I agree with Suzanna, she sounds so intelligent. By calling the author a "cracker" and accusing her of "white lies" she really proves her point that it's white people who are racist. She also makes a really good point by urging the author to research her facts. If the author would have taken Suzanna’s insightful criticism to heart she may have discovered for herself that "police departments are targeted to kill and racial profile black people." A claim that was obviously fact-based and meticulously researched. Suzanna also correctly points out that due to "white skin privilege" we crackers get away with such things as murder and fraud—every day no less. (I personally defrauded 4 people just yesterday!) In summation, I hope the author has been influenced by these poignant remarks and in the future she’ll keep her "white, cracker, bitch" lies to a minimum.

Bitch you have the nerve. You must be white also to say such outrageous white lies. Anyway how many white random fatal shootings can you count of your hands with a white male unarmed none. You think and breathe like a racist. NYPD like all other police departments are targeted to kill and racial profile black people. Is it because blacks are criminals and crackers are innocent? No, it's simply because this is a racist society which refuses to deny it. Crackers get away with murder, lies, fraud every day because of white skin privilege. Wherever you went to school or got your "facts" from are pure white lies. Bitch research before writing dumb shit on the internet.

I would like to thank Ms. Mac Donald for an intuitive and thoughtful article regarding the Sean Bell shooting. Being a supervisor in the NYPD with 16 years of experience, most in a very high crime neigborhood, I can fully understand the catch-22 that police officers are faced with every day. Over 13,000 lives can be attributed to the hard work of the NYPD.

Maybe we should go back to the days of Mayor Dinkins where street arrests were frowned upon and aggressive officers were punished. There is a saying in the NYPD: there are cops and then there are the police. To be labled the latter means that you as a police officer go and aggressively pursue criminals. Cops wait in their patrol cars or foot post or some other administrative assignment until they are told to do something. When they do take action it is in a slow and deliberate way so as to ensure that they will not have to take any police action. These members of the department love to take pride in the accomplishments of the NYPD, though they have done little to forward the effort. Without officers such as those involved in the Bell shooting, who put their lives on the line for communities that don't care, the City would not be the safest big city in the world.

Thank you for this article. As a police officer who has been shot at four times and has never shot back, I am glad to hear someone address the facts and not the emotions.

I just read all the responses to this article. Of course the girl from Jamaica threatens the life of the woman who wrote this article. Can't people have opinions? I just can't believe this nonsense!

Unlike everyone else that has responded thus far, I am in agreement with the fact that our black advocates have failed to make a "call to action" for black on black crimes that affect our communities on a much larger scale than police misconduct. I also agree with the fact that the police are concentrated in black and minority areas because that is where most crimes happen. We do it to ourselves, no police, black leaders, or news cameras there to capture the horror! As a black woman, am I supposed to get along with a criminal just because he/she is black too? No! He/she will rob/rape/kill me just as easily as they would anyone else.

You made some good points about the phenomena that black advocates ignore, but you cannot ignore the obvious abuse of police power in the Bell case, and many others like it. It's not your place to define the decency of a black advocate and since the fact of the matter is that you are not black, you have a unique point of view about this tragedy. However, you don't know about the way officers interact with minorities, so you shouldn't comment on it. Police take a "one bad apple spoiled the barrel" approach to dealing with minorities in this country. We commit most of the crimes, so as a law of average, most of us are no good. As a black woman in Texas, I know of what I speak . . . do you?

Your typical silly defense of cops and black crime to violate the human rights of black males like myself or my cousins and nephews to support your white racialist agenda is going to lead to more racial violence in the future. I promise you if any cop knowingly kills anyone in my law abiding family they will die, I don't care what color they are.

Typical right wing bullshit. 50 shots? No way if these cops (who cares what their race is) were in a white neighborhood would they have fired 50 times. You obviously are a racist and to you black lives don't matter.

It never fails that in a case such as this, there is always a flurry of articles such as this one, in which black people are admonished for daring to state what is painfully obvious.

Anyone would have to be blind not to see a pattern here.

When was the last time an unarmed white person was shot for no reason? That is the last thing white people have to worry about (another example of white skin privilege), but it is something blacks must be constantly aware of.

Your article also states that the police identified themselves, and then one was hit by their vehicle, which is inconsistent with a witness who reported seeing the van crash into the car first, then seeing the officers get out, and the shooting subsequently took place. And regardless of the record of anyone in the car, the police had no previous knowledge of it. Furthermore, police cannot shoot inside of a moving car, and a car is not considered a lethal weapon (that's in the police manual).

I always tell my friends that the white police officers are no different than the white people who lock their car doors, grab their handbags, leap out of elevators, or cross the street when they see a black person (I have had all of those things happen to me while wearing a Brooks Brothers suit). The difference is that they have guns and badges, so that when they get scared, they KILL you, and their badges protect them from having to assume any responsibility for their actions.

It remains to be seen if Bloomberg will pull a "Giuliani," and send the trial to some upstate county where a cop would have to rob a bank, film it himself, and then confess in order to get a parking ticket, but frankly, I believe that is exactly what will ultimately happen.

You are a stupid bitch who needs to get fucked up if you come to jamaica with that dumb shit he was murdered and why are the other witnesses saying the same thing they never said they were the police I would love a chance to whip your ass for this dumb shit right here please come to the rally at Macys and tell us who you are so we can stop the life out you ok.

The police have been turning a blind eye to the ghetto for years, and if this is their way of showing us they care, I would rather take my chances without their assistance. Why don't we hear about stuff like this happening in Nassau County? Suffolk County? Westchester County? Or any other surburban townships?

Yes, people in the ghetto (as you have referred to it) want protection from drug dealers and thugs, but when we have to consider protecting our children from them as well as the NYPD it becomes very scary and very frustrating.

This was the type of tragedy that should NEVER occur.

I recently retired after 30 years with a sheriff's office in the St. Pete/Clearwater, Florida area. Although our metro area pales in size to your hometown, we still have the same type of issues on a smaller scale. The St. Pete Times, a mirror of the NY Times, also stirs the racial pot when it's convenient for their purpose. You speak about the holy Rev. Jesse Jackson. This area had to endure the Terri Schiavo debacle a couple of years ago and if I didn't know which side of the live or die fence I was on, all it took was for him to arrive on the scene and my quandary was settled.

I will have to admit that I am really disappointed in Mayor Bloomberg's immediate rush to judgment about these police officers that were doing a very difficult job. I can tell you that when a law enforcement officer's chain of command does not support his actions until all the facts are known, serious damage can be done to the desire of these officers and others to continue the job they were sworn to do. Thank you again for your eloquent article and keep up the good work.

I have to admit that after reading some of your article on whether or not the cops are racist, I was somewhat on the fence about hoping that the cops who killed that man were sent to prison, and raped by large black men for the next 20 years of their lives. Then I was curious as to what you looked like.

Now I may just be making an assumption here, but I'm willing to bet my paycheck that you don't know shit about getting pulled over, cuffed, and sat on a curb all without reason. I don't think you would know shit about being stopped and frisked for no reason. I'm also going to assume you've never been talked to like you were less than a person just because that certain cop was having a bad day.

I wear a badge and I know just what type of racial, oral sewage comes out of the mouths of the city's finest. I am embarrassed to don my shield.

And finally, shame on you for trying to determine what and what is not a decent black advocate. You don't know shit about what being black is about. I wouldn't give a fuck if your husband was black or you have mixed children. You are still white as you were at birth.

In closing I would like to say the NYPD did us very proud on 9/11 but is an utter disgrace and embarrassment to the fine state of New York. This is not the first incident of its kind in NYC and I'm sure it won't be the last. So fuck the NYPD, and fuck you for supporting them.

I just love how you, a middle class white female, think you can explain all the social ills of black America, and ignore the fact that the police would NEVER fire 50 shots at an unarmed white man. I also love the fact that you write about the shooting as if you were an actual witness, and also ignore the fact that the NYPD is prone to lying and covering up the facts of such incidents.

Thank you for an eloquent, well-reasoned published view. Having been a Narcotics Platoon Commander I know all too well what those five were feeling that night. They were doing their best to do a righteous job, but fate just took over. Everything that could go wrong for them did.

Leaders concerned about civil rights need to choose their fights more carefully than they tend to do. Crying wolf too often dilutes their effectiveness as leaders. Of course no one in America wants to see injustice, and we hate to have the innocent accidentally killed, but the Sean Bell case does not fit the profile of innocence inasmuch as a car is a deadly weapon and was used against the undercover cop, and because the passengers could have stopped and cooperated and ended the incident without bloodshed. The cops wanted to stop them, not kill them. The cops are charged with protecting citizens and disarming those that pose a threat to citizens. If they did not do this in black areas, the leadership would say that this means blacks living in these areas are expendable and the politicians do not care about them enough to try to protect them. To call off the cops because of the kind of killing that happened here, as tragic as it was, is nowhere near what would happen if the cops stopped trying to prevent crimes from happening in those dangerous areas. The death rate of blacks would no doubt go much higher if the cops were to drop their efforts in those areas. Leaders should keep this in mind before discouraging efforts that work, on balance, in favor of saving lives in these black areas.

A giant thank-you from myself and the rest of the law enforcement community, which does a thankless job in order to try and make sure everyone goes home at night and to their families, even if it means we do not.

As a retired police officer who killed a felon who had shot me I applaud your article. These people who are putting out all the hot air have no idea what they are talking about having never "been there." They can run their mouths 'til the sky falls and they won't approach the quality of your article. They have never felt the fear in the pit of their stomach when someone was shooting at them trying to take their life or the sick feeling in the pit of their stomach at the realization they have just taken someone's life to save their own. They are all pathetic individuals who shouldn't be capitalizing on misfortune! If they really want to help they need to do as you have suggested in your article. They won't . . . there aren't any headlines in doing that!

I have waited and waited for a response to come out like this. As the mother of a son who has participated strongly in the Police Explorers Program, is soon to join the Air Force in the Security Forces branch, and wants to retire as a police officer, I praise your response to this situation. Why would anyone, including my son, want to become a police officer? They are attacked constantly and most are racially motivated attacks. If a police officer is doing his job, and in the blink of a moment has to stop and think "Is this person black or white," someone is going to die . . . him or the other person. I don't want my son to have to think about race. I want him to protect the community and himself, and not have to stop and think if doing so is going to cost him his job and/or his life.

Jackson and Sharpton pick what gets them in the spotlight. If Sean Bell had been white, they would be nowhere to be found. Who really is making this racial? Black or white, these officers need to be commended. When it comes down to it, we wouldn't want to be in their shoes, but we certainly don't want to give them the well-deserved respect for wearing those shoes. These were not Opie Taylor boys . . . otherwise, they would have shown their hands and not made crude remarks to make our officers feel the need to protect themselves. Black or white, how stupid do you have to be?

Police officers are underpaid, underrespected, underappreciated, and with lack of support. The mayor should also be ashamed of himself. He's condemned them in public without an end to a proper investigation. Not to sound too uneducated, but this entire situation is a load of crap! Those officers have my full support and daily prayers. You go get 'em boys!

I wonder what you would read into these shootings, and the usual response from our elected officials, if you were a young black man who had not been involved in criminal activity. I fear for my life, as does my mother, from the very people that are here to protect me. I would very much like to believe that this incident was not racially motivated, but the overwhelming history of this country's racist past and present . . . let's just say I am skeptical.

Clearly the jury is out. Your whooping up of unmitigated
support for the police is the same as the black leaders' unmitigated call that this was racially motivated.

They should not have shot so much. 'Nuff said.