Although the victim isnt black - is this ok?

What is the value of a human life? And does that value differ based on race/gender and/or occupation? If you are an officer of the law, are you some how, held to a different standard or set of rules/laws? And if so, how is it that citizens should feel safe when someone who took a test to get a job is now in charge of whether they live or die?

Read the article below - Thoughts PLEASE!!

June 18, 2008
Ex-Officer Acquitted in Death of Immigrant in Westchester
By MARC SANTORA
A former Mount Kisco police officer was acquitted of all charges on Tuesday in the death of an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, ending a case that roiled the Westchester County suburbs a year ago.
The verdict also put an end to a saga that had placed the former officer, George Bubaris, at the center of a larger debate about the relationship between the area’s wealthy residents and the immigrants who have flocked there to work as day laborers, struggling to eke out an existence.
“It has been a pretty emotional roller coaster of a day,” said Andrew Quinn, Mr. Bubaris’s lawyer, after the verdict was announced in State Supreme Court in White Plains. But the case itself, he said, was relatively straightforward.
“It was a medical case,” he said. “We argued, and I think convincingly, that the medical evidence introduced was inconclusive.”
The county medical examiner had ruled the death a homicide, saying that the man, Rene Javier Perez, had died of internal abdominal injuries. Prosecutors said that Mr. Bubaris had inflicted those injuries by punching Mr. Perez.
The prosecution, Mr. Quinn said, also contended that Mr. Perez’s injuries were sustained within the two hours before his death. “We introduced evidence to show that the injuries were inflicted 6 to 36 hours before” he died, Mr. Quinn said.
Just as important, he said, was the fact that the defense established that the injuries were “equally consistent with a fall” as with a beating. Mr. Bubaris, 31, who resigned from the Police Department after he was charged, originally came under suspicion because he was the last person seen with Mr. Perez.
Mr. Perez, 42, was homeless, had a history of alcoholism and a long arrest record for petty crimes, according to medical and court records.
On April 28, 2007, Mr. Bubaris was one of three officers who answered a 911 call from Mr. Perez, who was at a Mount Kisco laundry. Mr. Perez had apparently been drinking, and the 911 operator noted that his speech was slurred.
Mr. Bubaris and two other officers arrived at the laundry shortly before 11 p.m., and soon after, Mr. Bubaris radioed headquarters and reported that there was no police matter.
The two other officers with Mr. Bubaris were sent to another call.
An hour later, the driver of a catering van found Mr. Perez dying on the side of Byram Lake Road in Bedford, N.Y., six miles from Mount Vernon.
Four months later, the Westchester district attorney charged Mr. Bubaris with second-degree manslaughter, unlawful imprisonment and official misconduct. Justice Lester Adler dismissed the two lesser charges but had allowed the jurors to consider a charge of criminally negligent homicide in addition to the manslaughter charge.
There are some 10,000 people living in Mount Kisco, 40 miles north of New York City. About one-quarter of that population is Hispanic, including many Guatemalans.
The case attracted widespread attention, in part because of the questions it raised about the relationship between the growing numbers of Hispanic immigrants and the residents who share space in an affluent swath of suburban homes and horse farms.
The fact that Mr. Perez was in the country illegally heightened the tensions.
But at the trial, the focus was on Mr. Bubaris and his actions on the night Mr. Perez died.
The assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, James McCarty, told the jury that a log of police calls, surveillance video and other evidence showed that only Mr. Bubaris could have taken Mr. Perez to the lonely roadside where he was found dying, according to The Associated Press.
“You can connect these dots,” Mr. McCarty said.
The jury, however, sided with the defense.
“What caused the injury is very speculative,” one juror, Richard Hodder, told The Associated Press. “We just could not come to the conclusion that the officer did something to injure him.”
If he had been convicted of second-degree manslaughter, Mr. Bubaris faced a maximum of 15 years in prison.