Sean Bell: When is Enough, Enough?

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Friday April 25, 2008, three detectives – Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper, were found not guilty on all charges in the shooting death of Sean Bell, an unarmed groom-to-be, who was the victim of a 50 shot tirade by the NYPD. Saturday April 26, 2008, Al Sharpton, along with Sean Bell’s family, led hundreds of angry protesters in the 20-block march 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street.
After hearing this verdict, there are so many emotions to describe what I felt, anger, frustration, sadness, empathy, bewilderment, but what best captures how I feel is just a sense of emptiness. I questioned writing this article, for the simple question, what’s the point? How is this bringing justice or helping his fiancée cope with her loss? I really don’t know, but I just wanted to offer people a chance to vent and express their feelings. Before I assume that everyone is clear of what took place on Friday 25, 2008, we need to first analyze what took place on early morning November 25, 2006.

The undercover officers and detectives involved had been deployed to Club Kahlua in Jamaica, Queens, because of the club’s history of lawlessness. Club patrons and neighbors had made dozens of calls to the NYPD, reporting guns, drug sales, and prostitution, and the police had recently made eight arrests there.

The night of November 24, undercover officer Gescard Isnora, who fired the first shots at Bell, had observed a man put a stripper’s hand on his belt to reassure her that he had a gun and would protect her from an aggressive customer. Outside the club, Isnora (who is African-American) and his colleagues witnessed a heated exchange between Bell’s entourage and an apparent pimp over the services of a prostitute, during which the pimp kept his hand inside his jacket, as if holding a gun.

Isnora alleges that after the hooker refused to have sex with more than two of the group’s eight members, Bell—presumably referring to the pimp—said, “Let’s fuck him up,” and Bell’s companion, Joseph Guzman, said, “Yo, get my gun, get my gun.” The detective also reported these exchanges over his cell phone to his colleagues in the area.

Feeling the danger level mounting, Isnora retrieved his gun from his unmarked car. When he returned to the scene, Bell and his two companions had gotten into their car, ready to drive away. Isnora thought that a drive-by shooting of the pimp could be imminent, and so moved to question the car’s occupants. He held out his badge (by his account), identified himself as a police officer (by his account), and told the car to stop. Instead, Bell drove forward and hit Isnora and a police minivan, backed up, and then slammed into the minivan again, nearly hitting Isnora a second time.

Isnora, who was standing on the passenger side of Bell’s car, claims that he saw Guzman reach for his waistband. Believing that he faced a deadly threat, Isnora opened fire. The four other undercovers and detectives at the scene also started shooting, killing Bell and wounding Guzman and Bell’s other companion in the car, Trent Benefield.

NO GUN turned up in Bell’s car. (Benefield alleges that Isnora began shooting before the car started moving,. The barrage of 50 bullets was so fast that no witness at the scene remembers hearing more than eight rounds fired off. None of the officers had ever used their guns before, moreover, despite making hundreds of arrests, including for gun possession. Guzman had a long prison record, including a sentence for an armed robbery during which he shot at his victim.

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury. Detectives Isnora and Oliver had faced the most charges: 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter, with a possible sentence of 25 years in prison; felony assault, 1st and 2nd degree; a misdemeanor, reckless endangerment, with a possible one-year sentence. Detective Cooper was charged only with two counts of reckless endangerment. A Port Authority police officer testified in the trial, recalling the errant round that struck the AirTrain platform near 94th Avenue on Nov. 25, 2006, as officers opened fire with 50 shots.

The damage to the AirTrain station was recorded on video and played on news stations repeatedly after the shooting, and that particular bullet became characteristic of the prosecution’s argument that the shooting was wild and chaotic.

Of course reading over the recap, certain parts of the story would be considered hearsay depending on which side your opinion rest either with the defense or prosecution. However, there are certain things that just don’t add up. For one, it has been well documented that none of the officers had ever used their gun in the line of fire, prior to this night. Maybe it’s just me, but my question is, why in the world would you send inexperienced officers to an area that is notorious for its crime rate? Secondly, if an out of uniform officer starts approaching your car, regardless of what he might have said, which is debatable, what would you do? I’m not justifying running anybody over, but is it fair to assume that maybe, just maybe he was just trying to get out of dangers way? Thirdly, during the trial the defense successfully weakened Guzman’s testimony by bringing up his previous criminal record. I’m having a hard time understanding what his record had to do with that night. Did the cops look up his resume on the police scanner and therefore know the type of individuals they were dealing with? No; at the time of the exchange, the cops new nothing of any of the victims.

As for Judge Arthur Cooperman, he sat through weeks of testimony, and decided, in the end, that the defense witnesses’ version of what happened was more credible than the prosecution’s. He said the prosecution had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. In the last analysis, that is the acid test in any criminal case. Which brings me to my fourth and final question, although I have at least ten more I can recall. Let’s assume that ALL of the witness’s stories aren’t cohesive, shouldn’t we at the least convict the officers on some of the charges? How can 50 shots be fired against unarmed citizens and the detectives not receive at the least the reckless endangerment charge? What about the stray bullet that hit the AirTrain Platform, barely missing a local passenger? For those officers to be cleared of all charges, is criminal in itself.

What saddens me about this case is although I hated the verdict, I honestly wasn’t that surprised. However, this is something that one can never grow immune to. For many, this case brought back tragic memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo, who was gunned down by 41 bullets courtesy of NY police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a hostile reaction which brought the arrest of hundreds who led a demonstration in the streets. Also, charges were not brought in the case of Eleanor Bumpurs, a mentally ill, 66-year-old black woman who was killed by two shotgun blasts fired by a police officer evicting her from her apartment in the Bronx in 1984.

Following the firestorm of questions he received from comments made by his former spiritual advisor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama delivered one of the most powerful and honest speeches on racism in America. He spoke of much of the resentments held by both Black and White Americans, and encouraged an open dialogue on the subject matter. Many experts/analysts dismissed his request, and downplayed the idea that we still deal with racism in America. I have decided to offer a few blogs of reactions from people following the verdict of the Sean Bell case; they were posted from the NY Times. However, there is one more notion that I must put to rest before you can read the posted comments. I’ve heard repeatedly in the last few days, through the papers, internets, and radio stations that that this can’t be racism because two of the police officers were black; this thinking is completely asinine. No one is calling the officers racist; it is the criminal justice system in its entirety that is the culprit here. It’s the lack of value they show for African American, specifically, African American male’s lives.

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April 25th

As a law abiding, tax paying member of New York City - I am extremely glad at the decision. The NYPD will hopefully continue its efforts to reign in the criminals and the criminally inclined who somehow do not believe that they need to behave like regular members of society.

These people who were shot and killed were already criminals, who incidentally were not involved in any crime at the time they were shot. However, they had their macho criminal behavior on full display at the time. No regrets.

Also, 2 black officers shooting black guys is NOT racism. Get off of it. Great job NYPD and congratulations to the officers.

Posted by Matt

April 25th

“What am I supposed to teach my fourth grade students about justice in this country?”

Teach him not to get drunk at a club, get in a fight, and then talk about getting your gun. Teach him to be calm and collected and not to try and run someone over with your car, particularly police officers. Teach him to respect the law, and to listen to the order of a police officer. If any of these simple lessons had been followed, none of this would have happened.

As a NYC public school teacher, I see countless numbers of kids who are younger versions of Sean Bell and his friends. They go about their lives participating in destructive and illegal behaviors, and then cry racism when they are faced with whatever (natural or forced) consequences ensue.
To say that this is racist incident is so ignorant! This is not racist: this is a matter of grown men partaking in illegal behavior and trying to run over a policeman, and then having to deal with the consequences.

Posted by colleen

April 25th

I am really tired of hearing the number 50 be important in this case or any other. It is not. Police are trained to empty their weapon if they have cause to fire and rightly so. If the cause for lethal force is there it means a life and death situation, and should be used to its completion. You do not shoot a man once, wait and see if he shoots back and then shoot again. You make sure that person is dead. You do not wound a man threatening your life, you kill him. That is the end of that story.

The only question is was the FIRST shot reasonable. Obviously the judge set aside the emotional nature of this case and came to the conclusion that there was at least some reasonable doubt. Which is of course the standard in our system, which people often forget.

Did the officers behave irresponsibly? Most likely. Could it have been handled better? Absolutely. But were the officers beyond reasonably doubt acting in a criminal way when they fired on a car that struck an officer and a police van (unmarked or not), identified or not, at least from what I’ve read, I don’t think so.

Posted by GM