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.
In response to post #53. I have yet to read an article slanted in any way towards the police. I've read numerous articles and expected an intelligent response defending the officers in this thread (FReepers are usually good in that department). 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.
My response to that is post #46. What were these guys at a bachelor party supposedly doing again?
Oh please. Spare me.
Yeah- just bad driving, striking the officer's car not once, but TWICE...
Yes, there are some thugs out there. There are also a lot of brave and sacrificial cops. AND there are cops who will give up their own lives rather than take down the perp when the perp needs taking down. It's true. It's tragic.
Sir_ed, let me say again what I said in a previous post. Your municipal or county department could use your help as a reserve or a volunteer. Your deep knowledge of what policing is and requires would make you an asset. I hope you will think seriously about volunteering. It's a tough job, but it's got to be done, and most municipalities won't pay for the troops, the equipment, or the training to get it done as well as they'd like. Volunteers will be an increasingly important part of the force.
And, who knows, you might learn something. Please think it over.
Excuse me, I think I read that the NYPD doesn't like officers shooting into such a vehicle. It's not so much a matter of deadly force, I'd suggest, as a matter of the usual fecklessness of shooting into a moving vehicle and the danger to those in the area. I don't know what they shoot in NYC, and I'd worry about ricochets off of windows and tires and such.
Also, at least around here in Central VA, such policies usually mean, "unless you have an articulable reason" (always assuming articulable is a word).
In other words, an officer could exculpate himself by saying something like," I knew the policy was that we are not supposed to blah blah, but I could not evade the vehicle because of blah blah so my only defense was to shoot into it." In other words, the policies are not rigid, because when the battle flag goes up, sometimes you have to improvise, and they usually don't ask us to give up our lives for a policy -- at least they don't come right out and say it.
I don't trust sharpton, all he's looking for is money and/or power. He has incited riots that have left people dead. He doesn't seem to have a problem with blacks killing blacks (unless the shooter is a cop)or with blacks killing whites. He's actually a staunch advocate of mumia abu jamal who killed a white police officer.
What do you mean it didn't teach him anything? Before the Tawana Brawley incident, who outside of New York knew who Al Sharpton was? He learned that any publicity is good publicity, and that his supporters don't care if Tawana Brawley and Al Sharpton were lying. In fact the bigger the lie the more people will believe it.
I thought the whole incident happened AFTER the bachelor party. Are you saying you have issues with the accounts that the car hit an officer who was on foot and hit an unmarked car as well? On what basis? Please bear in mind that people do very weird stuff when they've had too much to drink.
(Hint: don't even try to tell me that a drunken driver is deserving of being shot full of holes.)
I wouldn't think of telling you anything to the contrary since you have all the answers. Congratulations Sherlock!
Sharpton would never pass up a chance to incite a riot.
Since we have this information -- Read On Combat, On Killing, and the first chapters of Training at the Speed of Life -- terms like "trigger happy" are of decreasing usefulness in thinking about a deadly force situation.
The upstate returns aren't in on whether the decision to shoot at all was a good one. My impression, though, is that if the guys on the scene truly thought that one of their partners had been hit by a car which subsequently hit one of their cars and showed no signs of doing the legal thing, namely: stopping, then I can see why they thought the compost had just hit the air-conditioner.
I'm not sure they should have reached that decision, but I think I understand it.
But once they did decide it was time to get serious, the number of shots fired is great for headlines, but not especially remarkable when you look at what people really do when things get exciting.
To put it another way, the first shot MAY have been because of being "trigger-happy". The subsequent shots were just what usually happens when things get exciting.
Let me try to say this: I find training with my fire arm demanding but relaxing. I like to go to the range. I like to try to shoot well. But I hate what handguns represent. Since we live in a world where sometimes guns are necessary, I guess I'll step up. But I'd just as soon I did't have to think about gun fights, or sit here with my p239 digging into my butt.
And I can guarandamntee you that, since I have one magazine in the gun and two on my belt right now, if somebody shot at me through the window right now, one magazine would be emptied right away. I HOpe I'd save the others for afgter I'd taken cover and had a clue about what was going on.
Reality is NOT like TV or like the movies. Most of us crap in our pants when things get exciting - literally. That doesn't make for good TV or good movies, so you don't hear about it much, but there it is.
A young deputy in GA pulled over a driver who reaches for his gun, deputy drew his weapon and repeatedly asks the driver to lay down his gun and put his hands up. Driver ignores the repeated warnings, gets up an fires at the deputy who later dies from gunshot wounds. His patrol car video cam caught it all on tape. Real sad.
I posed the question on another thread. Many freepers have CCW permits. Wonder how they would have reacted if their car was rammed twice?
Looks like the Dinkins era has returned to NYC.
Thanks, oh stainless one.
Having skin in the game affects the thought process.
I always tell people who ask me about getting a fire arm: Visualize pieces of my skull and brain hitting the wall behind me. If you get a gun and you want to use it effectively, you have to decide NOW that it's okay to see pieces of skull and brain hitting the wall -- and to know you made that happen. It's too late to wrestle with it when you have to draw the gun you bought.
That poor deputy didn't want to kill the guy. He hadn't done his homework, he hadn't decided. Like a lot of cops he signed on to protect people, not harm them. God bless his sacrifical but maybe insufficiently prudent heart, and may God console all those who love him.
My pleasure :-)
Sharpton must be finding it curious having to move over to make room for some Freepers on his bandwagon... but there it is.
Oh, yes judge, jury and executioner the American way, I'm proud of your mental abilities.
What? The car had already run into a police officer and rammed a police van *before* shots were fired.
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