Crystaline

I'm so utterly disgusted with the verdict. How is there no justice for unloading 50 bullets into a human being? When will it finally be enough? 60? 80? 100?

It's absurd and just downright inhumane. My heart goes out to Sean Bell's family. They must be in so much pain.

migamoo

Can you add a source please? Some people might not be familiar with this case.

pacifierrocks

I have a feeling that I'll be in the minority on this but I'm not upset with the verdict. I think you have to take in the totality of the circumstances on this case. Police officers don't get second chances a lot of the time and have to make split second decisions. Is it a tragedy what happened? Absolutely. In a perfect world it wouldn't but police officers, as much as people would hope they weren't, are human. They make judgements and decisions based on that. From what I understand, it was dark, they though there wasn't a gun(none of found), one of the officiers(the one that unloaded most of the 50 bullets) got clipped by the car, the car kept hit the unmarked surveillance van, and might have kept moving(I'm not too sure about that part).

A vehicle is a deadly weapon and from what they say they thought there was a gun. Since the police officers have never fired their weapon until this point I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. There's also the question of why so many bullets? That's what they're trained for. The police are not supposed to shoot to wound. They are trained to hit the biggest target on the body and they are trained to kill. The only time police are supposed to take out their guns and shoot the suspects is when they feel that their lives or the lives around them are in danger. I feel like that they were reasonable in feeling that way. It would've been better all around if this didn't happen at all. An innocent person was killed and others wounded. But I think that the totality of the circumstances show that while wrong, they were justified in taking the action that they did.

Here are some articles.Sean Bell - The New York Times
NYPD officers acquitted in groom slaying - Crime & courts - MSNBC.com
In line of fire, cops on their own - Dateline NBC - MSNBC.com
Bell's fiancee says verdict 'killed Sean again' -- Newsday.com
For a quick and dirty one there's always wiki

sunnykerr

For me, there are two issues at play here.

On the one hand, I 100% support police officers everywhere in their work. And they were doing their job.

On the other hand, though, there's a level of excess here. As well as statistics that show that a black man is far more likely to be shot by police officers trying to apprehend him than a white man in the same situation.

I still think that police officers do dangerous work. I'm not saying it gives them a free pass to murder random strangers. But I also think that people know not to mess with cops. Life is not a TV show. And we can't blame cops for doing their job when we don't like the results.

I do hope, though, that every aspect of this case was considered before their acquittal. Even as I say this, I trust it was. I believe in the system.

Crystaline

The system is very selective. Police officers can literally do whatever they want and get away with it. I see it every day where I'm from.

Even if they were acquitted of manslaughter, but the reckless endangerment charge too? 50 shots wasn't reckless? Seriously? I'm appalled.

Ruby_Slippers

I see both sides too.

But 50 times? At what point are the police held accountable?

TheAngel

I don't completely understand. Was Bell shot 50 times or were 50 shots fired overall because there were three men, all were shot multiple times, so I thought it was 50 shots overall. I think the problem is, when faced with lethal force, police are taught to empty their clips, reload, and keep shooting until the person is no longer moving. One bullet or a hundred, dead is dead. It shouldn't matter the number but the circumstances. I read the report and you just can't tell. I mean, both sides are giving totally different stories and I don't know who to believe. The victims were drunk at the time, which means they might not have actually done what they thought they did. Then again, the cops could be covering up. I just don't know.

sunnykerr

How many cops were involved in total?

Again, I don't want to minimize the tragedy here. Any way you slice it, a young man died and nothing we do or say will bring him back.

And if there was misconduct, then it's disgusting that it was covered up.

But 50 is such a scandalous number that it makes wonder how many officers were involved.

Crystaline

I believe there were 5 cops involved in total. Two of them weren't charged with anything. The majority of the shots were fired by Michael Oliver. 31 times.

sunnykerr

Well, there you go. Michael Oliver should either be in jail for a VERY long time, doing some SERIOUS psychoanalysis to get at the bottom of his violent nutjob tendencies or, you know, tied up in a room for five minutes with all of Sean Bell's relatives hitting him with hard objects.

Unless there's a way in this world where on cop can discharge his weapon 31 times by mistake.

That leaves twenty bullets for four cops. That's an average of five a piece. Which still feels like overkill to me. But (a) what do I know? and (b)... well, really, what do I know?

sum1

See these:

Amadou Diallo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ousmane Zongo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johnny Gammage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abner Louima - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

migamoo

Doing a quick read up about the incident, it looks like there were 5 cops, and 3 victims. Sean Bell was the only one that was killed though, and his two friends were injured. So while there were 50 shots fired, and 31 by Oliver, do we know how many times Bell was actually shot?

sunnykerr

I still think this was a tragedy, but numbers do seem to put the incident in context.

Well, except for the 31-shots guy. Even with three "potential suspects" (I wasn't there, so I have no idea how they came to be in that place), 31 shots is WAY overkill.

But twenty shots for four cops aiming at three people? I don't know anything about guns, but that seems to me more like something that could have been a tragic mistake.

Of course, none of this will ever bring back Sean Bell. And he didn't deserve to die so young and in that way.