John Adams would be disappointed:

The Sean Bell shooting is still front page news in the city as his friend Trent Benefield, also shot on that evening, spoke from his hospital bed for the first time.

In an interview with Dominic Carter on NY1, Benefield claimed that there was no fourth man and that the cops didn’t identify themselves. Now though I’m likely to believe that there was no fourth man, I find it highly unlikely that the cops in question would have not identified themselves.

Whether they did or didn’t what is unsettling is the direction this event is taking. The cops in question have basically already been found guilty before charges have even been brought. Even our own Mayor Bloomberg, under the pressure of the press, was quick to claim the police were “excessive” all but sealing their guilty verdict.

Its times like these that make me appreciate the true leaders and visionaries of this nation. Back in 1770 another altercation took place between the authority of a city and its inhabitants. The authority was the British troops and the city was Boston. Back on that day a crowd of New Englanders converged on the customs house where 9 British soldiers were standing. The soldiers under fear of the moment panicked and fired into the crowd killing five people.

The immediate reaction and judgment of the event was similar to the Bell shooting. Protests were quick calling it a butchery and for the heads of the British soldiers. One man though, new that the right for a fair trial was critical and that every man was innocent until proven guilty, even a British Red Coat. That man was John Adams, who would go on to become our second President. John Adams knew he was risking is career in stepping up to take the case but couldn’t stand by and watch the soldiers, whether guilty or not, be condemned before the facts could be discovered.

Whether the officers in the Bell case are guilty or not, I don’t know. What I do know, is that Mayor Bloomberg is no John Adams.