Ask that question to the families of Nicholas Heyward, a 13-year-old boy killed by the NYPD while playing with a toy gun in 1994 … or Michael Ellerbe, a 12-year-old boy killed by Pennsylvania state police in 2002.. or Paul Childs III, a developmentally-disabled 15-year-old boy killed by Denver police in 2003… or Timothy Stansbury Jr., a 19-year-old Black child killed by the NYPD in 2004… or Devin Brown, a 13-year-old boy killed by the LAPD in 2005… or DeAunta Farrow, a 12-year-old child killed by West Memphis police in 2007, again while playing with a toy gun. In all of these cases, the children killed were Black. In none of these cases were the officers involved even tried, much less convicted.
If you want to gain an even deeper sense of how often this happens, here’s a quick experiment: Simply Google the words “Police shoot unarmed boy.” Take note of how many results surface; of how many of these murdered children were not persons of color; and of how often the police officers in these instances were charged. And remember that these are only the incidents that are known about, that are retrieved by Google, and that involve children.
And, as the quote from Avakian at the beginning of this article speaks to, just as lynchings terrorized Black Americans as whole— and not merely the thousands who were actually hung from trees—so too does the impact of police murder extend far beyond those whose lives are literally taken by law enforcement. Millions of Black and Latino youth wake up each morning with the knowledge that there is nothing to protect them from being gunned down just like Sean Bell was.
And those who are able to escape this fate are faced with the constant threat of physical and psychological harassment at the hands of police, even while performing simple rituals of everyday life such as walking in a park or traveling to the corner bodega for a soda: The NYPD stops-and-frisks hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino males each year, and the vast majority of them are committing no crime: In 2006, of more than 500,000 stops made by the NYPD on the streets of New York City, 90 percent resulted in no summons or arrest. The vast majority of those stopped were Black or Latino. This is another reality that no person of color can escape, whether they themselves have been stopped 20 times, ten times, or zero times by the police.
In the Immediate Aftermath of the Verdict...
In the two weeks immediately following the acquittal of the officers who killed Sean Bell, two incidents occurred that serve as particularly powerful reminders of how non-isolated an incident his murder truly is.
First, on May 2, Douglas Zeigler—the highest-ranking Black officer in the NYPD—was sitting in his car in Queens when two white officers confronted him and attempted to force open his car door; even after he identified himself as the head of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau. Zeigler may have been a superior to the two cops, but that apparently was of far less importance to the officers than the fact that he is Black. The NYPD has admitted that the officers were “discourteous” towards Ziegler.
State Senator Eric Adams said of the incident; “The only difference between Sean Bell and Chief Zeigler, I believe, is that Chief Ziegler didn't make a move towards his glove compartment. If he would have done that, he would have gone to the same destination and went to the morgue instead of going home.”
Then, on the night of May 6, Philadelphia witnessed what could fairly be dubbed Rodney King II: A gang of 10-15 police officers were caught on video tape pulling three Black men out of their car and relentlessly kicking and beating them with their batons, as the men lay utterly defenseless on the ground. The tape is unbelievably sickening, and you really have to see it to fully appreciate how heinous it is. Had the beating victims been dogs instead of African-Americans, there would no doubt be a deafening national uproar.
Currently, the three men who were beaten are in jail on attempted murder charges. The cops who beat them are walking free.
What more proof do you need that police violence and cruelty against Black people is woven tight into the American fabric?
A Vengeful Rise in Old-Fashioned, Violent White Supremacy
But the larger picture framing Sean Bell’s murder is bigger even than systematic police brutality against people of color. Rather, his death is part of a social, cultural, and political landscape in which violence against Black Americans—both physical and psychological—is becoming increasingly commonplace and legitimized.
Consider the case of Megan Williams, a name that is still foreign to the average American—even within progressive circles.
Last fall, Williams—a 23-year-old Black woman in West Virginia—was kidnapped by a mob of whites and subjected to a weeklong nightmare. During her imprisonment, she was raped and beaten repeatedly; forced to eat rat feces; scalded with hot water; choked with a cable; and stabbed in the leg while her captors called her “n-word.” When she was found by police, she cried, “Help me.”
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