Sean Bell was shot and killed back in New York. He was shot by the police because they were mistaken. They thought he had a gun. He didn't have a gun. The police thought he was going to try to hurt them. He was trying to get married. Simplistic summation of events, I know, but there was one thing that hurts all of us. That was the simple fact that the police shot this guy fifty times.
Why fifty? Why not a thousand? Well, that was because they didn't have assualt weapons handy at the time - all they had was pistols. Why not just one shot? You know, the old John Wayne way? One shot – to any part of his body would have accomplished the same result - and been a lot neater - and might have spared his life - and saved the police a lot of trouble.
Why not a shot into the air, or down at the sidewalk?
They were probably trained to shoot just like I was, back in the military: to unload your weapon on the enemy, zap him with 4, 5 shots (we had revolvers - if we had had automatics, we probably would have gove to 10 to 15 rounds). That was the way we treated the enemy. The military way. Fine for shooting in a war zone, facing emenies everywhere, alien creatures - we didn't speak their language, know what they really meant except to hurt us.
Police have a very different job. a constabulatory role. That means they need to know their neighborhoods, know who lives there and what they do, how they talk, what they mean. It also means educating the people on your beat and also learning from them.
I guess that's what hurts so much about this senseless, stupid killing. It was not only not necessary, it was also a notification for all of us that more and more of our police are out to get us. They are not trying to protect us because they are afraid of us. That's scary.
© John Womack 2007, All rights reserved.
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