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By Akinshiju C. Ola
They call it "friendly fire."
That's what they called it in November 1992, when a Black transit officer was shot and critically wounded by four white officers. And, that's what Police Commissioner William Bratton called it when another African American undercover transit cop was shot at least four times by a white off- duty cop on a subway platform, Monday, August 22.
Derwin Pannell, the officer shot in 1992, is still recuperating from those wounds and has filed a lawsuit against the police department and the city. The family of Desmond Robinson, the latest Black victim of a white officer's "friendly fire," also plans to sue.
Meanwhile, Bratton waded through a dense observation at a news conference following Robinson's shooting which sidestepped accounts of eyewitnesses, defending the white off duty NYPD cop's actions. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani adeptly joined the commissioner's dodges, speaking about the unreliability of witnesses. On the other hand, while stressing his disbelief of a racial factor in the shooting of Robinson, Bratton announced that a special department panel will study the racial attitudes of police officers in an effort to avoid having another such incident happen.
But, it seems clear that Bratton's mouth cannot avoid the contradictions of his mind. He went on to say that the majority of police officers are white while...