April 25, 2008I
am sick to my stomach and I really do not know what to say right this
second. My cell and office phones have been blowing up all day, and
people have been emailing me nonstop, to let me know that Detectives
Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper, the three New York
City police officers accused of shooting 50 times and
murdering Sean
Bell, were found not guilty on all counts: Oliver, who fired 31 times
and reloaded once, and Isnora, who fired 11 times, had been charged
with manslaughter, felony assault and reckless endangerment. They faced
up to 25 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Cooper, who fired
four times, faced up to a year in jail if convicted of reckless
endangerment.And
that’s it: Sean Bell, a mere 23 years of age, out partying the morning
before the wedding to the mother of his two small children, dead, gone,
forever. Sean Bell and his two friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph
Guzman, all unarmed, ambushed by New York’s finest. His last day,
November 25, 2006, is marked as another tragic one in New York City
history. How many more? I once heard in a protest song. How many more?But
I knew this verdict was coming. I have lived in New York City for
nearly two decades and, before that, worked as a news reporter for
several publications throughout the city’s five boroughs, and I cannot
begin to tell you how many cases of police brutality and police
misconduct I covered or witnessed, more often than not a person of
color on the receiving end: Eleanor Bumpurs. Michael Stewart…Amadou
Diallo…Sean Bell. This is not to suggest that all police
officers are trigger-happy and inhumane, because I do not believe that.
They have a difficult and important job, and many of them do that job
well, and maintain outstanding relationships with our communities. I
know officers like that. But what I am saying is that New York,
America, this
society
as a whole, still views the lives of Black people, of Latino people, of
people of color, of women, of poor or working-class people, as less
than valuable. It does not matter that two of the three officers
charged in the Sean Bell case were officers of color and one White.
What matters is the mindset of racism that permeates the New York
Police Department, and far too many police departments across America.
Shooting in self-defense is one thing, but it is never okay to shoot
first and ask questions later, not even if a police officer “feels”
threatened, not even if the source of that “feeling” is a Black or
Latino person. That
is a twisted logic deeply rooted in the America social fabric, dating
back to the founding fathers and their crazy calculations
about slaves being three-fifths of a human being. And in spite of
Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, and other successful Black
individuals, by and large the masses of Black people, and Latino
people, are perpetually viewed through this lens of not being quite
human. William Kristol of the New York Times wrote what I felt was an
incredibly ignorant and myopic March 24th column implying, strongly,
that we should not have conversations about race in America, that such
talk was dated. This piece was in response to Barack Obama’s now famous
meditation on race. But Kristol, like many in denial, had this to say:
“The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about
race… Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national
conversation about
race isn’t necessary to end what Obama calls the ‘racial stalemate
we’ve been stuck in for years’— because we’re not stuck in such a
stalemate… This is all for the best. With respect to having a
national conversation on race, my recommendation is: Let’s not, and say
we did.” Well, Mr. Kristol, what, precisely, do you think Black New
Yorkers are feeling this very moment as we absorb the Sean Bell
verdict? Or do our thoughts, our feelings, our wounds, not matter? “Black
male lives are meaningless in America,” a female friend just texted me,
and what can I say to that? Who’s going to help Nicole Paultre Bell,
Sean Bell’s grieving fiancé, explain to their two young daughters that
the men who killed
their daddy are not going to be punished? I remember that
November 2006 day so vividly, when word spread of the Sean Bell
killing. And I remember the hastily assembled meetings by New York
City’s de facto Black leadership—the ministers, the elected officials,
the grassroots activists—at Local 1199 in midtown Manhattan where it
was stated, with great earnestness and finality, that after all these
years, we were going to put together a comprehensive response to police
brutality and misconduct. There were to be three levels of response:
governmentally (local, state, and federal bills were going to be
proposed, and task forces recommended); systemically within the police
department (comprehensive proposals were called for to challenge police
practices or to
enforce ones already in place); and via the United States Justice
Department, since any form of police brutality or misconduct is a
violation of basic American civil rights. We met for a few months after
the Sean Bell murder, divided into committees, then the entire thing
died—again. There was a lot of research done, many hearings that were
transcribed, much talk of a united front, then nothing, not even an
email to say the plan was no longer being planned. Anyhow,
in the interim I spent a great deal of time, more time than I’ve spent
in my entire New York life, in Queens, mainly in Jamaica, Queens,
getting to know Sean Bell’s family. I was particularly struck by Sean
Bell’s mother, Valerie Bell, and his father, William Bell. Two very
decent and
well-intentioned working-class New Yorkers, who had raised their
children the best they could, who were now, suddenly, activists thrust
into a spotlight they had never sought. The parents are what we the
Black community calls “God-fearing, church-going folk.” Indeed, what
was so incredible was how much Mr. and Mrs. Bell believed in and
referenced God. But that is our sojourn in America: when everything
else fails us, we still have the Lord. And there they were, holding a
50-day vigil directly across from the 103rd precinct, on 168th Street,
right off Jamaica Avenue and 91st Avenuein Jamaica, Queens, in the
dead-cold winter air. They and their family members and close friends
taking turns monitoring the makeshift altar of candles, cards, and
photos. And I remember how we had to
shame local leaders a few times into supporting Mr. and Mrs. Bell with
donations of money, food, or other material needs. While much of the
media and support flocked to Nicole Paultre Bell, Sean Bell’s fiancé,
and the sexiness of her being represented by the Reverend Al Sharpton
and his lawyer pals Sanford Rubenstein and Michael Hardy, the media did
not pay much attention to Sean Bell’s parents and their kinfolk at all.
What
was especially striking was the fact that Mrs. Bell got up every single
morning, made her way to the vigil area, then to work in a local
hospital all day, then to her church every single evening. She reminded
me so much of my own mother, of any Black mother in America who has had
to be the backbone of the family, often sacrificing her
own
health, her own wants and needs, her own hurt and pain, to be there for
others in their time of need. Mrs.
Bell always told me that she truly believed justice would be done in
this case. She really did. I never had the heart to tell her that it is
rare for a police officer to be found guilty of murdering a civilian,
no matter how glaring the evidence. Nor did I have the heart to tell
Mrs. Bell that the media and the defense would seek to destroy her
son’s image and reputation, that Sean Bell would be reduced to a thug,
as an unsavory character, to somehow justify the police shooting. Nor
did I have the heart to tell Mrs. Bell that this pain of losing her son
would be with her the remainder of her life. I did not share my
suspicion that the parade of Black leaders, Black
protests, media hype—all of it—was all part of someone’s carefully
concocted script, brushed off and brought to the parade every single
time a case like this occurred. I have seen it before, and as long as
we live in a city, a nation, that does not value all people as human,
there will be more Sean Bells. “I
am Sean Bell,” many of us chanted in the days and weeks immediately
following his death. Yet very few of us showed up to the hearings
after, and even fewer had the courage to question the vision, or lack
thereof, of our own Black leadership who accomplished, ultimately,
little to nothing at all. And very few of us realized that the
powers-that-be in New York City have come to anticipate our reactions
to matters like the Sean Bell tragedy: we
get upset and become very emotional; we scream “No Justice! No Peace!”;
we march, rally, and protest; we call the police and mayor all kinds of
names and demand their resignations; we vow that this killing will be
the last; and we will wait until the next tragedy hits, then this whole
horrible cycle begins anew. Plain
and simple, racism creates abusive relationships. It does not matter if
the perpetrator is a White sister or brother, or a person of color,
because the most vulnerable in our society feel the heat of it. Real
talk: this tragedy would have never gone down on the Upper Eastside of
Manhattan or in Brooklyn Heights. I am not just speaking about the
judge’s decision, but the police officer’s actions. Those shots would
have never been fired at
unarmed White people sitting in a car. Until we understand that racism
is not just about who pulled the trigger in a police misconduct case,
but is also about the geography of racism, and the psychology of
racism, we are forever stuck having the same endless dialogue with no
solution in sight. And
until America recognizes the civil and human rights of all its
citizens, systemic racism and police misconduct, joined at the hip,
will never end. That is, until White sisters and brothers realize they,
too, are Sean Bell, this will never end. Save for a few committed
souls, most White folks sit on the sidelines (as many did when we
marched down Fifth Avenue in protest of Sean Bell’s murder in December
2006), feel empathy, but fail to grasp that our struggle for justice is
their
struggle for justice. They, alas, are Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo, and
all those anonymous Black and Brown heads and bodies who’ve been
victimized, whether they want to accept that reality or not. And the
reality is that until police officers are forced to live in the
communities they police, forced to learn the language, the culture, the
mores of the communities they police, forced to change how they handle
undercover assignments, this systemic racism, this police misconduct,
will never end. And until Black and Latino people, the two communities
most likely to suffer at the hands of police brutality and misconduct,
refuse to accept the half-baked leadership we’ve been given for nearly
forty years now, and start to question what is really going on behind
the scenes with the
handshakes, the eyewinks, the head nods, and the backroom deals at the
expense of our lives, this systemic racism, this police misconduct,
these kinds of miscarriages of justice, will never end. Our
current leadership needs us to believe all we can ever be are victims,
doomed to one recurring tragedy or another. It keeps these leaders
gainfully employed, and it keeps us feeling completely helpless and
powerless. Well, I am not helpless nor powerless, and neither are you.
To prevent Sean Bell’s memory from fading like dust into the air, the
question is put to you, now: What are you going to do to change this
picture once and for all? Mayor Bloomberg said this in a statement:”There
are no winners in a trial like this. An innocent man lost his life, a
bride
lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a
father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief that those
who knew and loved Sean Bell suffer.”No,
the grief will never end, not for Sean Bell’s parents and family, for
his fiancé and children. But Mayor Bloomberg, you, me, we the people,
can step up our games, make a commitment to real social justice in our
city, in our nation, and, for once, penalize people, including police
officers, who just randomly blow away lives. Sean Bell is never coming
back, but we are here, and the biggest tragedy will be if we keep going
about our lives, as if this never happened in the first place.And
a long as we have leadership, White leadership and Black leadership,
mainstream
leadership and grassroots leadership, that can do nothing more than
exacerbate folks’ very natural emotions in a tragedy like this, we will
never progress as a human race. Instead a true leader needs to harness
those emotions and turn them into action, as Dr. King did, as Gandhi
did. In the absence of such action, so many of us, especially us Black
and Latino males, will continue to have a very nervous relationship
with the police, even the police of color, for fear that any of one of
us could be the next Sean Bell.Kevin Powell is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer, community activist, and author of 8 books. He can be reached at kevin@kevinpowell.net.
