Too Many Pigs. Not Enough Justice.

The all-white Mississippi jury that acquitted Emmet Till's murderers.
Never again.

This week brings the "alternative" Village Voice doing some hard reporting on the Sean Bell case, after forcing us to endure a holiday season hell of lifestyle reporting. Finally, it seems, someone in the press is beginning to ask some hard questions about how there's been a lot more effort expended by law enforcement to try indict the late-Sean Bell on DUI than to go after the cold blooded NYPD officers.

The "revelation" Sean Gardiner makes here -- that the NYPD have vindictively sought to indict damn near the whole neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens to toss muddy up the case -- is both startling and yet unsurprising. We've known for weeks about this, New York's Swinest having literally taken this investigation into the sewer looking for anything to exculpate their fellow pig.

Still, let's examine the enormity of the NYPD's machinery of defamation and slander that's been arrayed against Sean Bell, his friends, and the whole neighborhood of Jamaica Queens. A quote from an anonymous retired detective who spoke with the Voice's Gardiner:

According to a retired detective who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a relative is an officer involved in the case, the NYPD assigned its entire warrants division, five squads comprising dozens of cops, to the Bell case.

"The warrants squad was out there beating the bushes—that's how you get intelligence," said the retired detective, who added that most of the cops he knows who have worked this case believe the Fourth Man Theory. "Somebody's going to have something that they're going to give you. It's basic police work. Saturate the area; you turn the screws a little bit to get more information."

Let that sink in folks: the entire warrants division was deployed looking for a fourth man (and likely a couple of cheap nick$el and dime busts the squad could hang their hats on). A whole "parallel investigation" launched into the victims, their families and friends. As Gardiner notes, even the NYPD brass knows this was a damned fool's crusade -- the real force behind this appearing to be the police "unions" looking out for one of their own. Meanwhile, there has yet to be an indictment, or anything like justice served to the killer pigs, and it could be weeks before the grand jury sees a shred of evidence.

The family of Sean Bell started a vigil in front of the 103rd Precinct recently. In sum, it will be 50 days for each shot fired. The rate things are going, I half expect Bell's family to turn to dust before there's any justice served.

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