<html>
<body>
<font size=3><br>
Revolution #124, March 23,2008<br>
*Whitewash of Sean Bell's Murder by Police Continues in Court*<br><br>
From a correspondent<br><br>
"This whole thing is so twisted. You've got the victims—Sean and the
other<br>
two with him that night—being attacked like they're the criminals, and
the<br>
criminals—the cops who killed Sean—being treated like they're the
victims.<br>
But you know, I've been at other trials of police who've murdered
Black<br>
people and here's the thing. It plays out pretty much the same way
every<br>
time."<br><br>
This comment, made to me by a Black woman as she and I waited for a<br>
15-minute recess at the Sean Bell trial to end, reflected the feelings
of<br>
others who have come to the Queens, N.Y., courthouse almost every day
since<br>
the trial began on Febrary 25, to hear testimony in the case of the
three<br>
NYPD detectives indicted in the killing on November 25, 2006, of
23-year-old<br>
Sean Bell and serious wounding of two of his friends, Joseph Guzman
and<br>
Trent Benefield, in a lethal rain of 50 bullets, hours before Sean was to
be<br>
married.<br><br>
The courtroom, presided over by Judge Arthur Cooperman—who will decide
the<br>
outcome of this case since the cops opted to have a bench trial rather
than<br>
a trial by jury—is physically divided down the middle as if by a large
wall,<br>
although there is no wall there. On one side sit the three cop
defendants<br>
and their attorneys, and behind them, on the half dozen or so rows of
wooden<br>
benches, sit members of the NYPD, decked out in their best suits and
with<br>
U.S. flag and Police Benevolent Association pins neatly placed in
their<br>
lapels.<br><br>
On the other side sit the prosecutors, members of the Queens D.A.'s
office,<br>
who act quite uncomfortable and unhappy about having to try police
officers.<br>
After all, they are much more accustomed to prosecuting Black youth.
And<br>
behind the prosecutors sit members and supporters of the Sean Bell
family,<br>
including his still-mourning mother and father, Valerie and William,
who<br>
sometimes have fled the courtroom when testimony or photos depicting
the<br>
death scene have become all too stark and horrific. Also there every day
is<br>
Sean's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, who was the first person to testify
and<br>
who broke down on the stand when she had to describe seeing Sean at
the<br>
hospital morgue shortly after he was murdered.<br><br>
Testimony by witnesses and video footage has painted a picture of a
wild<br>
terror, as police blasted away with 50 shots at Sean Bell and his
friends.<br>
Security video from a nearby AirTrain station showed transit police<br>
scrambling for cover and shouting at passengers to duck, as one of
the<br>
police bullets shattered a window.<br><br>
A woman who lives in the vicinity of the club where Sean Bell was
murdered<br>
testified that she hollered to her kids, "Don't come out of your
room!" The<br>
woman, Maria Rodrigues, testified that as she and her children hid in
their<br>
beds, a bullet from the police barrage came through a window in her home
and<br>
lodged a lampshade in her house. Another neighbor, Bernardino
Dossantos,<br>
went to see what happened. He described how the police treated the
victims<br>
of the shooting: "I see a man. He got the belly down to the
concrete. He got<br>
the handcuffs down to the back. He got blood to the head."
Dossantos' SUV<br>
was also hit by police bullets.<br><br>
But it is Sean Bell and his two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent
Benefield—<br>
both of them seriously wounded—who are being treated as the *criminals
*in<br>
this trial. Just two days after the 50-bullet barrage, the authorities,
and<br>
the ever-compliant mass media, began to paint a picture of Sean, Joseph,
and<br>
Trent as criminals involved with drugs. They concocted a tale, which
they<br>
soon dropped but not before the mass media had played it to the max,
that<br>
there might have been a "fourth man" on the scene that night
standing close<br>
to Sean's car with a gun in his hand.<br><br>
In the last week or so of the trial, the three cops' lawyers have opened
up<br>
a new line of attack on Sean, Joseph, and Trent. They say that a
small<br>
amount of marijuana, less than an eighth of an ounce, was found in a
plastic<br>
bag on Liverpool Street, not far from where Sean, Joseph, and Trent
were<br>
fired upon. As if, if this were the case, it justified *killing *Sean
Bell.<br><br>
The defense attorneys are also arguing that the collection of ballistic
and<br>
other evidence that night by the NYPD crime scene unit was tainted, and
that<br>
evidence was tampered with or removed by police investigators. That
the<br>
forensic examination of Bell's car didn't happen until 24 hours after
the<br>
shooting, and that all kinds of people had access to the vehicle before
it<br>
was officially examined by a police investigator. And that during
the<br>
initial "investigation" of the vehicle by other police,
investigators didn't<br>
note bullets that were lying in the car in plain sight. And defense
lawyers<br>
got a police investigator to testify—in cross-examination—that he
had<br>
changed a statement made by one of the police who did the
shooting.<br><br>
If in fact there were these kinds of instances of corrupted and
"missed"<br>
evidence, the most charitable explanation is callous carelessness by
the<br>
authorities over the death of a Black man at the hands of the police.
Much<br>
more likely is that all this contamination of the investigation and
the<br>
crime scene was a conscious and systematic cover-up, as the system
scrambled<br>
to deal with public outrage over the murder of Sean Bell. But
whatever<br>
combination of callous carelessness and/or conscious cover-up was in
effect,<br>
the"investigation" in the aftermath of the shooting worked to
ensure that if<br>
the murdering police went to trial, the evidence would be covered up
or<br>
compromised. And nothing in this trial is getting to the bottom of
*that.*<br><br>
The cops' lawyers opened the trial by referring to Sean and his two
friends<br>
as part of the "negative element." This "negative
element" is code for Black<br>
people and other people of color, especially the youth. It's code for
the<br>
people who this system has no jobs for, no decent education, no
decent<br>
health care or housing, no decent future, no hope. Code that stands
for<br>
"license to kill," for the armed enforcers of this system to
murder at will<br>
Black and other youth—who are considered to be "dangerous
surplus<br>
population" by the system. And to do this without being punished,
since it<br>
is what they are supposed to do and are trained to do.<br><br>
-- Steve Yip P.O. Box 941, Knickerbocker Station New York, New York
10002-0900 866-841-9139 x2670, yipzzz@gmail.com It's time to throw off
the chains of oppression, and get with the emancipators of
humanity!<br><br>
<br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>