Got Damn America (50 Shots to The Dome)

Dear Rotten Apple,

Amadou Diallo. Patrick Dorismond. Ousmane Zongo. Timothy Stansbury. And now Sean Bell. It seems like New Yorkers go through this sort of thing every 3-4 years. An unarmed man of color is killed by the officers if the NYPD. There is an outrage over the shooting and excessive force. There are marches and demonstrations. There is a trial… and there is an acquittal. (Except in the case of Ousmane where the officer was sentenced to five years). I remember there was even a case of a black transit cop being shot while he chased a suspect because the police thought he was the perp.

It makes me angry. Sure, I could sit here and write about racism and discrimination all I want and much of it would be true and justified. I could sit and vent about the years of police brutality that have been inflicted on peoples of color in America and call it “American Terrorism”. Of course, then I might be called unpatriotic and a hate monger trying to stir up feelings of division in our “united” States of America. I could harp on corruption and the “pigs”, but what would it really accomplish? Nothing. Instead, I’d like to vent about something that is really simple and something that the people can actually do something about. How the officers are tried in court.

We have to understand that when a group of police officers are involved in a shooting they are usually tried as a group. Why is that? Because it is a lot harder to convict a group of officers of murder than it is to convict individuals. As a prosecutor, you have to prove that EVERYONE being charged is guilty to the same degree. Its all or nothing. Either everyone is innocent or everyone is guilty. There is no in-between.

In the case of Sean Bell, of the 50 shots fired one officer, Mike Oliver, squeezed off 31 shots. 31 shots!! He emptied a clip, reloaded, and damn near emptied another clip. The other two officers charged shot 15 times total. Officer Gescard Isnora fired 11 times and Officer Marc Cooper fired 4. When looking at these facts, it is reasonable to say that Officers Oliver (who is African-American) and Isnora (who was first to fire) were the ones who were grossly negligent and the others were just reacting to the other officers.

In order to come away with a guilty verdict, the best thing to do would be to try each as an individual. It would have been a lot easier to convict ONE officer who emptied a full clip, reloaded and kept firing. It is a lot harder to convict an officer who fired 4 shots as a reaction to all the shooting. And therein lies the problem. If you think one is innocent, then they ALL have to be innocent. If you think one is guilty, they ALL are guilty. As a juror, you can’t separate one officer from another. Its all or nothing…..

I am waiting for the day when an unarmed person not of color is killed by a police officer. I want to see the outrage. I want to see the protests. More than that, I want to see the trial and verdict. I hope that the cop gets off. Not because I want to see someone hurt or dead, but because I want to feel that justice was truly done. I want to believe that its not RACE, but just the way the law works… because I don’t even flinch anymore when this stuff happens. It’s all too regular to me. 41 shots or 50 shots, an innocent person is dead.

Sincerely,

Akil E. Kennedy