“And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.” – George Bernard Shaw, “Caesar and Cleopatra”.

Three years ago after Thanksgiving dinner my family piled into a car to try and make it to Circuit City for a family shopping trip of sorts. After finding the store closed my mom pulled out of the shopping center and onto the road, driving for roughly 15 seconds in the wrong direction. First she panicked and then she quickly looked for a parking lot to pull into and turn around. Last month my little sister pulled a similar maneuver while practicing her driving. Neither my mom nor my sister was gunned down by a New York police officer causing their car to careen into another vehicle and burst into flames. Neither my mom nor sister is named Fermin Arzu.

Fermin Arzu was a Honduran immigrant in the Bronx that pulled a similar maneuver before getting shot at five times by an off duty police officer. The officer said he believed that Arzu was reaching for a gun in his glove compartment while fleeing the scene of an accident–when he opened fire with his personal firearm. Arzu was later found to be unarmed.

An unarmed black man shot in New York City, sound familiar? What about an unarmed black father engaged to be married next month? The similarities to the Sean Bell case didn’t go unnoticed; protesters used his Arzu’s funeral as an opportunity to remind the citizens and civil servants of New York that they still remember the March firing of 50 bullets at a Nissan filled with unarmed men. They still remember that morning when Sean Bell’s fiancée was supposed to be joined forever with her high school sweetheart and was instead told that she’d never see him again.

If you’ve ever watched an episode of Cops or High Speed Chases then you might remember that there is never a scene where police officers open fire on a moving vehicle. That’s because they aren’t supposed to. Regardless of whether or not the driver is armed or whatever fears they may have about the situation. It turns out cars are pretty heavy and like in the case of Fermin Arzu, have a tendency to keep going after the driver is dead.

Nicole Paultre Bell recently filed wrongful death charges against the NYPD and five police officers. She is claiming that the police officers in question were poorly trained in their shooting of her unarmed late fiancée.

I don’t know that there’s much that can be done outside of improved training that will end these sorts of incidents. Of course I believe to a degree that they are racially charged. It is not my belief that police officers are being recruited because of their prejudices or being trained to shoot unarmed black men. I do think that these shootings to be indicative of a greater problem. The number of unarmed white men being shot to death by police officers just doesn’t seem to be as high.

I do read these stories trying to have sympathy for the police officers. I take into consideration that these are people that knowingly place themselves in the line of danger on the daily. In these two cases, in the case of Amadou Diallo, and in those that will follow suit I do not see the reasoning.

I want to be angry. I want to hate the police. Mid-July I believe it was two NYPD officers that were gunned down while attempting to stop a stolen SUV, one fatally injured. I wanted to not care. These situations all become too real in the journey from “NYPD Police Officers” to Herman Yan and Russel Timoshenko. It’s hard to think of the officers’ families and then try to focus your frustration on them as perpetrators rather than two men that didn’t make it home that night.

I suppose you really can’t do more than wish the world was a little more perfect. A little more perfect with maximum sentences for all police officers involved in these kinds of cases in order to keep consequences of being trigger happy on the minds of officers. Maybe a better training and a stronger screening process as well.

Hopefully someday we’ll have a society where everyone gets to go home safely at night.

Cedric King writes frequently for his personal blog here. You can e-mail him at LCKv3D@gmail.com or take AIM at LCKv4.

Last 5 posts by Cedric King

• MCS: Congressional Approval Ratings - September 18th, 2007
• MCS: Thinking About 9/11 - September 11th, 2007
• MCS: Bin Laden's Message - September 8th, 2007
• MCS: States Aren't Humans - August 22nd, 2007
• MCS: Acting Affirmatively Toward Racial Inequality - August 7th, 2007