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Fear and Loathing in New York
When Sean Bell was gunned down by NYPD on his wedding day, it shocked the country. One rapper recorded a protest song, another offered financial support to his fiancée. But for Southeast Queens residents, it was business as usual.
King Magazine, April, 2007
When a New York Police Department cop shoots an unarmed black man, the prototypical protestors are radicals and communists—Free Palestine shirt, free newspapers and Free Mumia! sloganeering—who call journalists “white devils” under their breath and cops “racist pigs” to their faces. This leaves Al Sharpton as the de facto voice of reason, though he tends to limit his involvement to the big rallies and press conferences. Generally, after a month or so, the circus subsides, the media loses interest and the mutual fear between young black men and police resumes.
But this time it was different. From the outset, the stakes seemed higher; a threshold had been crossed. At 4:56 a.m. on November 25, 2006, Sean Bell became New York’s police-brutality high-water mark. After celebrating his bachelor party at Club Kalua, a Queens, New York, strip club where everyone knew his name, 23-year-old Bell left with his two good friends Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, who were to attend his wedding the following day. Fewer than 10 minutes later, in the driver’s seat of his Nissan Altima, Bell was shot and killed by a 50-bullet barrage by five undercover cops—two white, two black, one black-Hispanic. One of the detectives, Michael Oliver, unloaded and reloaded his 16-shot Glock, dumping a total of 31 bullets. Benefield, 23, and Guzman, 31, were critically wounded. No weapon was recovered in Bell’s car. It wasn’t the first time an unarmed black man was shot by NYPD; what evoked a national response of this decibel was likely the fact that he was a father of two, killed on his wedding day and about to start a new life with his fiancée Nicole Paultre.
When pictures circulated of a profusely bleeding Benefield laid out on the sidewalk screaming in pain, alongside word that he and Guzman were cuffed in the hospital, the case confirmed something many young black men nationwide feel: If it could happen to Bell, unarmed, on the eve before his wedding, it could happen to me. Two weeks after the shooting, around the corner from the makeshift shrine at the shooting site, the hurt is still fresh. On a ragged industrial block, there are notes, poems, writing on the wall, balloons; across the street there is another memento from the shooting—a small bullet hole in the bottom left window above a concrete porch. Nearby, a 45-year-old man dressed in a black jean suit with matching do-rag and New Balances, scoffs at the notion of a fourth guy. “There was no fourth guy!” he bellows, referring to reports that a fourth man, possibly armed, fled the scene. “They’re covering their ass, that’s what they’re trying to do.”
Franklin Ogaard, a retired NYPD Internal Affairs detective, combed the area shaking his head. “Fifty shots by police officers,” he says, “that’s not a good shooting. That’s a little extreme… [Some police officers] might be fearful of the community that they’re working in. Subsequently, anything could scare them into firing shots.” Here to help this writer examine the crime scene, he continues to look for clues at the AirTrain station adjacent to Kalua, where cops had blown out the windows, it became obvious the fear cut both ways. “The [cops] don’t realize, how [the Sean Bell shooting] affects us as African Americans,” he explains. “Whether I go out or where I go is predicated by not just crime in the city, but the police.”
A security guard standing nearby concurs. “It got me so bad I go [straight] home every [night]…” he says. “I got a friend who says, ‘I’m not stopping for shit. I’m not getting pulled over by no cop.’ It could have been any of us.”
Of course in New York, this wasn’t the first time. There are many elements to the Sean Bell case that for locals felt familiar. Police response followed an established script: As in excessive-force cases of the last 10 years—Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Patrick Dorismond, Timothy Stansbury and Ousmane Zongo—the victims were smeared [see sidebar], and misinformation spread.
Two days after the shooting, The New York Times reported that one of the cops claimed he heard Guzman tell someone “go get my gun.” When a gun wasn’t found, reports of a fourth, gat-wielding friend gained traction. “There may have been a fourth individual in the car who fled,” announced Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at a November 26, 2006, press conference.
The fourth-man theory spread quickly through leaks to the press and raids on Bell’s friends and acquaintances. “A police source tells NY1 the arrests have given cops information on the so-called fourth man in Bell’s group,” a local news network, NY1, reported. “Police say ‘the fourth man’ was seen walking with Bell and his friends to their car moments before they were shot by police.” Soon every major local news outlet was on it. “Police sources tell The Daily News two witnesses picked the man out of two separate photo lineups,” NY1 reported. Often, too, the comments were oblique enough to not warrant follow-up. “Law enforcement sources have said police had been investigating Bell and Benefield for dealing drugs in the area prior to the shooting,” the New York Post added on December 7. Soon Bell’s juvenile record was unsealed and also leaked. Police unions are rumored to responsible for the leaks.
To Southeast Queens residents, though, the detail was a red herring, distracting people from what had happened. Sean Bell’s shooting is just another affront in a long list of slights. On June 14, 2005, after Officer Christopher Wiesneski was shot in the leg with his own gun while arresting a man for smoking weed, police rounded up 181 black men in the area, many for so-called quality-of-life misdemeanors, like open alcohol containers and public urination. They were put through the system using A.C.D. or Adjournment Contemplating Dismissal, which requires those arrested to sign a paper stating they’ll stay out of trouble and waive their rights to judicial recourse.
A year later on June 17, 2006, Xavier Simpson’s beating—which resulted in a fractured wrist and elbow—and subsequent strip and cavity searches by four NYPD cops briefly made headlines. The incident soon faded from view after the Queens DA elected not to bring charges against the four officers involved. Simpson’s charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest were also dropped.
Six months after Simpson’s beating, Xavier’s mother Shawnique, a veteran corrections officer, is still angry. At a community forum called by Queens politicians to discuss the Bell case, Shawnique addresses the local politicians in attendance: “My son’s arms will never be the same,” she says. “He will never be able to draw, he will never be able to play a long game of basketball… My son didn’t have anything in his hands that day, all he had was the color of his skin.” (Two days after the meeting, Simpson filed a $10 million civil suit against the NYPD.)
Jesse Sligh, a soft-spoken prosecutor from the Queens District Attorney’s Office, who’d been dispatched to explain why a grand jury hadn’t yet convened in the Bell case, now has to account for Simpson’s case. “The official determination by my office was that there was insufficient evidence to sustain criminal charges and then, of course, it was referred to Civilian Complaint Review Board by my office,” Sligh manages, meekly, before offering to revisit the case. (CCRB Spokesperson Andrew Case declined to comment on the Simpson case, as the investigation is ongoing.)
Noel Leader, a retired police officer who founded 100 Blacks In Law Enforcement Who Care, is just as angry as Simpson. “[Ray] Kelly was supposed to report since 2003 how many blacks and Latinos were being stopped, questioned and frisked,” he says. “He has no respect for black people… And that’s the core of this problem. And its not just a few cops, it’s a lot of cops. If we don’t deal with the problem at the core, we’re only fooling ourselves.”
A local resident, Donald Murray, 32, feels New York’s Rodney King moment might be at hand. “The streets is going to be filled with blood when they say ‘not guilty, not guilty, not guilty,’” he says. “And it might just be ours ’cause we’re going to be spazzing out and then they’re going to be taking us down.”
The meeting underscored a feeling in Queens—and in New York’s larger black community—that police are above the law. As Simpson put it, “When we send messages out there that they’re not held accountable and we pay for their mistakes, you know what they say: ‘Hey, I’m going to put a noose in the back of my car tomorrow. ’Cause I got the green light to go hang somebody by the tree.’”
Two weeks after the forum, on January 22, a grand jury convened in the Bell case. The testimony to determine whether or not criminal charges would be brought against the five officers is expected to drag on for at least a month, which displeases lawyers on both sides. Two days later, Guzman, who’d been riding shotgun in the Altima when Bell was gunned down, finally emerged from Mary Immaculate Hospital in a wheelchair. After sustaining 11 shots, he wasn’t waiting for the grand jury’s verdict. On Al Sharpton’s syndicated radio program, Guzman characterized Bell’s death as a murder. “I don’t believe all police are bad,” he said. “But the police that night were wrong. They committed a crime. Let them be accountable for it.”
That same day, Ray Kelly faced the City Council. Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron deemed the police response to Sean Bell’s shooting inadequate. “I ask that you do the graceful thing and resign,” The New York Times reported Barron saying. “I say that because you have allowed this to happen.” But Kelly was unbowed, saying, “Officers are stopping those they reasonably suspect of committing a crime, based on descriptions and circumstances, and not on personal bias.”
But the stats are hard to defend. On February 3, last year’s stop-and-frisk stats were released. A total of 508,540 people were searched in 2006, a more than 500 percent jump from the number searched in 2002, the last time these stats were released. Blacks comprised more than 55 percent of those stops. News from the CCRB was even worse. In the first half of 2006, the most recent period for which stats were available, Blacks made up 24.5 percent of New York’s population (according to 2000 census) and filed 2,038 claims with CCRB. Whites, who comprise 35 percent, filed just 586 complaints.
On the streets of Queens, those numbers seem to hold true. On a frigid Thursday evening, Carl Mills, 53, who considers himself an uncle to Sean Bell, listens as a stocky, dark-skinned schoolbus driver named Mitchell, who declines to provide his last name, outlines three alleged incidents of racial profiling he’s experienced in the last few months. On 168th St. in Jamaica, Queens, in front of the 103rd precinct, he is manning a vigil led by Sean Bell’s parents, William and Valerie. Mrs. Bell arrives promptly every morning at 4:56 a.m., the time Sean was pronounced dead. She leaves around 7 a.m. for work. The rest of the time, the vigil—a table in front of a chain-link fence with two banners depicting all 50 shots, some communist literature, a framed poem with stanzas that spell out Sean Bell’s name—is overseen by folks close to the Bell family. “You’re not supposed to bury your kids,” Mills says.
Moments later, Sean’s father, William, arrives. He’s a handsome dark-skinned man with gold-rimmed glasses, a black leather golf hat worn backwards and a matching jacket. Two months after his son’s death, his fatherly instincts are hard to shake. “You look kinda cold there, partner,” he tells a journalist. “You got to have some warm stuff on when you come here.” He seems oddly calm, the most composed person at the vigil.
The same can’t be said for Donald Murray, who’s set up his own vigil beside Queens’ Jamaica Center–Parsons/Archer subway station, a higher-traffic part of the neighborhood. Murray also arranged for Sean’s face to be painted on the wall by the station, next to Big Pun, Biggie and Tupac. Throughout the day, he enlists passing teenagers to hold numbers from 1 to 50 to symbolize the gunshots. He’s managed to gather 21 kids and feels successful. Earlier in the day, a cop approached him with the choice between a $70 parking ticket and $800 fine for a non-sanctioned protest. “I said, ‘Give me the $800 fine,’” he recalls. “I was supposed to bitch [up and take the parking ticket]. That’s what he wanted.” But today Murray has larger things on his mind: “This is going to be a case that’s going to change the world,” he says. “Whatever way it goes, I can’t wait. If we have to have a riot, I can’t wait. If we have justice, I can’t wait.”
At 10:30 p.m. on a cold Thursday night in February, he was just sitting down to some barbecue, his first real meal of the day. “I want…justice,” he says. “I ain’t talking about just this. The cops [also] need justice. They don’t need to be patrolling us like this no more. So I’m fighting for real justice. ’Cause we ain’t going nowhere here.”
Underneath his black coveralls, Murray wears a navy blue hoodie. It reads: “I Am Sean Bell.”
Additional reporting by Michael Brown
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