Editor complaining about THIS variety of revolving-door justice.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Such officers are being produced by the thousands (including the military and private killer contracts) and they are safe from prosecution if they shoot the right people.
Perhaps it is the same worldwide.
The police station where Australian Aboriginal Mulrunji Doomadgee was beaten to death was fitted with video cameras which were to be left on at all times. The sole police officer present turned off the video cameras, and when they were turned on again, Mulrunji Doomadgee lay dead with several broken ribs, a busted liver and spleen.
Had this not been done by a police officer, it definitely would have been an open and shut case. The case was not initially brought to trial, but Public demonstration seemed to eventually bear fruit when the officer was brought to trial some five years later. Of course, being a police officer, the result was predictable not guilty. Shades of Rodney King?
Ozzies copy the USAns in a lot of ways - almost as badly as Canucks, from what I gather reading the Toronto Star every day.
Right now, Torontans are engaging in a massive multi-week hate and harassment-fest against the bus and trolley drivers and their union - and they aren't even on strike!
I also read the star, what I don't understand is why would someone who professes to be a conservative constantly posts in a paper that they contend is leftist or liberal? Remember the anti-union hatred that spewed forth during the GM bailout? During any strike, they are out in full force trying to put their definition of the situation on events. Heaven help you if you are pro-labour or anti-capitalist, it is just amazing how short sighted people are when it comes to identifying their own interests. Then again, the media certain does have a way of obsfucating just about every issue it presents, at least we have access to some good old Trotskyist literature and even groups if you are so inclined. The years of struggle against capitalist hegemony even when fought on a strictly ideological level is very wearing on people-those folks have been in the trenches for decades but even if they appear as the "lunatic fringe" it is hard to take exception with their theoretical and practical applications of a bonifide working class program. Which is what we need right about now. To bad the progressive just don't get it.
RR
"To Protect and to Serve"
To Protect the STATE
and to Serve the Criminals in Charge of the STATE.
Well, this is what happens when you have a corrupt STATE - A Too BIG to Fail Government.
Police Brutality happens to the people.
The Police are let off the hook, because they are protected by the power of the government.
The STATE, the Police, the WHOLE System is corrupt.
We Need to END This Corruption. We Need to END The STATE (by STATE I mean the Government).
I completely agree with you.
But, it USE to be POLICE: SERVE & PROTECT.
Now days it is POLICE: LAW ENFORCEMENT.
We went from Police protecting us....
To Police Literally Enforcing laws upon us!!!!
We the people are supposed to be the government.
Not slaves to Federal employees who beat us down Literally with Legislation.
What if they guy was tazzered to death, probably wouldn't even get a court date.
You are absolutely correct.
Police people used to wear slacks and dress shoes.
They were public servants.
Now the Police FORCE look like they are in the Military.
They wear helmets and combat boots
They carry Automatic Rifles.
They are prepared for WAR.
WAR with us, the people.
Which federal employees are beating you down? You mean like when we when we cited and imposed stiff fines on Mr. Murray after he recklessly entombed nine miners at Crandall canyon?
...
Politicians in a capitalist state are the administrators who work for the capitalist class that owns it-usually they are the flunkies of the family who can't be trusted with the family fortune so they do charity work-go into politics, buy themselves a foundation....whatever. If this democracy thing gets to far out of hand well, it is time to call in the military-to restore order, protect private property, break a strike up as it is vital to the "national interests" which is another way of saying they are protecting the interests of their own class and then they generalize this particular interest into the national interests-like securing middle eastern oil. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....just like yesterday and I get on my knees and pray. F98k we been fooled again!
RR
The police are out of control. The drug laws give them too much power. As long as the little self centered corporatist Bloomberg buys his elections nothing will change out in Queens. At least the cops in this most recent abuse of power should be retrained and taught how to act like civil servants. Cheney set a bad example with his gun and alcohol use. The Cops were high and got away with murder.
Every person in this world who has a weapon is a killer waiting to die.
How many of all the people who are body-dying from this world at all times aren't being murdered in one way or another?
For once I'am in complete agreement with all the comments here. There have been so many murders by police in recent years and these policemen have been found innocent of any wrong doing.Who have found them innocent? Police commisions,members of the various departments involved in the "investigations" to determine wheather or not it was a "good shoot"and of course civic groups made up of appointed members of the more "responsible" members of the community.And of course the judges!!The police exist for the soul purpose of protecting the rich upper class,politicians and government officials.And if a police murder squad just happens to murder an innocent man thought to be looking for a gun in his car by shooting him FIFTY times so what? We are protected by our police authorities and our judges.We needed a little target practice anyway and who cares if he was black?.......and the beat goes on
Translation?
Cops drunk at a strip club are "Super Citizens" armed, and fully permitted to kill anybody they don't like.
No Investigation. Nothing to see here. Move Along. What a society.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I think this is part of a larger cultural change in which people are unwilling to question authority, especially authority that wears a uniform. It doesn't matter if it is the police, the military, or the TSA...people do not want to question what they do.
I saw a video of a TSA officer violently throwing an unarmed, but upset woman on the floor. She was apparently upset but was not a threat. A relative of mine (Democrat) sitting next to me commented something to the effect of that's what they have to do to keep us safe.
I was talking to my aunt several months ago, saying I was upset that Obama wouldn't release any more photos showing detainee abuse in Iraq. My aunt (Democrat again) replied that there was nothing new to see and it would only cause problems. Case shut there, I guess!
Anyone remember that kid who got tasered by the cops at a Q and A session with John Kerry at the University of Florida? There WAS an apology in that case...the student had to apologize to the cops!
I think two unarmed teenage kids have been tasered to death in Michigan in the last year. For one, the offense was underage drinking. He was 15.
Look how quickly Obama ate that tepid "the police acted stupidly comment" which had arguably been the boldest thing he's done since becoming President. They arrested a guy at his own house for pete's sake and the President had to apologize to the police?
How did this come about? When did we become a nation of blind trust in authority?
How does shooting an unarmed man 50 times make any civilian safer? What were they protecting the public from?
Did they think he was a giant monster?
It could have been race hatred, race fear, sloppy police work, a combo of all three, I don't know. I just want it to stop and am not convinced that my skin color will protect me from such a massacre, which is why I go out of my way to avoid the pigs. I don't even make any sort eye contact with them.
"Windows have more rights than the citizens do. Don't believe me break a window and see whose rights are protected by our protectors. I guarentee the window will be made to look like the apotheosis of liberty herself while the vandal will be made out to be an anarchist, terrorist, or both. Either way the pigs can beat the tar out of you for doing it. You break a window, we break your bones and toss you in jail on trumped up charges for your trouble. Gotta love our police state."
That's one reason why I don't condone window-breaking by activists. That minority of protestors do nothing but rile up the goon squad, frighten innocent people, and get themselves thrown in jail. You're not going to awaken any kind of consciousness in a fast food employee with bricks and urine. They won't have any sort of epiphany and take off their uniforms and join the protest.
Or they are cops themselves-agent provocateurs as the expession goes. Here's allot more: The 41 bullets pumped into the unarmed 22-year-old African immigrant Amadou Diallo in the vestibule of his home in 1999? Or the 20-odd bullets pumped into the backs of 18-year-old Antonio Rosario and 22-year-old Hilton Vega in 1995 in the Bronx as they lay on the ground as ordered by the police before their killing? Or will they draw the line at a more economical blast of bullets, such as police used to kill Timothy Stansbury, an unarmed 19-year-old, on the roof of his Brooklyn housing project in 2004, or Mingo Kenneth Mason, who was shot and killed outside a Harlem project with one bullet this September? The police arsenal of terror is not limited to semi-automatics: who can forget Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, brutally sodomized with a broom handle and beaten within an inch of his life in 1997 after being hauled into a police station for “questioning”?
It’s been 15 years since the videotaped vicious beating of Rodney King showed the world what happens all the time to black people in racist America. Young black men have always been targets of racist violence in this capitalist system. But not even an aged black woman sitting in her own home is safe from the cops. In Atlanta, 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston managed to fire several shots in self-defense before cops with a “no knock” warrant broke down her door supposedly looking for drugs and killed her in a hail of bullets on November 21. One week later, protesters stormed police barricades in front of Kathryn Johnston’s house. A church meeting was flanked with signs mocking the city’s paid leave for the killer cops. One read: “Kill a Black Citizen and Get Paid.” We say: Down with the racist “war on drugs”! No to gun control!
http://www.icl-fi.org/english/leaflets/50rounds.html ( source)
Now we have the first black president, and nothing has changed.
Race does not matter as much as economic class.
It is part of what I have named the American Aparthied.
RR
White cops will kill again. Take away their guns now!
The article said 2 of the 3 cops were BLACK.
And ther was like 70 bullets and 1 gun only holds like 12 bullits.
DO the math, some of the BLACK COPS shot him too.
They probably had to reload too.
ANYWAYS LETS NOT MAKE THIS A BLACK AND WHITE THING.
ITS A COPS VERSUS THE PUBLIC THING.
COPS BLACK, WHITE, ASIAN, HISPANIC, ANY COP HAS TOO MUCH POWER, AND THEY ALL SEEM TO LIKE TO ABUSE IT.
Can anyone find the actual police reports on this case or any other information?
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Just remember we have the right to bare arm's, not infringed upon, so we need to look a little harder at our rights and use them without fear of infringer's and shut them up with that right if needed to put them in there place, infringer's are not citizens like they want you to think or they wouldn't do it, that's what this country was built for freedom, and if we need too we can take them out of our country what ever way needed, so use your rights and fight to keep our freedom, history has repeated itself, eye for an eye can make you see the light JUST A THOUGHT TO THINK ABOUT...GOD BLESS AMERICA don't let the anti american's see it coming till it's too late