Disappeared News

For those who have been following the shooting of Sean Bell in Jamaica, N.Y., you probably know that a judge acquitted the cops today.

Bell was shot on his wedding day in  November 2006 by three cops who fired more than 50 bullets into the unarmed man. Some of the bullets even landed on a nearby train station. From the article cited below:

Two of Bell's companions gave eyewitness testimony that the officers acted like Wild West cowboys and opened up without warning. And most importantly Bell was unarmed and seemingly posed no threat to the officers.

I hope things stay quiet in New York.

For those who wonder if police are ever convicted, check out this article, Verdict in Bell Shooting Is No Big Surprise.

From an AP story:

The U.S. attorney's office said after the verdict that it had been monitoring the state's prosecution and would conduct an independent review of the case. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who represents Bell's family, called for a federal investigation.

"This verdict is one round down, but the fight is far from over," Sharpton said on his radio show. "What we saw in court today was not a miscarriage of justice. Justice didn't miscarry. This was an abortion of justice."

A friend and I were in New York when Los Angeles police were acquitted in the Rodney King beating case in 1992. Everyone was afraid that rioting would spread from LA to other cities. We did an intervention in a high school in Manhattan.

How can you explain these things to kids? You can't. No one can explain to me either how come the cops always get off scot free when an innocent black man is shot for no reason.