TONIGHT
RECENT POSTS
- This Flu Kills
August 29, 2009 - Serious Doubts on Healthcare
August 27, 2009 - Ted Kennedy Dies
August 26, 2009 - Two and a Half Men: The Return of the Sitcom
August 24, 2009 - MJ's FBI File
August 24, 2009 - How Youth Make a Difference
August 22, 2009 - Hurricane Katrina Four-Year Anniversary: Have We Done Enough?
August 21, 2009 - Bringing Guns to Obama Town Halls
August 19, 2009
E-mail a friendYOUNG VOICES
A Deadly Mistake
As my fellow Young Voices contributer, Sean Nixon, stated in his article, the Sean Bell incident was incredibly tragic. However, it wasn't just tragic for the Bell family and friends; it was also tragic for the three detectives who mistakenly made the choice to shoot Bell.
The real question before the American people concerning the death of Bell is not the guilty verdict for the detectives who killed him, but whether this incident had something to do with Bell being black. In my opinion, certainly mistakes were made on the part of the detectives, on the part of Bell, and on the part of his friends. But Bell was not killed because he was black. And the judgment concerning his killers wasn't wrongly decided. The cops were doing their jobs to protect the community from what they reasonably thought was a threat. And Bell and his friends were acting suspiciously. To take the shooting, and the verdict, out of context is to color the incident as a racial incident and not a deadly mistake.