NEW YORK—Last week three New York City police officers were indicted in the shooting of groom-to-be Sean Bell and his two friends. As the much publicized story goes, Bell and his friends were unarmed last November when plainclothes police fired about 50 shots at the car Bell was driving, killing Bell.
Now the issue at hand is whether the trial will be moved out of New York City. In a similar case from 1999, unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by plainclothes police in the Bronx. The Diallo trial was moved out of the city, where the police officers involved were acquitted, sparking mass demonstrations and arrests.
The idea of moving the trial away from NYC is, of course, to give a fair unbiased environment. This makes sense.
New Yorkers have been saturated with news about the shooting, playing up the fact that three unarmed black men were shot at by police and the one killed was to be married that day. What the headlines don't emphasize or sometimes bother to mention at all is that the police (one black, one Hispanic and one white) were under the impression that the three men were armed, and that before opening fire, the car Bell was driving aggressively rammed into an unmarked police van.
A quick sampling of New Yorkers easily confirms the bias. When asked if they thought the police officers should be convicted, this is what people had to say:
"They should be put away," said Laura, a college student.
"He [the white officer] needs to go to jail. They should get sentenced depending on how many shots they fired," said William, a graphic designer.
"They should get life. They were too extreme," said Alanso, a bus boy.
No judge, no other side of the story, just execution.
What about the fact that police officers on the streets who are putting their lives on line everyday they go to work? We need to go no further than two weeks ago when two unarmed auxiliary police officers were killed in cold blood in Greenwich Village. One of them, Eugene Marshalik, was just a 19-year-old college student volunteering his time to protect the city. This is the kind of day-to-day life threatening circumstances that the NYPD faces. They don't always have the convenience of all the facts.
One person out of four we asked did seem to have a more balanced perspective on the matter.
"It's no casual thing to reach for your gun. We should consider all the evidence in a court of law before we come to a conclusion. We can't make decisions based on the media," said Lee, an ex-immigration officer.
But really, how many New Yorkers have such a balanced take on the issue? Not enough.
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