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In Jamaica, a flashpoint for debate

BY CARA TABACHNICK | Special to Newsday

December 3, 2006

A makeshift shrine near the location where Sean Bell was shot and killed by undercover police officer. (Charles Eckert, Freelance / November 30, 2006)

Throughout the week they came. Walking silently along the sidewalk littered with glinting shards of windshield glass, past the torn pieces of yellow police "caution" tape fluttering in the breeze, past the row of television trucks lining the block.

Mothers holding children, groups of friends, curious passersby, politicians, members of community groups. They placed flowers, lit candles and taped handwritten notes to the concrete wall along a desolate stretch of street in Jamaica where Sean Bell was killed in a hail of 50 bullets fired by police, hours before his wedding.

As the days passed, the memorial grew for Bell, 23, and his two injured friends, Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23, who were with him at his bachelor party on the morning of Nov. 25. People said they felt a compelling desire to visit the scene.

"In a way, it's become our own Ground Zero," said Daryl Babb, 41, of Far Rockaway, who came to the site, he said, because he believed it could have been him or any one of his friends in that situation that night.

As groups of people swelled, shrank and then swelled again at the memorial, some people stood silent. But many discussed their feelings about what has become to them another Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima case, names that in New York City need no elaboration.

"This is almost like a modern-day lynching, except they did not have rope," said Babb, as he recalled times he has been stopped by police for no reason.

The shootings have become a flash point for the African-American community, and have underscored the tension between police and people of color.

"If they are not shooting us, they are putting us in jail for false pretenses," said Bronx resident Brian Nixon, 31.

"America is getting worse for black people," said Mrs. Brown, 60, who did not want to give her first name but said she is a longtime resident of the neighborhood.

She stood before a floral bouquet with a yellow sash that read "Love Yourself, Stop the Violence." She said she sent her three sons to live in England because she was fearful of police harassment of them, and hasn't seen them in 21 years.

"Black people need to fight back," she said, fighting back tears. "It hurts so bad. It hurts in my guts. It's like it was my own son. I just want to see it stopped."

"I'm a mother. How do you think I feel?" said another resident, who declined to give her name. "My son is the same age; it could have happened to him."

Phyllis Watson Stansbury, whose unarmed teenage son Timothy Jr. was killed by a housing officer in a January 2004 confrontation in Brooklyn, told the gathered crowd, "You have to come out respectfully, but with some aggression to let them know that we are sick and tired and we cannot tolerate this within our community."

The anger and pain that pervaded the scene at times was tempered by reflections on what needs to be done to help communities that suffer from so much violence.

Nixon, who has family in the Queens neighborhood, said: "I don't think it's a race thing. It's more the community versus the police. They protect their own and the community is left to suffer by themselves."

He said African-Americans need a voice from within the community to speak -- and not just for political reasons.

Babb said, "I hope this is a wake-up call, not only in the black community, but in all communities where this takes place. There needs to be unity, and the black community needs to be more proactive and say, 'This is what needs to be done.'"

Some said people should not rush to judgment before all the facts about the shooting come out.

Queens resident Ralph Gonzales, 53, said, "They don't know what was going through the minds of the five police officers at the time. I'm not supporting or condemning the actions of the police department or Sean Bell, but there needs to be an investigation before anyone rushes to judgment."

"There were mistakes on both parts," said Edwin Rios, 45, who works in the library of nearby York College and stopped by the memorial scene on his lunch hour. "There is a sense of pain. This could've happened to anybody, not because of race, and this shouldn't polarize the people in the city."