Sean Bell: Guilty!

Before I read the linked article below, over the last day since the cops were acquitted I had been having conversations with friends about the signals that this unconscionable verdict sends to Black men in New York City. (1) You are a probable danger. (2) The science of probability is imperfect. (3) Our bad.

"The trial provided some answers on why the police officers fired: They mistakenly believed there was a gun in Mr. Bell’s car. But the case did not explain how anyone could have expected him to know that he was being approached by a police officer at 4 a.m., and indeed, the judge, Arthur F. Cooperman, said that did not matter under the law. 'It was necessary to consider the mindset of each defendant at the time and place of occurrence,' the judge said, 'and not the mindset of the victims.'"
-NY Times, 2/26/08

In the end, it wasn't the cops who shot Mr. Bell who were on trial. It was the deceased man himself.