Question: When is it not a crime for you to shoot 50 bullets into a car full of unarmed men?
Answer: When the people in the car are black and you are a cop, of course.
On November 25, 2006, Sean Bell was killed and two of his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were wounded when New York City cops fired 50 shots into Bell's car. None of the men in the car were armed. The cops were not in uniform and it is unlikely that the people in the car knew they were cops. The cops claimed that they thought the driver was reaching for a gun. One of the cops reloaded his weapon and continued firing even though no shots ever came from the car. Neither Bell nor any of the passengers of the vehicle had actually committed a crime.
Today, a judge found the three officers who were charged in the incident not guilty on all counts. The officers had declined a jury trial in favor of a judge's verdict, which is their right in New York state.
How does the action of these cops fit in with the basic premise that the police are supposed to protect the public? Even if Bell did reach for a gun, how is it justified to fire into the vehicle when the other passengers did not reach for guns and committed no crime? Isn't it the job of the police to protect the public? If the people in the back seat were two attractive white women, would firing randomly into the vehicle still have been acceptable? How is it justified to recklessly fire your weapon so that bullets strike close to people standing on a train platform nearby?
In 1999, Amadou Diallo was gunned down in the foyer of his apartment building because four police officers thought he looked suspicious. They fired a total of 41 bullets at Diallo, killing a man whose only crime was being black in New York City. The officers involved were found not guilty after their trial was moved to an upstate court.
I know there are questions about how good a job the DA in the Sean Bell case did in making the case but the fact of the matter is two unarmed, innocent black men have been gunned down by police in the streets of New York City and no one has had to pay for their deaths.