Sean Bell Case Study

Early in the morning on November 26, 2006, Sean Bell was excitedly awaiting his wedding. That wedding never happened because of the five police officers that shot at him and his two friends fifty times. Bell died that morning. Three of the officers were charged; the most serious offense was first-degree manslaughter. All of the officers were indicted. The officers’ cases’ outcomes were unjust and society was able to influence the outcome with the way it treats police officers differently. On that early Sunday morning, Sean Bell and two of his friends were at a strip club. At the club there were undercover police officers, and the officers thought that there was a gun at the scene. One of the officers stood in front of the car Bell and his

Society as a whole thinks more of police officers than it does of citizens that are accused of breaking the law. Society trusts officers’ words more than normal people. They think that because someone is a police officer they are more trustworthy. This bias was evident when, “The judge told the court that the police officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version…”(NPR). The judge felt that because they were police officers he could trust their account of the incident more than the victims’. The victims were thought to be a danger when the police acted, but they weren’t. Because the police at the time didn’t trust the victims, the judge also doesn’t trust them because he thinks the officers’ perceptions at the time were reliable and should be trusted. This shows how society and the law view police officers differently than other people accused of crimes. They only trust the defendants because they are police officers. Often when officers commit crimes, society and the law will excuse them from these crimes because they think it’s okay as long as they were doing their job. This can be okay if breaking the law was completely necessary. During Sean Bell’s it wasn’t necessary for the officers to go against the law, and they went even further and broke their department’s rules. They were not supposed to fire at a moving vehicle, but they did and killed a man. So, they weren’t even acting inside of the law when they killed Sean Bell. The officers should have been charged with Sean Bell’s murder because that’s what happened; they murdered Bell outside of the law. Even if they weren’t charged with murder, they should have at least been convicted of the crimes they were charged with. They were guilty of those crimes, there’s no doubt that they killed Bell and injured two of his friends. The officers should have been found