December 2, 2006
Queens Shooting: Funeral for Sean Bell, Fourth Man, "50 Shots," and a Legacy of Mourning
Last night, the family and friends of Sean Bell were joined by hundreds for Bell's funeral in Queens. Bell was killed during a chaotic confrontation with police officers last weekend. The Reverend Al Sharpton spoke during the service. From the Daily News:
"We must give Sean a legacy, a legacy of justice, a legacy of fairness, not a legacy against police. We don't hate cops. We don't hate race. We hate wrong. We dislike wickedness in high places."People outside the church were angry and chanted "50 bullets! 50 cops!" in reference to the number of bullet fired on Bell and two friends in half a minute. The NY Times reports Bishop Lester Williams, who was supposed to marry Bell and his fiancee Nicole Paultrie but ended up presiding over Bell's funeral, asked Mos Def, who went to the funeral to pay his respects, to help disperse the crowd. Mos Def said, "If you’re young and you’re black the police are raised to treat you in a more hostile manner. They’re programmed to be hostile." Here's video of the funeral.Then speaking directly to Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, who was standing in for Mayor Bloomberg at the Bell family's request, Sharpton said, "I keep reading in the paper that y'all are looking for a fourth guy. Well, I don't believe that fourth guy exists."
The police identify the fourth man as Jean "Mo" Nelson. Nelson was released after calling his lawyer, who said, "It is almost as if there are two investigations. I don't know who is authorizing their investigations, but it seems hellbent on trying to find a phantom gunman." But police reports claim that witnesses spotted a fourth man in a beige jacket near Bell's car; witnesses also told the police that the undercover officers did identify themselves before firing. For his part, Mayor Bloomberg has been less critical of the police, cautioning that more information needs to be found.
The rapper Papoose's song "50 Shots" (MP3 here) about the shooting has been getting more attention; NY Times' music critic Kelefa Sanneh calls it "unsubtle" but "proof that the protest tradition lives on." And the NY Times looks at a group of funeral mourners who have become friends because of their children were killed by the police:
It was [Maria] Dorismond’s first such funeral since her son was killed, but others, like Nicholas Heyward, whose son was killed in 1994, could count off half a dozen.Besides Maria Dorismond and Nicholas Heyward, Katiadou Diallo, mother of Amadou Diallo, attended the funeral (people clapped when they saw her). Dorismond told the NY Times that her son's young daughters wanted to become police officers "so they can find out what really happened."In addition to his son, 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr., who was playing with a toy gun when he was killed by a housing officer in Brooklyn, recent victims of violent encounters with the police included Amadou Diallo, killed in a hail of 41 bullets in the Bronx; Malcolm Ferguson, a drug suspect whose death came only five days after officers were acquitted in Mr. Diallo’s death; Gidone Busch, a mentally ill man killed by the police in Brooklyn; Patrick Dorismond, killed by an undercover narcotics detective in Manhattan; and Sean Bell, killed in Queens when five undercover detectives opened fire on his car.
Top photograph of Sean Bell's casket being held by mourners by David Karp/AP; lower photograph of mourners passing out "Justice for Sean Bell" signs by Mary Altaffer/AP
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Growing up in the bowels of poverty in East St. Louis, IL I find it sad that years later that my black brothers still have to fight to live in our democratic society.
As a soldier, I have walked the sands of Kuwait, Iraq, and other soils of the same scent. We are taught "Rules of Engagement" before discharging our weapons. We teach our soldiers to defend life only when we see the gun in the hands of the enemy.
Despite the bullets and shrapnel that have riddled the now lifeless bodies of my fearless comrades, our rules of of engagement save lives and offer opportunity to those who hate us for being Americans.
What about the Americans that hate and fear us for being black? What are their rules of engagement against our black men?
I wonder when I lay my life on the line for this nation, will they take my brother's life for the coffee in his skin. All of this while I'm far away protecting this very nation against those who hate us for being black and beautiful.
God bless Sean Bell's family for holding on to their faith that God will prevail justice. In the end, his life will symbolize some hope for another family that the struggle will one day end and the "Rules of Engagement" will change.
God bless,
crys
thank you for your service,
however, you'll hardly find a veteran in the readership here and if you read other blogs some don't care if you're a decorated vet.
For instance, read what some people are saying about Charles Rangel, who's a recipient of a bronze star AND a purple heart medal.
A black newspaper editor wrote once that as a society we tend to be fascinated with the "current atrocity" then we move on and repeat the process with the next. Why? because in a city of 8 million and 30,000 cops just by plain mathematics there are going to be some unavoidable bad encounters on a regular basis even if they are not that frequent. We will also continue to see stories of sadistic rapists and of innocent tourists stabbed or assaulted on their first visit to the city and on and on.
Having said that, and as sorry as I feel over this latest tragedy, I truly dislike and do not respect Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who go around using major and minor atrocities as well as other of their own making to aggrandize their personas on the press without doing anything for either side.
I also dislike the media circus of jesse jackson and other people who make these things a media circus but if I was black family what would people say if I turned him down? And besides, even though it's a media circus at least what he does could benefit civil rights as a whole. And hopefully everyone benefits. So even though if I was the family I'd just want a private funeral, I probably would say "yes" if people wanted to pay their respects. At least, it wouldn't happen to other people's sons.
I really think the NYPD's handling of this is BS. And take heart that change can come as I "didn't see the problem" before this.
This has changed a lot of people and yes changed me. I'm standing with everyone who lives in fear because this really needs to stop.
Just saying that statistically NYPD is doing a good job is BS. Statistics don't take away the pain of losing your son or daughter. You don't know what that feels like unless you've been through it. And they NEED to get to the bottom of this but they should apologize no matter what.
If I opened fire on that vehicle, doesn't matter if it was orders the fact I know I killed someone innocent will make me hand in my badge and gun permanently.
Unfortunately those who feel no remorse or guilt will continue living as cops and denying they did anything wrong.
I'm not sure if all this whining is funny or pathetic. Maybe a little of each. Blacks do not live in fear of the police. They live in fear of each other, and with good reason. For every incident like this there are dozens of intentional black on black murders. Black on black crime is so routine it barely gets mentioned in the newspapers, much less a blog like this. Everyone wants to be a victim, and I guess pretending to be a victim of the NYPD is somehow more desirable than being the victim of an anonymous black guy. But there are far more of the latter than the former.
Invoking race in this tragedy is an obnoxious and divisive distration, which I'm pleased to see quite a few blacks involved (Al Sharpton, the victims family) recognize. The race baiters are simply drawing attention away from the real issue - possibly criminal actions on the part of a few, and manifestly poor training by the NYPD.
Some of these officers act like they are in videogame or shooting a BB gun, where pulling the trigger has no real consequences (the officers blasting away at the dog in the apartment complex a few months ago comes to mind).
Al Sharpton generally drives me nuts, but he has earned a lot of respect in my book by explicitly stating that this is not about race. Jesse Jackson, on the other hand, should STFU.
You don't kill an animal with 50 shots.
why a human being????
A HUMAN BEING for christsakes.
A deer gets taken down with one shot, why must the NYPD use 50 shots for three unarmed men?
Show me where the NYPD shot at white citizens with 50 shots, then we'll talk.
till then STFU!
OH poor male white man, they're the victims, Why are they always the victims???! Please help us.
True, no one shoots 50 shots at a deer or a rabbit. But then, they don't drive cars at you and don't have friends who may (or may not) be armed. I think it's fair to assume that the police over-reacted in this situation. But the tragedy is really the whole context of the evening. Strip club. Too much to drink. Two groups of angry guys get into a fight. Somone outside the club gets pulls a gun and shots are fired. How many times does that story get Jesse Jackson and Sharpton to turn out for the funeral? If you want to know why White America is afraid of certain areas of its major cities and welcomes more police in those areas, just take a look at the daily, almost routine murders that involve young black men. We've lost something like 3,000 men in Iraq now since 2003. The young male black on black murder rate makes being a soldier in Iraq look almost safe in comparison. Yet a few scared cops who were not, one should point out, all caucasian--get blamed for one, admittedly, very bad night. It's a tragedy. But isn't the greater tragedy that our cities are virtual free-fire zones where everyone, cops and citizens included, are scared out of their wits? I know I get scared when I hear young men arguing outside a club. When the shots ring out, 98 times out of 100 it's not the shots from a cop you have to worry about.
Really? It's not bullets from a cop that we should be worried about?
Why should cops be scared? they have the power to ruin a life so easily by putting you through the system or worse case, shot 50 times like these three.
There's a mentality out there that it's OK to shoot first, ask later when it comes to minorities.
In a cops mind, there's Us and them, and them is Black most of the time.
If you believe otherwise, you're too ignorant to admit it.
And, where prey tell are those 98 shots? IN your gated community?
Mr. Bell and his friends were thugs. They each had multiple arrests for gun possession, robbery and assault. One was recently released from prison. If they had been killed in one of dozens of black on black shootings that occur each weekend n New Yok City there would be no Al Sharpton, no Jesse Jackson, no Mos Def and no throngs of mourners. But now there are political gains, and more importantly some money, to be made and the hustlers, race men and media whores are circling. Think about it - every few years there is an incident where a few of the 35,000 members of the NYPD make what may turn out to be an error in judgement. But caution sometimes kills as well - in the past years four detectives were murdered because they did not shoot first. Perhaps on some other planet police officers are infallible beings, but the NYPD is as close to perfect as we're ever going to get.
You must be joking.
What political gain? You mean Al Sharpton CAN be president????? In what parallel universe.
You mean trotting out that wheelchair cop every time he's needed for political gain?
No justice, No peace.
Is the President the only elected official in the US? I guess city councilman, assemblyman, state senator and mayor don't count. And no, there won't be peace in black neighborhoods like South Jamaica until the community and its leaders stop moaning about being hapless victims of whitey and start fighting the plague of guns, drugs, crime and fatherless households that has decimated their children.
Where did you hear that the black community played the victim card?
Is that all you know about black people and their community?
NO justice, there will be NO peace.
I find it funny that most of you have no idea that only ONE of the five cops involved in this incident was white. Two were black, two were hispanic. This is a NEW YORK CITY issue, not a RACE issue. It's a sad situation, but no one is going to respect it when clowns like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton get everyone wild on RACE and JUSTICE.
This is a NYC issue, and I wish more people would realize that. White, Black, Brown, Red, who cares - stop making it about something it's not.
MR. Bell was a gifted baseball player. if he had stayed in school, he wouldve been playing pro ball..His coaches was confident of this. He wouldve never even had to face this tragedy. They said he was that good to go pro at baseball. He put his career on hold to take care of his first child at 19 and his girlfriend. He didnt start getting in to trouble until his gift to play was stashed away...Didnt nicole see how gifted he was? It was a blessing in disguise. Everybody saw his tremendous gift for baseball. His cousin said they were all mad at him for making that choice. Something couldve been worked out as good as they said he was..He wouldve been paid in full now and his kids wouldnt have to ask for anything. Sorry this ended up like this. He was a gifted brother and his legacy lives on.
Prayers to his family and fiance.
RIP my brother sean.
no matter if the officers were black white hispannic whatever... there is no reason for evenn onne shot on anybody thats unnarmed let alonen 50... justice nneeds to be served...i hope those cops die annd go to hell
THis entire situation is truly a sad one, it's hard on the family and everyone in the community, the point is someone is gone,for no reason and someone has to pay whether it be a race or political issue, they better do something fast, this THING could get even UGLIER than what it already is...
RIP to all Fallen Soldiers
Blessed Love
To the The Bell Family and His Fiance.
Truly SAD!