The Street With Sean Bell's Name

There's an interesting article in the New York Times about a proposal to name a street after Sean Bell, who was shot and killed by police officers in a highly controversial shooting outside a nightclub in 2006. 

I understand that Sean Bell was a victim of at best, extremely poor judgment of officers of the law, and at worse, grave criminal injustice by detectives who made the mistake of shooting first and asking questions later. But what I don't understand is giving Mr. Bell an honor so lofty based on the distinction of merely being a victim of a crime, albeit a heinous one.

Who was Sean Bell? What did his life consist of before the bullets starting flying? We know that his blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit when the car he drove into a car with detectives. He was walking out of a strip-club with friends. He had a criminal record. He was not a boy scout. He was certainly not someone who I would look upon a role model for a my son. Again, this doesn't at all diminish the tragedy of his death, nor excuse the misdeeds committed against him.

But just as board chairwoman Adjoa Gzifa asks, why does Sean Bell get memorialized and honored given the circumstances of his death? How about the hundreds of young men and women who are cut down throughout the years who are victims of robberies and other crimes? Many who are law-abiding citizens who instead of walking out of strip-clubs, were walking their girlfriends to their apartments when they were jumped by hoodlums and thugs?

Funny. I don't see the movement to rename 120th Street "Minghui Yu Avenue" to honor the Chinese graduate student was killed by a car while trying to run away from being mugged by a teenage thug who was showing off. Apparently there was no need to memorialize a guy who just happened to be killed "in a mistake", as the perpetrator's aunt insisted. Minghui Yu was just a graduate student who was a "religious, hardworking, brilliant guy" who quickly became yesterday's news - without fanfare or activists demonstrating - and certainly without the honor of street-naming ceremony.

I'm not debating that Sean Bell's death wasn't tragic and quite possibly a travesty. But there are few deaths that aren't. And someday in the future when I drive through New York City and my children look upon the street signs and ask about the greatness of the people who have had streets named after them, I can tell them about the people behind Yitzhak Rabin Way, Duke Ellington Boulevard, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, and the Joe DiMaggio Highway. I just don't know if I'll have much to say about Sean Bell.

Maybe instead I'll use that opportunity to tell them about Minghui Yu.