Since police shot 50 bullets at a car in Queens, killing Sean Bell the night before his wedding, most New York City press outlets have speculated about whether or not the killings were racially motivated. Police critics have gone farther, asserting the racism and guilt of the officers, though they weren't at the scene and can't know with certainty what happened.
Now Heather MacDonald, a staffer at City Journal, has posted an article that convincingly challenges the mainstream narrative.
The allegation that last weekend’s shooting was racially motivated is preposterous. A group of undercover officers working in a gun- and drug-plagued strip joint in Queens had good reason to believe that a party leaving the club was armed and about to shoot an adversary. When one of the undercovers identified himself as an officer, the car holding the party twice tried to run him down. The officer started firing while yelling to the car’s occupants: “Let me see your hands.†His colleagues, believing they were under attack, fired as well, eventually shooting off 50 rounds and killing the driver, Sean Bell. No gun was found in the car, but witnesses and video footage confirm that a fourth man in the party fled the scene once the altercation began. Bell and the other men with him all had been arrested for illegal possession of guns in the past; one of Bell’s companions that night, Joseph Guzman, had spent considerable time in prison, including for an armed robbery in which he shot at his victim.Nothing in these facts suggests that racial animus lay behind the incident.
She also reports this detail, which also appears -- though less prominently -- in New York Times coverage:
The officer, after all, had heard Sean Bell say, “Let’s f**k him up,†and Bell’s friend, Joseph Guzman, respond, “Yo, get my gun.â€
Of course, it turns out that there wasn't a gun in the car, and Sean Bell may well have been an innocent man tragically, and wrongly, killed by police.
The point is that accusing police of a terrible mistake is a categorically different from accusing them of malicious racism, and the facts of the case suggest the police had reason to act -- even if they acted wrongly -- that hadn't anything to do with race.
Commentators and activists like Al Sharpton also desserve censure for giving the false impression that the NYPD shoot people like this all the time. Here is some context that the New York Times should've provided:
The instances of an officer shooting an innocent, unarmed victim are so unusual that they can be counted on one’s fingers. Last year, of the nine suspects fatally shot by the police, two had just fired at a police officer, three were getting ready to fire, two had tried to stab an officer, and two were physically attacking an officer. Far more frequent are the times when the NYPD refrains from using force though clearly authorized to do so. So far this year, officers have been fired upon four times, without returning fire. In 2005, there were five such incidents. And the NYPD apprehended 3,428 armed felons this year, 15 percent more than last year. Each arrest of a gun-toting thug involves the potential for the use of deadly force, yet is almost always carried out peacefully.The Department has dramatically driven down the rate of all police shootings—justified and not—over the decades (in 1973, there were 1.82 fatal police shootings per 1,000 officers; in 2005, there were 0.25 such shootings per 1,000 officers, bringing the absolute number of police shootings down from 54 in 1973 to nine in 2005). The NYPD’s per capita rate of shootings is lower than many big city departments.
The black community--indeed the whole community--is upset by the Sean Bell shooting partly because officers sometimes do act out against minorities out of racial animus or prejudice. The notion that a race one belongs to is being targeted for murder by the police understandably stokes fear.
Fear is sometimes justified by facts. As someone who hates the idea of anyone living in fear, however, I find press coverage irresponsible when it misleads minority readers into being more fearful than is justified by the facts. Check out MacDonald's whole piece.
Crystal Smith @ December 5, 2006 - 10:07pm
I agree that the shootings might not have been racially motivated. Meaning, the officers didn't decide to shoot just because these men were black- three out of five of the police officers were minorities. I believe this case has everything to do with class and power. Police Departments in almost every American city have had to dealt with injustified shootings. It just so happens that minorities, black men namely, are more likely to appear dishonest to police and therefore dangerous thus making them less likely to "ask questions first" than if the people were white. Police although they do provide a valuable service sometimes take their power to another level and what needs to be addressed is the level of training in the New York City Police Department. The police officers did not follow protocol and bottom line... it doesn't matter if the people in the car were green... it is inhumane to shoot at anybody 50-something times. So, to me race isn't the problem here- it is the misuse of power and that is what should be addressed. And unfortunately, minorities should be fearful of the police because statistically they are more likely to be shot and killed than whites in these types of situations and if you look at the historical background between police and the black community--- it isn't really reassuring.
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