Waiting For Justice

Seventeen months ago in the early morning hours of November 25, 2006 outside a strip club in Jamaica, three police officers fired 50 bullets at three unarmed and innocent young men, killing Sean Bell and severely wounding Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield.
This incident occurred in the morning of what was supposed to be Sean Bell’s wedding day. Immediately following the incident we counseled for calm and for all parties to give the Queens District Attorney and the justice system time to work.
We really believed that the victims and their relatives could and would get justice in the borough of Queens.
The bride to be, Nicole Paultre, Sean Bell’s fianc/e, his daughters, and his parents, William and Valerie Bell, spent the next year-and-a-half of their lives in limbo - waiting for justice to be rendered. Similarly, fellow shooting victims Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, who were wounded in the fusillade of police bullets, bided their time.
They are still waiting.
We are still waiting.
The city is still waiting.
The decision by Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman to acquit all three Police Detectives, Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper, not of murder charges - they were never charged with murder - but of charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment, was impossible to fathom.
The eight-week trial that heard testimony from 50 prosecution witnesses might as well have never been held. We believed that the evidence presented by the prosecution was compelling. Police Office Michael Oliver, who fired 31 shots, even reloaded his weapon.
This case is now in the hands of the U.S. Department of Justice who will examine the same evidence and decide if somebody - some police officer somewhere - violated the civil rights of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield on the chilly November morning outside of the Club Kalua.
Perhaps the supervisor on the scene - Lieutenant Gary Napoli - who spent the shootout cowering on the floor of his undercover Toyota sedan could be found guilty of violating the victims’ rights.
Perhaps the way the New York Police Department handles undercover operations needs to be rethought. Perhaps all police officers need more training in handling and discharging their weapons.
Along with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York Field Division will also conduct independent reviews of the facts and circumstances.
We all must continue to wait for justice in this case.
While we are waiting, we hope that the police and the communities they serve, no matter what ethnicity, can find common ground upon which to rebuild a relationship of trust and respect for the lives of all citizens.