Cops cleared in groom shooting case

[YoFuggedaboutit]

Let's see, cops fire 50 shots into a guy who didn't have a gun in the early hours of the morning after he was coming out of his bachelor party, and they are found not guilty.....

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/judge-clears-cops-in-grooms-shooting/20080425085009990002

We could be looking at a riot in New York bigger than the Rodney King riots and Watts Riots combined.

[SCFinFan]

Good ol' incestuous legal system!

[Buddhagirl]

Unreal...

[Denver_Bronco]

I can' wait for the riots. I want a plasma TV...............

[TonyB0D]

sweet...i'm gonna head to the city and see if i can grab some free loot while the brothas are rioting

[run_to_win]

Excerpts....

Bell, a 23-year-old man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens .

The judge indicated that the police officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version. "The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified" in firing, he said.

The nearly two-month trial was marked by deeply divergent accounts on the part of defense lawyers and prosecutors.

The defense painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous.

The victims and shooters were set on a fateful collision course by a pair of innocuous decisions: Bell's to have a last-minute bachelor party at Kalua Cabaret, and the undercover detectives' to investigate reports of prostitution at the club.

As the club closed around 4 a.m., Sanchez and Isnora claimed they overheard Bell and his friends first flirt with women, then taunt a stranger who responded by putting his right hand in his pocket as if he had a gun. Guzman, they testified, said, "Yo, go get my gun" — something Bell's friends denied.

He claimed that after warning the men to halt, Bell pulled away, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van that converged on the scene with Oliver at the wheel.

The detective also alleged that Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.

"I yelled 'Gun!' and fired," he said. "In my mind, I knew (Guzman) had a gun."

With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire.

Did the victims know the strip club was "seedy"?  Are there any strip clubs that aren't considered seedy?

Location and time do affect suspicions.  Had they been coming out of a restaurant at 4:00 pm the no one would think twice about it.

Who was the NFL player (QB?) who, when asked about players and thier troubles at nightclubs, said that his parents taught him that "Nothing good happens after midnight"?

Bell's fiancee, parents and their supporters, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, have held rallies demanding that the officers be held accountable.

Al Jesse, and their ilk, have such a long history of crying "wolf" that I wonder if their involvement alone actually makes it LESS likely that authorities who shoot blacks will be punished.

[MaineDolFan]

Al Sharpton has stuck his nose into this?

NOOOOOOO.  That must be a typo!

[Sunstroke]

50 shots because they "believed" the guys were armed? Sweet mercy...glad they didn't believe the guys were carrying a nuke or something, they'd have called in an aerial napalm strike.

I don't know though...Both sides' stories sounds a little shaky to me. I'm betting neither side is telling the whole truth in this situation.

[SCFinFan]

This was a criminal trial. The cops won't fair so well on the civil side of things.

[Guru-In-Vegas]

So based on runz's reasoning, don't get caught anywhere considered "seedy" after midnight.  50 bullets coming your way will be the consequence.

[run_to_win]

So based on history, don't get caught anywhere considered "seedy" after midnight.  50 bullets coming your way will be the consequence.

Realize where you are and what that implies to the police, and then act accordingly. 

What happened to these men was wrong.  However, whether intentionally or not, they allegedly escalated the situation.  A simple "Yes officer" and all this would have been avoided.   If only they could have for one second swallowed their anomosity for "the man" ...

There I goes bashing the police again.   

[Dave Gray]

I'm going to try to play the middle ground here.

I hear this kind of thing and I'm obviously horrified that an armless man can get shot up.  It screams excessive force.

That said, mistakes happen.  I make them.  So do you.  I have made terrible decisions in my job, and have paid the appropriate consequences.  I also learn from those mistakes and lacks of judgment and become better at what I do because of it.  Cops are doing a job.  The stakes are just way higher than a normal job.  These are probably shitty cops, and they definitely screwed up, but I don't know whether they are criminals or not.

I think it was Stroke who mentioned it above, but we don't really know what happened in this case.  I doubt the victims in the case were completely innocent.  Did they deserve death?  No.  But they probably deserved something, and in the moment, the cops lost control and made poor decisions.

I don't have the answer: It makes them bad cops, probably, but I don't know that they should go to jail.  It's a gray area.

[Brian Fein]

That said, mistakes happen.  I make them.  So do you.  I have made terrible decisions in my job, and have paid the appropriate consequences. 

Isn't it true, sir, that the appropriate consequences for killing people is jail or even the death penalty? 

If I run over a guy with my car "by accident" I get charged with vehicular manslaughter.  What makes this any different other than the killer is a law enforcement officer, and the weapon was a gun?

[Dave Gray]

Isn't it true, sir, that the appropriate consequences for killing people is jail or even the death penalty?

Actually, no that's not true.  People get killed every day by accident without going to jail.  Murder is different than death through a mistake.

If I run over a guy with my car "by accident" I get charged with vehicular manslaughter.  What makes this any different other than the killer is a law enforcement officer, and the weapon was a gun?

This isn't true either.  If you're drunk and you run someone over, sure.  But if you accidentally plow over someone, you don't necessarily go to jail.  You'll more likely be held liable civilly instead of criminally.

[Brian Fein]

The difference between murder and accident is intent. 

I'd love for some lawyer to convince me that cops fired 50 bullets at a guy and intended to NOT kill them.  What were they, warning shots?