Sacco and Vanzetti would'a sure been proud...

Today was the first time I'd heard this element of the defense in the Sean Bell case:

With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again, as the supervisor sought cover.

To be crystal clear here, the only "bullets flying" were the 50 bullets the cops were methodically pumping into Sean Bell and his friends.  So the message to police would seem to be: if you're going to shoot, shoot a lot, because then you can claim you were just defending yourself from the confusion caused by your own gunfire.

And I wonder: how well does this defense work if you don't happen to be a cop?  If I shoot at a group of people and then some friends start shooting them as well, can we claim that all the commotion made us think we were being attacked?  And what if the group we're shooting at happens to be cops themselves?

Yes, I'm aware of the flaws in that analogy (like the first shot, which is much more likely to be legal coming from a cop than from me).  But it doesn't take away from the ridiculousness of the defense in this case.  You wonder just how far the NYPD would have to go before a judge would be willing to hold them accountable.

The best comment I've heard on the case was this one:

"We ask police to risk their lives to protect ours," said an assistant district attorney, Charles A. Testagrossa, in his closing arguments. "Not to risk our lives to protect their own."

Comments

[Save the Oocytes]

It's like a cop variation on EED or the insanity offense. As long as these people believed something unbelievable, it's okay that they acted on these wrong beliefs. And if people died? Ask Congress about Iraq.

[Jonathan Versen]

Hey John,
My understanding is that the police said that one of Bell's friends said "I'll go get my gun", and this is when they started shooting.

The friend in question has a rap sheet, which doesn't mean he did say he'd go get his gun, but since the cops went with a no-jury trial the judge obviously knew about the friend's criminal past.

(whereas if they went with a jury trial there would have been at least the possibility that information about the criminal past of the friend could be thrown out as prejudicial and not been available to the jury. As opposed to the judge deciding, "nope, I'm not prejudiced.")

All of which creates a situation which lends itself to putting words like that in his mouth if you're the defense.

[John Caruso]

My understanding is that the police said that one of Bell's friends said "I'll go get my gun", and this is when they started shooting.

Not quite. The (undercover) police said they overheard that statement, then followed Bell and his friends out to their car, then confronted them after they were in the car, then started shooting when Bell tried to drive away. Regardless of what was said, though, the point I'm keying on is that the cops never saw a weapon and were clearly never shot at before they opened fire.

In thinking about it now I'm struck that the cops didn't confront Bell's group immediately upon hearing the alleged remark about the gun. The cops don't have any compunction about using aggressive tactics against peaceful demonstrators—hemming us into protest pens, immediately arresting anyone who so much as steps off the sidewalk into the street, and so on. So why didn't they confront Bell's group immediately when they supposedly heard the remark? Why let the situation get to a point where deadly force would even be an issue?

[Save the Oocytes]

Because it's addictive.