Posted on 11/26/2006 6:18:47 PM PST by 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.
Hee hee.
Yes, still in dispute, and those aren't the only relevant facts that determine if this is justified action by the cops.
Read post #2. After reading a few articles on this. There has been no attempt to even imply the victims were doing anything wrong. It looks bad.
Sure, going to strip clubs and having children out of wedlock should be punished by DEATH.. </sarcasm>
You think they did good, killing a guy who had children out of wedlock, and possibly not identifying themselves as cops?
I think this was a horrible overeaction, and I am concerned at the JBT mentality of cops these days.
Here in Oregon a homeless man was peeing in the bushes, and a bunch of cops ran up to him and started chasing him. They jumped on him with their knees, full force, then started kicking him. He had done nothing violent except run away, they beat and kicked him with such ferocity that people eating at a restaurant across the street called the cops and told the dispatcher that the cops were killing a guy right in front of them.
The homeless guy was taken, unconscious, to the jail, where a jail nurse refused to help him, saying he was "faking" his seizures. Sheylooked in on him an hour later and he was dead.
The autopsy showed most of his ribs were crushed and broken because of the cops jumping on him with their knees. He had multiple broken bones, his lungs had been pierced by his broken ribs, his trachea had been crushed and he had numerous facial injuries.
They basically killed him for peeing in some bushes and running from them.
The cops in America are getting to the point to where they are no longer peace officers, but are instead becoming another brutal gang like the bloods and crips, and it really bothers me.
I personally have never had a bad experience with cops, being as I look like your basic clean-cut Republican type, and I'm always friendly with everyone I meet, but even here in my small Oregon town I can see the cops' attitude towards the public changing.
When I moved here from North Idaho twenty years ago the cops were citizens of the town, and they looked and acted like your average small-town Oregonian.
Now, however, the cops all look like wannabe SWAT team or SEAL Team members, with dark glasses, shaved heads and scowls when they look ate people on the streeet.
It's so weird, I look at how most cops here look at the public, what they act like and it's weird, it's like they want to be thought of as an invading army to be feared than your basic townie, a fellow citizen.
Ed
As he walked toward the front of the vehicle, the car drove forward — striking the officer and a nearby undercover police vehicle, Kelly said.
Not as I see it... hitting a person with a car is not exactly making nice. The first thought going through my mind if I was an officer was to make sure this nut does not run over an already injured officer, and of course preventing the officer in the other car from being hit. Other thoughts would be wondering what the previous gun reference meant from a fellow that would actually try to run over people.
Atempted murder had already occured before the shooting started. The officers were justified IMHO from that second on.
http://www.rockawave.com/news/2006/0331/Community/071.html
http://www.brooklyndowntownstar.com/StoryDisplay.asp?PID=1&NewsStoryID=3396
This club and many others in the area were already under investigation for weapons, drugs and prostitution.
If the police had several undercover cops in the club they were working hard to shut the club down.
Wow. The Jamaican mafia involved with drugs and gun smuggling. Who would'a thunk it?
You've said that on several posts relating to this shooting. The Tawana Brawley case "looked bad" initially, too, based on the murky first reports and Sharpton's race-baiting rhetoric... which is all we've had so far here, too.
I hope we get a toxicology report on the victim. If he was drunk or even just buzzed, maybe it was just bad driving.
Since all honest conservatives have deep distrust of the police power, I wonder why freepers line up behind the gun-men, especially when there was no apparent imminent threat. (Hint: don't even try to tell me that a drunken driver is deserving of being shot full of holes.)
>>One fewer criminal in the world, the police did a good job in protecting the public and should be rewarded for their actions.
This Sean Bell character was a lowlife, having children out of wedlock, hanging out at strip clubs at 4a.m. on the day of his wedding, striking a police officer with his car and then ramming a police vehicle.
A car used as a weapon is deadly force, Bell was armed with a 3000 pound weapon, the police responded with equal and just force.<<
Once someone has kids out of wedlock its really better to let them get married than to kill them and leave the mother and the state to support the kids.
Did he really only hit a police car and not a cop himself? I thought he actually hit an undecover cop.
So you think this guy just attacked the officers? The police aren't claiming that.
Don't know if you've ever had someone try to run you down with a car but it's as deadly as someone shooting at you. If an officer was deliberately hit that is assault with a weapon, possibly attempted murder.
Most cops I have met are the steroid/jock/@sshole types you describe. Jackboots. Every now and then you meet one with decency and intelligence, but it's rare.
That is unclear. If someone was shooting at me when I had done nothing wrong(undercover, unmarked car). I sure as hell would try to run them down. Wouldn't you?
The police aren't claiming anything. That's the way these things go. You only get to hear your hero's version right now. The police version comes out after an investigation.
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