The Real Tragedy of Sean Bell

The November 25^th police shooting of Sean Bell at a Queens nightclub is far more tragic than the death of a single unarmed man. The aftermath of this sad incident speaks volumes about our inability to have a rational conversation about race.

Bell, 23, a father of two young children, was having a bachelor party with a group of friends at 4 a.m. on November 25, 2006 at Club Kalua, a strip joint located in a seedy section of Jamaica, Queens. He was supposed to get married later that day.

According to police reports summarized in a November 27, 2006 New York Times article, two undercover police officers were stationed inside the club beginning at 1 a.m. The club had a reputation for drug-dealing, prostitution, and illegal weapons possession.

According to officer accounts discussed by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at a news conference, one undercover officer overheard a conversation between a stripper and another man, leading the officer to believe that the man was armed. The officer then alerted a backup team of five officers outside.

Bell was among a group of eight men arguing with another man outside. According to reports, the eight men then split up into two groups of four. An officer heard a man in Bell's group say that he was going to get his gun.

According to officer accounts, the group then piled into a Nissan Altima with Bell at the wheel. An undercover detective who had been following them approached the vehicle, verbally identified himself, and displayed his shield in front of the hood. Bell drove into the detective, hitting him in the leg, and then backed up, hitting a minivan carrying two backup officers. A December 23 New York Post article reports that, at the time of the shooting, Bell's blood alcohol level was double the legal limit.

The officers then opened fire with 50 rounds. Bell was struck twice and later died of his injuries. Joseph Guzman, 31, was hit 11 times and critically wounded. Trent Benefield, 23, was hit three times. Guzman and Benefield have denied seeing or hearing the detective identify himself, and no gun has been recovered from the scene.

According to a front page November 28, 2006 New York Times story, five cops fired on Bell's car. Two are black; one is black and Hispanic; and two are white.

A December 2, 2006 New York Post article discusses a fourth man at the scene, identified as Jean "Mo" Nelson, who witnesses say, had a gun and fled from the Altima. Nelson, 27, admitted being at the scene but denied having a gun or being inside the vehicle. According to the article, witnesses said the detective leaned over the hood of the car, identified himself, and displayed his shield.

According to the November 27 article, the NYPD acknowledged that the number of shots fired was high, but not unprecedented. In 2005 officers fatally shot an armed man 43 times in Queens. And in 1995 the police fired 125 bullets during a Bodega robbery in the Bronx.

NYPD officers have had the ability to fire large numbers of shots within seconds since 1993, when the Department switched from 6-round, 38-caliber revolvers, which were cumbersome to reload, to faster-loading 15-round semiautomatics. The change in weaponry was in response to greater firepower being used by perpetrators.

At a news conference reported in the Times piece on November 28, Mayor Mike Bloomberg called the shooting "unacceptable" and "inexplicable." He also said "excessive force was used."

What's really inexplicable is how the mayor of the world's greatest city can publicly voice an opinion about an ongoing investigation. With that foolish remark, Bloomberg poisoned the trial jury pool even before a grand jury had been impaneled. If there is a criminal trial, it is doubtful that the officers involved could get a fair shake in Queens or anywhere else in New York City. Yet Bloomberg doesn't think there should be a change in venue.

Bloomberg is a smart guy and a superb manager. It's incredible that he could say something so dumb. And he compounded his error with subsequent statements.

In the November 28 Times article, Bloomberg is caught talking out of several sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he's quoted saying that the shooting was "part of a pattern that is unacceptable." A few lines down, he contradicts himself by characterizing the incident as "an isolated case."

On a WABC radio broadcast in December, Bloomberg continued to back off his "unacceptable" remark, saying that there were many unanswered questions and that the legal process should take its course "without preconceptions." It was too late. Irreparable harm had already been done.

Bloomberg is trying to satisfy both community leaders and the NYPD, an impossible task. It would have been simpler, and far more professional, for the Mayor to have offered condolences to Bell's family and declined further comment.

It is admirable that Bloomberg is reaching out to the black community in this instance, something his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, failed to do in the 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant who was shot 41 times at his workplace. But there is a huge difference between opening a dialogue and trying to be all things to all people.

Who are these so-called "community leaders"? The most prominent among them are the usual cast of characters: the Reverend Al Sharpton, City Councilman Charles Barron, and the Reverend Calvin Butts.

The first of these three wise men is a "family advisor" who ubiquitously appears whenever there is an incident of this kind. Twenty years ago he called someone trying to resolve a boycott of a Korean grocer a "white interloper." Sharpton was found liable in a defamation suit stemming from the infamous Tawana Brawley case for which he never apologized. In the late 1980s, he presided over a near-riot on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Last month, Sharpton led a march down Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan "shopping for justice." That's an empty slogan, and he knows it. Justice is a search for truth based upon facts. But Sharpton isn't concerned about facts. He's already made up his mind.

In all fairness, Sharpton has moderated his rhetoric somewhat in recent years. To his credit, he called for calm after officers were exonerated in the Diallo shooting, and he has done so again in the Bell case.

By contrast, the second in this trio, New York City Councilman Charles Barron, is an unabashed bomb thrower. Several years ago Barron famously said that he "felt like slapping a white person." Commenting on the Bell case during the last month, he has repeatedly said that "black people aren't the only ones that can bleed." During a Wall Street rally reported in the Post on December 22, Barron bellowed that if "we don't get justice, there should be an explosion in this town."

If Barron's ongoing incitement to violence produces serious injury or death, he should be impeached and removed from office. A legislator is supposed to uphold the law, not invite lawlessness. And Mayor Bloomberg should be censured for his careless remarks. But don't expect the City Council to ever take action against either of these men.

Though reprehensible, Barron is right in demanding a special prosecutor. A special prosecutor would lend universal credibility to the proceedings and tamp down a volatile situation.

On a recent WABC-TV broadcast, Sharpton said that the officers violated "the law" because they were prohibited from shooting at an unarmed man in a moving vehicle, even if the vehicle was being used as a weapon. That is untrue.

The rule is stated in the NYPD Guidelines, and guidelines by definition are not mandatory. The Guidelines, contained in the police Patrol Guide, are more restrictive than New York's Penal Law, which permits officers and citizens to use deadly force when they have a reasonable belief that they are in danger of being killed.

A November 30 Times article discussing this topic notes that the Patrol Guide also states that the primary function of police officers is to "preserve human life." That article quotes Sergeants Benevolent Association general counsel Andrew Quinn as characterizing the restrictive Guidelines rule as "idiotic". Similarly, a veteran prosecutor of police shootings has described the rule as contrary to common sense, since there are circumstances where shooting a driver is the only way for a cop to preserve life, including his own.

The third sage in this unholy alliance is the Reverend Calvin Butts, leader of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. At a City Hall conference last month, Butts characterized the officers involved in the shooting as "ignorant savages." How constructive!

Can bigotry be involved in a police shooting? Undoubtedly. Bigotry exists in all walks of life. But there is no evidence of that here, especially given the diverse racial makeup of the officers involved.

Police officers put their lives on the line daily and often have to make split-second, life-or-death decisions. That goes ten times for undercover officers, who work during the most dangerous hours in the worst neighborhoods. The Bell shooting occurred in less than ten seconds.

Race did play a role in this tragic shooting, but not in the way Sharpton, Barron, and Butts suggest. An uncomfortable fact is that, statistically, race influences the dangerousness of a situation. Race is one factor among many. Others include time of day, surroundings, age and sex. Is analyzing these factors "profiling"? Absolutely. Law enforcement authorities do it all the time, whether they admit it or not. It's not politically correct, but it saves lives.

Adam Brodsky's December 3 New York Post column "Race & the NYPD" cites NYPD statistics indicating that the majority of crime perpetrators and victims are black. According to Department statistics, African-Americans constitute only 25 percent of the City's population but over 60 percent of its crime victims and murderers.

The national picture is very similar. According to FBI statistics compiled in the wake of the Washington, DC sniper shootings, there were 224 known sniper attack murder offenders in the U.S. between 1982 and 2001, almost all male. In 215 of these cases, the race of the attacker was known. Among those, 43.7 percent were black, 64 percent of which were between the ages of 19 and 29.

According to Brodsky, when police shooters do make mistakes, casualties are more likely to be black than white, not because of police bigotry, but because blacks are more often present at crime scenes. Club Kalua was located in an African-American neighborhood. Bell, Guzman, Benefield, and Nelson were all black.

The undercover officers had staked out the Club because it was the subject of numerous complaints. They were in a high crime area. The officers entered the Club at 1 a.m., New York's deadliest hour, according to an April 28, 2006 Times article citing NYPD statistics. It is absolutely reasonable that an officer in this situation would behave differently than he would in a low crime area during the daytime. That isn't racist. It's realist.

The reasons for disproportionate violent crime in black communities involve a complex interplay between factors such as education, income, parenting, and peer pressure. Messrs. Sharpton, Barron, and Butts should focus their considerable talents on these issues rather than screaming "racism" every time an unfortunate shooting occurs.

Much has been made of the number of shots. It makes for sexy headlines and raw emotions, but the emphasis is misplaced.

Fifty shots were fired, but only two struck Mr. Bell. The key question is whether the police acted reasonably under the circumstances, not how many shots were fired. If one shot had been fired that killed Mr. Bell, and the officers were found to have acted illegally, they would be no less guilty than if they had fired 100 shots. If, on the other hand, they had fired 200 shots and exculpatory evidence later emerged, they would be no less innocent than if they had fired a single round.

There is some reported evidence that the police panicked. Although the officers involved had many years on the job, they were still inexperienced: none had previously fired a gun in the line of duty, and there are indications they reacted to the gunfire of each other in a phenomenon known as "contagious shooting". In addition, a couple of stray rounds landed at a nearby AirTran terminal, endangering bystanders and officers on patrol there.

If it is found that the police acted illegally, they should be punished to the full extent of the law, but at this point, there are too many unanswered questions to make that judgment. In some instances, it is possible that both the officers and Bell's friends are telling the truth. For example, it may be that the detective who approached the car identified himself but that Guzman and Benefield didn't see or hear the identification. Is Mr. Nelson telling the truth, or did he dispose of his gun after he left the scene? Did the officers overhear talk about firearms, or did they make up a story to that effect? We simply do not know. And until there are definitive answers, the officers, who have offered to testify before the grand jury without immunity, deserve the benefit of the doubt.

According to NYPD statistics available online, there were over 127,000 criminal complaints in New York City in 2006. The overwhelming majority of these were resolved without incident. A handful of high profile, tragic cases does not mean that the NYPD has declared "open season" on black people.

No unarmed person deserves to be shot. That being said, Mr. Bell and his friends bear some responsibility for what befell them. They unnecessarily put themselves in an extremely dangerous situation.

Nobody forced Mr. Bell to go to Club Kalua. His friends could have thrown him a party at a private home, where they would have had control over who entered the premises, which would have made things much safer. Instead, they got into an altercation at a strip joint known for prostitution, drug-dealing, and illegal guns. Under these circumstances, Mr. Bell and his companions might have been shot even if there were no police present. To top it off, Bell was drunk behind the wheel. In his condition, he may very well have died in a car accident even if nothing had happened at the Club. Now his fiancée has no husband, and his daughters have no father.

The Bell case lays bare thorny issues of race that this society has been unable to effectively confront for many decades. The major players talk past rather than to each other. We hear the same old rhetoric. In this case, it has been turned up several notches and is very dangerous. It's high time that we changed the players.

Many years ago, Ted Koppel did a two-hour "Nightline" town hall meeting on race. It was one of the most productive and intelligent discussions on this subject that I've ever heard. There was no showboating, just rational, respectful, open-minded dialogue. Too bad it was given so little press.

We should have such conversations frequently, not just in television studios, but in schools, community boards, and houses of worship across the United States. It's a small start, but it would be a big step in the right direction. If we continue to wallow in demagoguery and political correctness, that would be the biggest tragedy of all.