Message to African-Americans: bounty on your head

Les Payne

April 27, 2008

It is perfectly acceptable for three cops to fire 46 shots at three unarmed men in a car, with 26 of the 9mm bullets piercing human flesh, according to the judicial system, which has acquitted the three cops who killed Sean Bell and injured his two friends.

This is the stripped-down view of State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman's freeing of the detectives who staged the orgy of free-fire.

On the dawn of his wedding day, Bell, 23, was killed by four rounds while leaving his bachelor's party at Kalua Cabaret in Queens. His friend Trent Benefield survived after taking three rounds as did Joseph Guzman, who was hit 19 times.

Street savvy among the cops in the club and those stationed outside might have prevented the 4 a.m. bloodbath. Under the haze of miscommunication, evidence emerged at trial Bell and his black buddies never got the required word that they were under pressure - and later assault - by common-clothes officers of the police department.

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The defense spent much of its trial time making the false case that the officers themselves faced deadly force. The cops were spared cross-examination on the stand because the prosecutor aided the defense by reading their grand jury testimony into the record - making their appearance unnecessary.

In this and other ways, the prosecution, some observers say, was weak, if not outright incompetent. The D.A. performance appears to have made the judge's acquittal decision easier if not self-evident.

The prosecution of such controversial city cases involving cops, some attorneys maintain, tends to break down at one of several critical judicial junctures. In the prosecution of the Amadou Diallo case, the Bronx indictment of second-degree murder against the officers was widely considered to be so heavy as to lean the case against conviction.

In addition, the Diallo case - where cops fired at the 23-year-old African 41 times, striking him 19 - was moved to Albany. All defendants were acquitted. In the Bell case, the defendants were rebuffed in pushing for a change of venue. However, they struck for a judge instead of a jury, angling that the odds were more favorable.

Whereas it's not a foregone conclusion that a judge will rule more favorably for cops, officers tend to prefer being tried by the judicial system of which they are the frontline component. Officers in the Bell case, in league with unindicted colleagues, fired 50 shots. Two of the acquitted had been charged with manslaughter, among other charges; the third faced a reckless endangerment charge.

The question arises anew: Does the Sean Bell killing confirm a sustained campaign of police terror against New York's black citizenry?

At the time of the incident in November 2006, the Bell killing was the sixth such police attack executed upon unarmed and innocent black men in 9 years, one every 20 months. This pattern overlays an NYPD policy of street-harassment so stunning in its routine as to render the cat's toying with the mouse a game of disinterest.

NYPD's "stop and frisk" report in 2006 disclosed that cops had questioned 508,540 persons; 85.7 percent of those stopped by the majority white force were black or Hispanic. Ninety percent were innocent of any illegal acts, despite police efforts. Probable cause brought the white 10 percent under police suspicion; the very skin color of the nonwhites constituted probable cause. No class of black man in the city escapes this provocation, as experienced by some of the most circumspect and well-heeled.

The half-million names have been filed on a retrievable crime database at headquarters. The New York Civil Liberties Union continues to oppose such police-state tactics as a violation of citizens' rights. Such paperwork criminalization of innocent, nonwhite New Yorkers is part of the commissioner's nonviolent campaign.

The Bell case appears to have fallen into a pattern of injustice where cops are acquitted of street killings of African-Americans. Instead the victims can reach closure only by cash settlement from the city treasury.

Accordingly, Patrick Dorismond, whose killer was never indicted - got $2.25 million; the death of Diallo - whose killers walked - brought his parents $3 million. Now come payoff time for Benefield, Guzman and Bell's family.

Is this the bounty for an African-American shot to death by cops? What about justice?