Posted on 12/02/2006 8:19:05 PM PST by Pyro7480
Protesters taunt NYPD as victim buried
VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - The man gunned down in a spray of 50 police bullets on his wedding day was buried Saturday as hundreds of angry demonstrators honored him with a moment of silence before going jaw-to-jaw with police in a bitter confrontation outside a Queens precinct house.
The demonstrators taunted police, standing just inches away from a row of officers and daring the police to lay a hand on them. Some in the crowd held signs reading "Death to the pigs" and "Shoot back."
"Fifty shots from the New York cops!" the crowd chanted before the moment of silence.
"We didn't come here to start any violence," said Malik Zulu Shabazz, a black nationalist leader. "The New York police started the violence."
The "March of Outrage" organized by the New Black Panther Party came one week after 23-year-old Sean Bell was killed and his friends Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman were wounded when police opened fire on the unarmed trio's car as they left a strip club. The demonstration Saturday began outside the club, moved around the corner to the site of the shooting and then continued to the precinct.
Starr Nelson, a Queens woman in the crowd with two sons in their 20s, said relations between the police and local residents were antagonistic even before the shooting.
"It could have been my son," she said. "(The police) need to start seeing people as people, not animals. You don't even shoot at an animal 50 times."
At a local hospital, Guzman was upgraded from critical to stable condition Saturday, and Benefield remained stable.
Outside the facility, an attorney for the two reiterated that they do not believe there was a fourth person in the car before the shooting as police suggest, and an undercover officer did not identify himself and flash his badge to the men in the car.
"Neither of the victims who are hospitalized, their bodies riddled with bullets, saw a badge or heard a command that the man who was holding a gun was a police officer," attorney Sanford Rubenstein said.
It is still unclear what prompted officers to fire on Bell's vehicle on Nov. 25, but police apparently feared one man in the group was about to get a gun. The unarmed victims were black; the five officers were black, Hispanic and white.
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown was investigating the case and civil rights leaders including the Rev. Al Sharpton have called for murder charges.
On Friday, an overflow crowd of tearful mourners paid their respects to Bell inside the Community Church of Christ in Queens. Bell and his two friends were celebrating his bachelor party before the shooting.
Will the Chinese community start protests against black NYers?
Not likely.
I read that the first officer to shoot was black.
I did to but that doesn't mean a damm thing to these savages protesting the NYPD.
Same with that other idiot, Governor Pataki, commenting from overseas.
I’ve tried to keep up with this. No matter how much I read the articles, I have yet to conclude in any way that this was racial … wrongful shooting, perhaps, racial “not”.
Just seems that anytime that a black is arrested, shot or bludgeoned by the police … it is racial … BS.
Perhaps, and just perhaps, the person involved in a crime happens to be black …. So what, he committed a crime … lock his ass up. If the happen to be white or Hispanic, lock his ass up.
Hey Al, you don't have to wait, just turn yourself in and confess to what you did at Freddies...
I'm no fan of the NYPD but its a two way street.
Shabazz has tried fomenting violence before. Some say that he's Calypso Louie's heir apparent..
"Since the police officers were of different races".....
But, this is diversity! Isn't diversity supposed to be a GOOD thing? There is no satisfying those pinko scum, they just keep moving the goalposts......
Meanwhile, there is a trial going on in Staten Island for the murders of Detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin who were killed in an undercover operation of buying illegal guns.
Both officers were black.
Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Charles Barron and the rest of the rabble rousers have not seen fit to protest the murders of fine upstanding citizens. They would rather provoke rioting in the case of the death of Sean Bell who had three arrests under his belt.
had not heard about the staten island trial. do you have any/some details on this case?
Obviously there is a lot of race-baiting going on. This is SOP in NYC. Everything becomes a racial issue when the cops shoot someone like that. I wonder, though, why the cops had to shoot 50 times. Perhaps there was a good reason, but it sounds more like a breakdown in training to me. Why give the racial trouble-makers an issue? They will jump on one at any opportunity.
There's no money in that! They are racial arsonists, extorting a fee for services.
No. Of course not. Just like the "groom" didn't go to the strip club to have naked women dance right in front of his face.
'Course the msm won't mention the Long Beach incident or the conviction of dandridge and gray for the slaughter in Richmond.
Next time you are in desperate need of police protection, call Al Sharpton, he'll be right there for you.
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