Just glad I dont live in NYC.  I mean blacks just cant get a break, run into a van with undercover officers and suddenly you are dead.  I would like to see a fair and balanced look at this without the "leader of the comunity" influence.  Im sure if this turns out to be a scandal like the Lacross players that it will be triumphed as a win for sharpton. 

Nuke em til they glow then shoot em in the dark. -- save my gun, shoot a liberal.

  You know, it's really interesting to watch how this sort of thing is repeated by various news agencies.  If you don't mind, I'm going to base my little reply off of Yahoo News at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061127/ap_on_re_us/police_shooting.  This one's a bit more recent (an hour ago when I started writing) and itself deals with the mayor's response.  Personally, I'm not worried about that so much as their take on the story itself.

  "Kelly has said police shot at the car after it drove forward and struck an undercover officer and an unmarked police minivan. The information was based on interviews with witnesses and two officers who did not fire their weapons, he said."  Alright, there we go... an account from one of the cops... and apparently backed up by other witnesses.  Far as I can see, this makes perfect sense.  A driver HITS a policeman with his car and then goes on to hit their van.  Don't know about you, but I think at that point there they had both the right and duty to stop said driver by whatever means were necessary.  If that means firing their pistol rounds into a car until it stops moving, so be it.  I can easily see the need for many rounds to be fired... many of them may not hit the driver, especially concealed as he may be by the glass and the cover he gains from the engine block.  Not sure what size clip the officers carry (the article states one officer fired 31 rounds and, in the process, emptied two clips... likely it's a 15 round clip and he had one in the chamber) but, individually, it seems a small amount of ammo to fire at a car, at least if it's moving and one is using pistol ammo.  It's no suprise that the veteran fired so many rounds, as he likely understood the odds he was dealing with.  The article mentions that only 21 rounds hit the car.  It also mentions "At some point, Bell backed the car onto a sidewalk, hitting a building gate, police said. He then drove forward, striking the police vehicle a second time, Kelly said."  So clearly the car wasn't sitting still throughout all this, and was pressing what the police could only consider to be an attack (don't know about anyone else, but if the police were shooting at my car and I wasn't a criminal, I'd be getting as low as possible and NOT moving, or find a way to stick my bare hands outside).  In any event, the driver was clearly not dead, and was apparently still trying to harm them.

  The only reason that the case seems to have any legroom is mentioned as (what seems to me) a rather unusual restriction on the use of police force:
"The department's policy prohibits shooting at moving vehicles states "unless deadly force is being used against the police officers or another person present, by means other than a moving vehicle."  I guess they expect the cops to just stand and get run over?

  That's alright, though... even with just diluting the article to the 'facts', I've cut out a vast majority of the article itself... and reading it in its entirety certainly leaves one with no doubt as to where the writers stand.  Most news outlets seem to be encouraging this to be a big scene, and it seems like they want everyone to wonder what's wrong the the NYPD.  Far as I can see, the only thing wrong is that officers aren't strictly allowed to fire at people who are using a vehicle as a weapon against them... even after said vehicle has hit one of their number.

  In short: If you don't want to get shot by cops, don't run them over.

Edit:  Typos.

Al Sharpton...a master of self-promotion,  in the name of civil rights.

My vote for a real "civil rights" or "community" leader goes to Barry Washington in Louisville, Kentucky.

You've never heard of him, because he's too busy actually helping people to promote himself.

Al Sharpton...it's time to get a real job. You and your ilk make me sick...and Barry Washington's job more difficult.

In the days after Katrina, Sharpton appeared on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC.
Sharpton tells Tucker he became aware of the deteriorating levee system and how it affected the black community during a stop in N.O. on his run for the White House .
Unfortunately Tucker never asked the obvious question to big Al, "Why didn't you do something???!!!???"!!!