1. He is arguing that the police were completely in the right in shooting Kathryn Johnston, although they obtained a warrant under, at best, questionable circumstances.

2. He is arguing that no knock raids are okay so long as you have a warrant and the police should not be held accountable for the outcome of such dangerous, violent raids.

3. He is arguing that 3 men confronted at 4 AM should respond meekly to undercover police. Given the number of reports I can find relatively easily of violent encounters with men pretending to be police this encounter seems more understandable than Kip makes it out to be.

4. Kip appears willing to be far more forgiving of government agents than citizens.

How have we reached the point where we are more forgiving of armed government agents than we are of citizens? What ever happened to the idea that the government, and its agents, were to be viewed with suspicion? That citizens were in the right in a confrontation with the government until proven otherwise?

There is substantial disagreement over whether the police identified themselves. But it was easy for the police to identify the young men as less-than-savory:

Note how in America today everyone is supposed to dress casual and act ghetto/thug/hip-hop; this makes it easier for the police to target folks who are less apt to have any real power in society.

Anyway, as a former NAACP legal redress chair and as an attorney with a fair amount of Civil Rights experience (stateside and in private practice) I believe it still remains to be seen if these gentlemen are crime victims pursuant to New York Statute.

I discuss that issue, and my successful arguments for crime victim status at the hands of Ohio police in my post on this matter, as I also wonder why the survivors were apparently handcuffed to their respective hospital beds without a warrant:

http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/11/sun-rises-for-naacp-legal-chair.html

And by the way, I love me some old-school (and some new) hip-hop, so this is not an anti-rap rant by any means.

Just an observation.

Peace to all.

-c

PS: I dig your site and will definitely blogroll it.

Which of course was exactly what didn’t happen with Kathryn Johnson. She shot first.

“The deaths of Sean Bell … killed or wounded in paramilitary police actions are the outcomes.”

There was nothing “paramilitary” about the Sean Bell incident. It was incidental to an undercover operation, not a paramilitary raid. Oh, and his car rammed first a cop on foot and then a police van. Seems to me the victims were the ones being “paramilitary.”