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The city of New York reached a settlement today on the shooting of Sean Bell by police. The Bell estate will receive $3.5 million and the remainder will go to the families of Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, who were with Bell on the night of the shooting.
Bell was shot on the night before his wedding in 2006.
"The Sean Bell shooting highlighted the complexities our dedicated officers must face each day. The City regrets the loss of life in this tragic case, and we share our deepest condolences with the Bell family," Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo said when the deal was announced.
The settlement frees the city from having to admit any wrongdoing. The money will go to Bell's two children, and his fiancee Nicole Paultre-Bell. Three of the five officers involved in the shooting, where 50 bullets were fired, were tried and acquitted of manslaughter in a 2008 trial. The officers claim that they believed Bell and his friends were armed on the night of the shooting, but it turned out that they were not.
Nicole Paultre Bell, Sean Bell's widow, said this to Aol. Black Voices:
"No amount of money will provide closure for me. I lost the father of my daughters and my best friend on the day we were to be married."
Prominent black public figures were not at a loss for words when describing their response to the Sean Bell settlement. I reached out to Rev. Al Sharpton, Bennett College President Dr. Julianne Malveaux and Georgetown Professor Dr. Michael Eric Dyson to get their takes on the situation. Rev. Al Sharpton had this to say:
The settlement must all provide for their families but this in no way mitigates or repairs the permanent damage done to them and the pain it has caused them forever nor does it diminish the outrage in the community. We will always pursue justice for the family of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield.
Dr. Malveaux said the following:
He should not have died, and the life in this settlement caution for each of us to take care of all of us and to be cautious and careful about the meaning of life. Both bullets and assumptions killed Sean Bell. Neither assault is acceptable.
Professor Dyson said this:
The Bell murder highlights the need for the end to racial profiling of minorities and police brutality against blacks. While the condition of the settlement precludes admission of wrongdoing, we all know that vicious racist practices often have lethal consequences for minority citizens.
Read each person's statement in its entirety here.
If President Barack Obama wants to speak on an issue related to race, he can speak on the Sean Bell incident. The Henry Louis Gates case is not a solid prototype for racial injustice, but the Bell case certainly is. The shooting of Sean Bell is one of the rare cases in which black men who are harassed by police actually find a way to receive justice (even though Bell himself paid the ultimate price). In most cases, justice is not served. Instead, victims are served with long prison sentences and a label of guilt that precludes them from ever being a part of our society again. That is something to think about.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here. 
Comments: (19)
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By: violet on 7/28/2010 12:20PM
so what your saying is that these were inocent people and the cops just pickd on them cause of their skin color..??? really they were in the wrong place at a wrong time...according to the BIBLE inocent people have nothing to fear from the authority they were put there by GOD for protection from those who break the law... all the inmates in prison say that they are inocent... now guess what this family who was reard by a thug will do with 7 milion.. go to college i bet...NOT..
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By: djkut on 7/28/2010 2:57PM
Violet what the hell are u talking about God say obay the laws of the land according to his words not Man's word and how he thinks, because if Man thought christlike then there would be no need for the action of treating people beneath you because of the color of their skin. I hope you would say the same thing about the KKK and some of these racist folks that are making these laws that you claim we need to follow. You wont get out and take a bullet out on that 1 though for HUH ???
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By: stare k on 7/29/2010 2:09PM
Violet That is none of your racist business .
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By: Tracy L. Bell on 8/01/2010 11:37AM
I'm glad the Bell estate settled with monetary gain. And contrary to the naysayers, an unarmed man was gunned down and KILLED and his friends and family are wounded for life. Nothing and I mean absolutely NOTHING is going to bring SEAN BELL back, so if this settlement is one small victory in "The Bell's" having peace in this sad and tragic situation, SO BE IT!!!!
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By: Cecil Jones on 7/29/2010 3:12AM
3.5 million dollars isn't a whole lot of money for two kids and a wife to live out their life after such a tragedy now is it? New York got the best of this deal. Where is the NAACP now? Who negotiated this settlement?
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By: LIFE on 7/31/2010 12:10AM
These kinds of forums are as dangerous as they are helpful. They are dangerous because ignorant people, not ignorant evidenced solely by poor spelling and grammar skills but also by a lack of an historical perspective or a racially and culturally limited historical perspective at best, get to spew their baseless rhetoric. These forums are helpful in that they often expose racsists and dispel the too common misconception that this country is any more racially harmonious in 2010 than it was in 1865 and they open the door for critical analysis.
The simple fact that police agencies have been killing Black people, since such institutions were introduced into society, long before Sean Bell, his parents and perhaps even his grandparents were born, makes it impossible for a logically thinking person to conclude that the killing of Sean Bell is anything less than another tragic manifestation of a long-standing police practice. That's my principled statement.
On a somewhat personal note: I hardly trust that people like "violet" who seem to lack the educational aptitude to correctly spell elementary words like "alcohol" and "innocent" can correctly analyze current events or the writings in the Bible.
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By: dina on 7/29/2010 1:09PM
i strongly beleive that this amount wasn't enough. this is perfect example of the racist society we live in. had this been someone of white ancestry, the settlement would've been in the amount of double digits. honestly, it isn't about the money, but i would've rejected this offer.
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By: ANDRE GREEN on 7/29/2010 7:48PM
I'M GLAD YOUR RETIRED TOO BECAUSE IF YOU WASN'T I WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SHOT YOU DEAD LIKE THE WILD WHITE RIGHT-WING ANIMAL THAT YOU ARE.
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By: Conscious on 7/31/2010 9:37AM
Please help me circulate my song and video in her honor. Aiyana Jones was a 7 year old girl killed by Detroit police.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIE7efHPIvM
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