Lady Justice, from the Seven Virtues, by Giotto, 1306.In Queens in November 2006, three police officers shot fifty bullets into a car occupied by three unarmed young men. One policeman emptied his gun and reloaded. Sean Bell died from his wounds the night before his wedding. Today a judge cleared the officers of all charges of manslaughter and reckless endangerment.
Apparently it's all right to kill people in New York City.
5 comments:
That's been going on in New York for a long time, and it's not just the police. I've been reading a fascinating book about the immigrant garment workers who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911. Scores of them wound up jumping from the ninth floor because the owners had locked one of the key exit doors (they didn't want workers sneaking out for a break or to steal fabric), and because the fire escapes were barely accessiable, cheap, and flimsy. The owners had seen fires in their premises previously, because they had set them during off hours themselves a few times in order to collect insurance money in the seasons in which they were stuck with a boatload of inventory. They were charged with manslaughter, but Tammany's top lawyer Max Steur got them off. A long, proud tradition of really "blind" justice it seems.
No, it's just okay to kill people of color in New York.
If you shoot a white kid, even a drunk white kid spewing racist remarks and, with several drunk friends, threatening your son, you will go to jail. And you only have to shoot the white kid ONCE.
What the shit?
Am I misremembering the case, or was that the one where the people shot at were completely innocent? Sadly I wish I could say I was surprised.
I was just reading the story in google news. I bet the decision would have gone differently if they had chosen to have a jury trial.
Yeah, it's pretty much the way things work, but it is disappointing. And people wonder why someone like Jeremiah Wright is angry.
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