Last Friday, three New York City police officers were acquitted for the killing of
\n23-year old Sean Bell, early in the morning on what was to be his wedding day, in
\nNovember of 2005. Bell’s 50-bullet murder sparked outrage in a city that is no
\nstranger to police brutality; the list of police killings of unarmed black men over
\nthe years is long and familiar.<\/p>\n
People like to treat police shootings as “tragic” isolated incidents, but the ugly
\ntruth is that police officers inflict violence on black communities on a regular
\nbasis. And they get away with it, time and time again. “When cops go on trial for
\noveruse of deadly force, their victims are generally young blacks and Latinos,” writes
\none commentator. “The attorneys that defend them are top gun defense attorneys and
\nhave had much experience defending police officers accused of misconduct. Police
\nunions pay them and they spare no expense in their defense. The cops rarely serve any
\npre-trial jail time, and are released on ridiculously low bail.”<\/p>\n
Bell, meanwhile, was handcuffed while mortally injured. Is this really what we call
\n“justice for all”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last Friday, three New York City police officers were acquitted for the killing of 23-year old Sean Bell, early in the morning on what was to be his wedding day, in November of 2005. Bell’s 50-bullet murder sparked outrage in a city that is no stranger to police brutality; the list of police killings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[31,42],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}