TWO CUT DOWN BY POLICE FIRE, AND YES, RACE STILL MATTERS

It was Thanksgiving eve as I sat in the living room of my son's
suburban Atlanta home having a conversation with him as he and his
wife's 26-month-old son moved happily about the room.

Suddenly, my son asked me, "Did you hear what happened here last
night?"

No, I replied.

What my son told me seemed almost unbelievable: Using a no-knock
warrant obtained after claiming they had purchased drugs there earlier
in the day, three Atlanta undercover police officers burst into an
88-year-old woman's house before identifying themselves. The officers
were met by gunfire from the woman who apparently thought her home was
being burglarized.

The slightly wounded officers, who had several backups outside,
returned the gunfire, reportedly hitting Kathryn Johnston twice in the
chest and elsewhere on her body.

Police later said they had found drugs in the house following the Nov.
21 shooting, but neighbors told reporters they believed police had
gone to the wrong house in the crime-ridden area, located less than a
mile from the Georgia Dome and near the Atlanta university center.

"If this were Buckhead or Midtown, there would have been a much
different set of circumstances," the Rev. Markell Hutchins, a local
activist, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "These police
officers felt comfortable shooting first and asking questions later."

Atlanta Police Chief Richard J. Pennington has placed all eight
members of a narcotics investigation team on leave after a
confidential informant reportedly said they had asked him to lie
during the investigation of the elderly black woman's death.

The president of the Atlanta police union has been quoted as saying
the informant had lied in a Fox television interview to avoid
entanglement.

"Whatever the case, the rage here appears to be less about the Atlanta
police than about a general perception that the justice system is
unfair to blacks and cannot be trusted to protect them," a New York
Times story said.

The tragic death of Atlanta's Kathryn Johnson came just four days
before an unarmed Sean Bell, 23, was shot to death by five police
officers in the borough of Queens in New York just hours before he was
scheduled to be married. Two of Bell's friends were injured in the
shooting in which police are said to have fired 50 shots.

"It sounds to me like excessive force was used," New York Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg told The New York Times Monday following a
meeting with top black political and community leaders. "I can tell
you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have
50-odd shots fired."

All of this brought to mind an e-mail I received from a reader earlier
this month.

"Why can't you write any article without mentioning black people, even
when writing about issues which concern and affect society as a
whole?" the reader asked. "Your latest column was enlightening, until
I read the 'members of the Trotter Group includes black columnists
from around the nation.' Who cares, and why is this important to the
issue? "

Well, unfortunately race still matters in many instances. When we
really get to be a colorblind society and treat everybody equally, I
may promise not to mention black people any more. But if I made that
promise now I would be doing an injustice to people such as Kathryn
Johnson and Sean Bell.

And more importantly, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the
mirror.