ECCENTRIC TANTRUMS
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Copyright 2008 by William A. Mays, Proprietor
The job of police officer is one of the most difficult and demanding—if not the most difficult and demanding—in the land. Those who voluntarily fill the shoes of our nation's law enforcement professionals do so with the heartfelt gratitude of those of us who find "better" things to do with our lives. And the level of difficulty only increases with the size of the city. So it follows that when you're talking about the country's largest city, you have the rank-and-file from whom the most is demanded. Out of the 37,000 members of the New York City police force almost every one is a courageous, duteous professional who does his job day in and day out with the utmost in dauntless diligence and care. "New York's finest" indeed! But as with any organization, occasionally a few slip through the cracks who have no business wearing the honorable badge. When they do, those few "bad apples" reflect an unfair and undeserved light onto the entire department. The cowards in question here are Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper, who join the craven likes of Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss in a gallery of pusillanimous ignominy so unseemly as to nearly turn the stomach. These chickenhearted examples of epicene feebleness remind one of the puppy that once picked up off the ground pees all over itself in fright. Woe be to the supervisors who let these lily-livered charlatans go into situations where they would be expected to display even a modicum of fortitude. In both the Sean Bell case and—even more so—in the Amadou Diallo case, the no-business-being police officers panicked in the face of phantoms, creations of their own paranoid and frightened imaginations. One only need look at the number of shots fired to know the state of mind at work. Only those caught in the steely grip of intense cowardice fire their weapons uncontrollably over and over and over. There exists no scale that can measure the level of unmanly, shaky-kneed fright that was surely the cause of such premature and undisciplined discharge. As a result, innocent citizens are dead. In Sean Bell's case, he was a man gunned down on his wedding day, leaving his fiancée to weep and ask "why?" and two young children to plead "where's daddy?" for the rest of their lives. Not to mention the cruel irony that exists where we have an African American who is actually willing to marry the mother of his children, and he's murdered on the very day he is doing so!
The defense in the court trial pointed out that Sean Bell had put his car into gear and attempted to run through one of the cravens. This was a sketchy neighborhood where Bell and his party had just been threatened on the street by another bar patron after leaving the Club Kalua at 143-08 94th Ave in Jamaica Queens. Bell had gotten into his car and started it up when he saw a man dressed in street clothes walking directly toward him holding a gun. At that point, the only question that would have run through our minds would have been whether to continue driving away from the area with all possible haste or to back up and finish the job! Sean Bell reacted to a real threat, not one cooked up in the imagination. The drawing and brandishing of a weapon prior to the existence of any menace whatsoever followed by a fusillade of 50 shots betokens one of two things, either a Sonny Corleone-style organized-crime rubout or the reactions of pants-wetting poltroons.
Police have one job and one job only; it is to protect the innocent citizenry. And for every case like this there are perhaps millions of examples that go unnoticed by the general public of dedicated, capable officers going about their sacred business with pride in their work and excellent results. But in this case, the Diallo case and others, cowards masquerading as police murdered innocent citizens. An example needs to be made. Lengthy prison sentences seem too lenient. The fact that no convictions resulted in either case says something about a justice system that is in dire need of speedy remedy. But at the very least, these frauds need to be publicly and ceremonially drummed out of the NYPD. The cancers need to be lanced and removed from the otherwise healthy body before the disease of cowardice is allowed to spread.
The defense in the court trial pointed out that Sean Bell had put his car into gear and attempted to run through one of the cravens. This was a sketchy neighborhood where Bell and his party had just been threatened on the street by another bar patron after leaving the Club Kalua at 143-08 94th Ave in Jamaica Queens. Bell had gotten into his car and started it up when he saw a man dressed in street clothes walking directly toward him holding a gun. At that point, the only question that would have run through our minds would have been whether to continue driving away from the area with all possible haste or to back up and finish the job! Sean Bell reacted to a real threat, not one cooked up in the imagination. The drawing and brandishing of a weapon prior to the existence of any menace whatsoever followed by a fusillade of 50 shots betokens one of two things, either a Sonny Corleone-style organized-crime rubout or the reactions of pants-wetting poltroons.
Police have one job and one job only; it is to protect the innocent citizenry. And for every case like this there are perhaps millions of examples that go unnoticed by the general public of dedicated, capable officers going about their sacred business with pride in their work and excellent results. But in this case, the Diallo case and others, cowards masquerading as police murdered innocent citizens. An example needs to be made. Lengthy prison sentences seem too lenient. The fact that no convictions resulted in either case says something about a justice system that is in dire need of speedy remedy. But at the very least, these frauds need to be publicly and ceremonially drummed out of the NYPD. The cancers need to be lanced and removed from the otherwise healthy body before the disease of cowardice is allowed to spread.
| Gutless Cops Set Free Again |
| The Sean Bell Case |