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.
how many arrests he may have had or whatever defects he had as a citizen are irrelevent.
there is a good case to be made that cops should not fire 50 bullets at unarmed citizens
Now I know why the police officers were in fear for their lives.
One cop shot 41 bullets. In 10 seconds. PC Kelly thinks that a cop should shoot 3 bullets, pause, and assess.
I believe the cops thought the thugs were armed and the duty of the policeman is to protect himself. Shoot until the threat is over.
Why is there no mention in this article about what exactly Sean Bell did???
He hit a cop with his car!!
They were firing to stop him from hitting somebody else!
2 words: Tawana Brawley
It seems like Reverend Al ought to spend more time on asking why a young man who is about to married can end up at a sh--t hole like this. Never would have happened if he was truly serious about having a wife he loved and a family. Sad thing here, all this outrage is disingenuous.
police should have shot the crowds! http://sacredscoop.com
They had to shoot 50 times because they couldn't shoot worth a damn. 21 bullets hit the car and/or its passengers. The others hit houses, the train station, and who knows what else.
50 bullets is bs and everyone knows it.
One story has it that the gun toting suspect ran. Looks like the situation is out of control. Interesting the crowd was anti NYPD but I got the impression that they wished more of the cops were White.
I have read many accounts of gunfights, some from the old-west, some during wartime, and others of modern-day LEOs. The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the phenomenon of audio-exclusion and tunnel vision that sometimes occurs during fight-or-flight situations. Many participants claim that during the fight they only remember seeing the fire on the muzzle of their adversaries weapon and heard little or no sound.
Many thought that when attempting to return fire that their weapon was misfiring because of no audible blast and no felt recoil even while the weapon was working correctly.
Others claimed that they counted their shots and quit pulling the trigger upon firing their allocated ammunition. But witnesses testified that the shooter continued stroking the trigger on the weapon for some seconds after the fight was settled and the weapon was empty.
All that said, it does seem like poor training when so many bullets didn't even strike the car that the perps were in.
Regards,
Rubber_Nose
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