Vol. 72/No. 19      May 12, 2008

I join with working people everywhere who are outraged at today’s decision by the Queens Supreme Court to clear of all charges the three cops on trial for the 2006 shooting of Sean Bell, gunned down in a hail of 50 bullets hours before his wedding. We stand with those protesting in the streets to say: justice will not be served until the killer cops are jailed for their crime.

Judge Arthur Cooperman’s explanation of his verdict was a classic case of what Malcolm X called “making the victim look like the criminal.” The judge indicted not the police but Bell and his two friends who survived and testified.

Cooperman said prosecution witnesses lacked “credibility” because some had “criminal convictions.” He simply gave credence to the word of the cops against that of their victims—typical of how the class-biased U.S. court system routinely treats working people.

District Attorney Richard Brown played his part in the injustice. He not only failed to get a conviction on even the minimal charge of “reckless endangerment,” but had the nerve to praise the “learned” judge and tell people to accept the verdict.

Bell joins the long, growing list of working people—in their majority Black—killed by the New York police, from Eleanor Bumpurs, shot in 1984 when she resisted eviction from her apartment, to Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant shot 41 times in the vestibule of his apartment building in 1999. In none of these cases did any cop do a single day behind bars.

These killings are not the result of “mistakes” or “bad training.” The purpose of the police—and of the courts and the entire “justice” system—is to serve and protect the tiny ruling class of billionaire families and to keep working people in check.

They hope that fear of cop violence will keep us afraid to organize or to protest employer assaults on our living standards and rights. Cops are used to attack union picket lines and protests. Immigrant workers face daily police harassment, from workplace raids to stops demanding to see ID. The wealthy rulers justify these attacks by seeking to criminalize working people.

However, as millions of immigrants have declared in the streets over the last two years, “We are workers, not criminals!”

I urge opponents of police violence to join the actions on May 1 demanding legalization of all undocumented workers and an end to raids and deportations. Those nationwide actions will strengthen the fight against police brutality.

The verdict in the Sean Bell case confirms once again that to win justice, working people cannot rely on the bosses’ government or on their parties, the Democrats and Republicans. We need to organize broad protests in the streets to press that fight.

We need a labor party, based on fighting unions, that will take on the twin capitalist parties in the political arena. A labor party would mobilize working people to demand: Jail the killer cops!
 
 
Related articles:
Acquittal of N.Y. cops who killed Sean Bell sparks protests
Charges dropped against Miami students arrested after cop riot
‘Free Mumia!’ demand Philadelphia marchers  
 
 
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