NY: Crowd denounces police killing of groom

AP on Yahoo ^ | 11/26/06 | Deepti Hajela - ap

[NormsRevenge]

NEW YORK - An angry crowd demanded Sunday to know why police officers killed an unarmed man on the day of his wedding, firing dozens of shots that also wounded two of the man's friends. Some called for the ouster of the city's police commissioner.

At a vigil and rally the day after 23-year-old Sean Bell was supposed to have married the mother of his two young children, a crowd led by the Rev. Al Sharpton shouted "No justice, no peace."

At one point, the crowd of a few hundred counted off to 50, the number of rounds fired.

"We cannot allow this to continue to happen," Sharpton said at the gathering outside Mary Immaculate Hospital, where one of the wounded men was in critical condition. "We've got to understand that all of us were in that car."

Some in the crowd called for the ouster of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, yelling "Kelly must go."

The police officers' group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care said it was issuing a vote of no confidence in Kelly over the shooting.

Paul Browne, chief spokesman for the NYPD, said Sunday: "We are continuing to look for additional witnesses to shed light on the incident, and assisting the district attorney's office with its investigation."

The five officers were placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation, Browne said.

Community leaders planned a rally Dec. 6 at police headquarters.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his aides were in contact with Bell's family and community leaders throughout the weekend. Bloomberg and Kelly also planned to meet Monday with community leaders at City Hall.

The shootings occurred at about 4 a.m. Saturday outside the Kalua Cabaret, a strip club where Bell's bachelor party was held. The survivors were Joseph Guzman, 31, who was shot at least 11 times, and Trent Benefield, 23, who was hit three times. Guzman was in critical condition Sunday and Benefield was stable.

Relatives of all three men — many of them stoic, and some crying — attended Sunday's vigil but none spoke publicly.

At a news conference Saturday, Kelly said the department was still piecing together what happened, and that it was too early to say whether the shooting was justified.

The car, driven by Bell, was struck by 21 of the police bullets after the vehicle rammed an undercover officer and hit an unmarked NYPD minivan. Other shots hit nearby homes and shattered windows at a train station, though no one else was injured.

Police thought one of the men in the car might have had a gun but investigators found no weapons. It was unclear what prompted police to open fire, Kelly said.

It was also not clear whether the shooters had identified themselves as police, Kelly said.

Kelly said the confrontation stemmed from an undercover operation inside the strip club in the Jamaica section of Queens. Seven officers in plain clothes were investigating the Kalua Cabaret; five of them were involved in the shooting.

According to Kelly, the groom was involved in a verbal dispute outside the club and one of his friends made a reference to a gun.

An undercover officer walked closely behind Bell and his friends as they headed for their car. As he walked toward the front of the vehicle, the car drove forward — striking the officer and a nearby undercover police vehicle, Kelly said.

The officer who had followed the group on foot was apparently the first to open fire, Kelly said. That officer had served on the force for five years. One 12-year veteran fired his weapon 31 times, emptying two full magazines, Kelly said.

Bell backed the car onto a sidewalk, hitting a building gate, authorities said. He then drove forward, striking the police vehicle a second time, Kelly said.

The police department's policy on shooting at moving vehicles states: "Police officers shall not discharge their firearms at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly force is being used against the police officers or another person present, by means other than a moving vehicle."

In 1999, NYPD officers killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot 19 times in the entry to his apartment building. The four officers in that case were acquitted of criminal charges. In 2003, Ousmane Zongo, 43, a native of the western African country of Burkina Faso, was killed during a police raid on a warehouse where he repaired art and musical instruments. Zongo was shot four times, twice in the back.

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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.

[JimFreedom]

Good rant ED!

[Phantom Patriot]

Cops are people. People who have chosen to take a lower paying job - usually because they want to help people and/or make the world a better place. Exceptions? Sure - cops are people.

You get what you pay for.

[toddlintown]

"We've got to understand that all of us were in that car."

The circus is in town?

[Phantom Patriot]

If an officer was deliberately hit that is assault with a weapon, possibly attempted murder.


What if it wasn't deliberate? Sounds like there may have been allot going on. Tough call.

[Phantom Patriot]

I've read numerous articles on this incident

How many times do you have to say that before they read it?

[Phantom Patriot]

I'm still waiting. The car was unmarked and the LEO's were undercover. This guy supposedly attacked them for no reason during his bachelor party. I'd like to see more info.

Two very important factors here. And they seem to come up often these days. Unmarked and undercover. I just wonder how this would go if a citizen was trying to stop a criminal who had just robbed their home and the suspect tried to run them down. Bet it would be allot different for the citizen.

[Eagles6]

I don't know, which is why I framed it as I did. I don't know what happened and none of us do. Only those at the scene know the truth. Unfortunately for many, all that matters is that the cops shot a black man, especially rangel and the professional race baiters.

[org.whodat]

why are you carrying

To dumb to understand sarcasm when you read it.

[Mad Dawg]

To dumb to understand sarcasm when you read it.

Well calling me dumb certainly advances the argument -- and gives you a way to avoid taking resonsibility for what you say.

If that's smart, I'll take dumb, thanks.

[Mad Dawg]

Have you all looked at the article I linked to in my #98? It IS the NYT so it's probably all lies, but it's interesting in that it offers more details and they tend to tip the balance in favor of the NYPD -- which is unusual.

[wtc911]

The nightmare scenario, or one of them, is that the guys undercover thought they'd been made and panicked.

----------------------------------------

You watch too much TV.

Far more likely (@ 1,000,000%) is that the UC heard the remark about getting the gun and sensed a drive-by in the making. The guys in the car had been arguing outside the spot with the bouncer and some others over whether one of the girls was going to give all of them a happy ending to their party. It was then that the 'get my gun' remark was made.

[Mad Dawg]

You watch too much TV.

You make too many unfounded personal remarks.

You will note, if you care to, that that was post #9, made before many of the details had reached me. And if what I said HAD been the case, it would have been a nightmare scenario, as I said when I offered it as one possible account.

Anyway, now it's looking different:

Dramatic new details of the deadly mayhem include the undercover cop at one point climbing onto the hood of Bell's car - his gun drawn and his police shield around his neck - screaming, "Police! Turn off your car! Let me see your hands!" said sources who talked to some of the cops involved in the shooting.

When Bell then tried to run down the plainclothes officer - twice - the cop began shooting, with some of his 11 bullets piercing the rear window of the man's Nissan Altima, the sources said.

Read it.

[wtc911]

You will note, if you care to, that that was post #9, made before many of the details had reached me.

---------------------------------------------

Perhaps you should look before you leap (or speak).

[Mad Dawg]

I don't want to interfere with your attack of superiority. You just go on ahead.

For anyone who's watching though, without even reading the article, as he himself admitted, kinoxi had initiated a discussion in which he became increasingly outspoken and persistent in attributing guilt to the police.

IN the face of what looked like another knee-jerk "the cops are wrong until exonerated" assault, I was gently engaging him to see if he was capable of imaging, entertaining, or responding to a view other than what looked like his pet cop-averse interpretation.

I did offer one possible construction of the then massively inadequate information. That construction would allow for some blame to be laid on the cops.

Having demonstrated that I was able to look at something from more than one point of view, I then began to meet kinoxi's persistent denunciations with persistent appeals to broaden his outlook by acquiring more information. After all, at the time, with the inadequate information, it was true that it didn't "look good". That, to me, is entirely different from saying it isn't in fact good. Some people judge by first impressions. Tra La.

Now wtc911 has decided I don't look before I leap, demonstrating to me that that is a fault with which he may be familiar.

Wow. I may actually worry about this for a while. Then again, maybe not.

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