I do agree with you that police officers do have a very difficult job to do. I also agree that when there is a white police officer that is forced to kill a black man... there are many more repercussions for him than for those people who are just plain murderers. However I am totally opposed to everything else in your article. Those officers never announced themselves as the police. When Sean Bell and his friends were leaving the club and saw plain clothed men pointing guns at them, I would have done the same thing as they did. Try to drive away as quickly as possible. How can you honestly say that anyone firing 50 shots at men who never once fired back (because they were unarmed) can be justified? I think that is the most rediculous thing I have ever heard. Personally I don't know if this was racially motivated...I doubt it was. I think that it is just plain irresponsibility and abuse of their law enforcement priveledge on the part of those officers. These men may have had a criminal background, and maybe it did have to do with guns, but not one of those officers knew who they were or their background when they started firing. I believe I remember one news story in which an officer had been quoted as saying that they thought the men exiting were other people...the real reason why the police were there. So that right there shows that they were just firing at anyone. They had the nerve to shoot at these men 50 times and it wasn't even the people they were looking for? And you don't think that's careless?? I understand that police have a hard job to do, but they are the ones who took the job. It was their decision to enter this occupation, which everyone knows is a dangerous and hard one, and it was their negligence that took these innocent men's lives.