On Monday, I traveled to New York City to meet with Rev. Al Sharpton and fellow members of Congress to discuss last week's verdict in the trial of the three police officers accused of shooting and murdering the unarmed Sean Bell the night before his wedding. We were joined by the Bell family, including his fiancee Nicole, and together, we visited the scene of the November, 2006 shooting.

The extinguishing of Sean Bell's young life is a tragedy that deserves justice, and I will continue to press for a full and fair investigation into the shooting and its prosecution. But this tragedy is far from being the first of its kind-- as Tom Robbins wrote in this week's Village Voice [1], "To get to the issues surrounding the death by police bullets of Sean Bell on the morning of his wedding day, you first have to joust with all the ghosts that have preceded him: that of [Michael] Stewart, of Arthur Miller, Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Timothy Stansbury, Khiel Coppin, and a score of others. The fact that those who mistakenly die at the hands of the police are most often black and Hispanic remains the most obscene tax levied on this city's communities of color. It is an old injustice, but one for which the powers-that-be still lack any credible answers."

The credible answers that we seek in the face of Sean Bell's tragic death may not be easy to find, but we will never fail to search. We will continue working to erase the lasting inequalities in our criminal justice system--in the memory of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, and many others, and in the hope that the pain and frustration felt in their deaths may be prevented for other families, communities and generations.