Posted on 04/26/2008 4:28:39 PM PDT by SkyPilot
NEW YORK (AP) - Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.
"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."
Reverend Al Sharpton comments on the not guilty verdict of the three New York City detectives in the November 2006 killing of Sean Bell as shooting victim Joseph Guzman, right, William Bell, left, Valerie Bell, second from left, and Nicole Paultre Bell, third from left, look on during Sharpton's radio show, Saturday, April 26, 2008 at the National Action Network headquarters in New York. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)
Sharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell - a black man - and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club. Two of the three officers charged were also black.
The rally at Sharpton's office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem's main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out "Kill the police!"
Fifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.
Sharpton urged people to return for a meeting this coming week "to plan the day that we will close this city down" with the kind of "massive civil disobedience" once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"They never accused Sean Bell of doing anything. Then why is he dead?" Sharpton asked, his voice roaring with anger. Authorities "have shown now that they will not hold police accountable. Well, guess what? If you won't, we will!"
"Shut it down! Shut it down!" the crowd chanted, standing up and applauding wildly.
Sharpton didn't say exactly how they would protest the acquittals of the officers who fired the 50 shots. He said Bell's supporters could demonstrate all over the city, from Wall Street to the home of Justice Arthur Cooperman, who on Friday acquitted the three detectives after a nonjury trial.
Sitting behind Sharpton as he spoke were Bell's parents, his sister and Nicole Paultre Bell, who took her fiance's name after his death.
"The justice system let me down," Paultre Bell told the crowd in a soft voice. "April 25, 2008: They killed Sean all over again. That's what it felt like to us."
It was her first public comment since she stormed out of a courtroom Friday after the NYPD detectives were cleared in Bell's killing as he left his bachelor party.
One of Bell's companions, Joseph Guzman, also spoke briefly on Saturday, saying: "We've got a long fight."
Strip club where Sean Bell was that night.
You knew this was coming. Looks like Rush might not have to wait for Denver for riots - kinda’ proves his point.
Tawana Brawley.....Al
You’re are right, more than proves Rush’s point.
Freddie’s Fashion Mart
Sharpton should be arrested.
I know almost nothing about this event except for the blurbs I saw on the idiot box
If the Righteous Rev. Al is got his panties in a knot over this, there must be money to be made somehow, somewhere.
Since it isn't about race based on the fact two of the evil trigger happy LEO's were black
" Sen. Barack Obama weighed in today on the acquittals of New York City police detectives charged in fatally shooting an unarmed black Queens man, Sean Bell, saying he believed that the verdict needed to be respected and urging those who disagreed with it not to resort to violence. That would be "completely unacceptable and counterproductive," Obama said."
"Well, look, obviously there was a tragedy in New York. I said at the time, without benefit of all the facts before me, that it looked like a possible case of excessive force. The judge has made his ruling, and we're a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down," he said in response to a question at a gas station in Indianapolis, where he was holding a news conference."
"The most important thing for people who are concerned about that shooting is to figure out how do we come together and assure those kinds of tragedies don't happen again," he continued. ... "Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and counterproductive."
Heh ... Obama’s being set up by the FO(the)B.
Surprisingly good reply.
Sharpton is yesterday’s guy, a fact that is slowly beginning to dawn on him.
Read my #11
Someone driving a 5000#+ automobile isn’t unarmed, and this is a direct incitement to riot.
Well, Al has been getting jealous of all the press and attention that Radical Wright has been getting -— now he has to chime in with his version of the hate America, hate Whitey, play the race-card time....hehehe -— these professional racists are so predictable... :-)
....if he could only use his powers for good.
Al Sharpton — the Muqtada al Sadr of America. Both deserve to die in a hail of bullets.
I grew up not too far from Club Kalua. This area after dark is no man’s land. Best characterized as a straight-up hood territory: robbery, bang-bang shootings, drug dealing, Prosties, always the look-outs: shouting: the po-po is coming. In the hood, the word for police: is po-po. Fellow Freepers, outside of New York: is the word po-po used to described the police?/Just Asking - seoul62.......
Hey Nicole, Sean was so in love with you that he had to go to a strib club on your wedding night to excite him enough to spend the next nite with you........ and now you want me to believe he is your all-loving saint.
I think it’s going to be a long, hot summer.
If they tear their neighborhood up ,we should not have to rebuild it this time.
Who could it be? They would look like a hero for saving NYC.
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution ensures that we have the right to a trial by a jury of our peers in a serious criminal case. But as with all rights, you can voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently waive that right and instead have your case tried by a judge.
That is what Michael Oliver, Marc Cooper and Gescard Isnora did. Many thought it was a gamble. It was a gamble that paid off.
Justice Arthur Cooperman, a 74-year-old bench veteran, acquitted all three detectives. The public is outraged. But it shouldn't be. Cooperman did what we ask every juror to do: consider and determine the facts of the case -- that is, what he believed to be the true facts -- from among all of the evidence in the case. Watch why the judge didn't believe the prosecution witnesses »
He listened to the evidence. He learned that Club Kalua, the strip club that Sean Bell and his companions were at that night, had been at the center of neighborhood complaints, drug activity and prostitution arrests, which is why undercover officers were there in the first place.
He heard the consistent grand jury testimony of all three defendant police officers. He heard the testimony of Detective Hispolito Sanchez, an undercover officer inside the club who heard Bell's companion, Joseph Guzman say "Yo, get my gun" and heard Sean Bell threaten to beat up a man near an SUV.
And he heard the testimony of Guzman, who denied, contrary to the testimony of other witnesses, that he uttered the words "Go get my gun." Cooperman also learned that Guzman had spent five years in prison for robbery and drug convictions for selling crack and was suing for $50 million in civil court.
It was clear that Guzman was the linchpin of this case. If you believe him, that the officers shot at Bell and his friends for no reason at all, the officers are guilty. If you don't believe him, then his statement -- "Go get my gun" -- sent the night into mayhem, causing the officers to believe that the men were armed and justifying the officers' actions that night.
Guzman was combative on the stand, irreverent. During his cross-examination by attorney Anthony L. Ricco, who represented Isnora, he shot back: "You know what needs to happen? This needs to happen to your family."
In explaining his decision, Cooperman said prosecutors had not proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt because of a combination of factors. Chief among them: inconsistent statements by prosecution witnesses, their demeanor on the stand, their interest in the outcome of the case and their motives to lie.
"These factors," the judge said, "had the effect of eviscerating the credibility of those prosecution witnesses."
Translation: The government could not prove its case against the officers because the judge didn't believe Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman. They are suing the police department for $50 million. They blew the case for the prosecution."--Sunny Hostin is a legal analyst on "American Morning."
You do not want my personal comment on NYPD vs. The Rev. Sharpton. It would be disallowed on FR!
The guy goes to a strip club, gets drunk, and tries to run down a cop. You reap what you sow.
“Those right-wing crackers are quoting me, brothers and sisters! God damn America!”
31 shots ? Is this a normal response? Would someone on this board know?
Actually it was about 50 shots and yes the cops in New York City can’t hit much of anything. Remember guns are bad in NYC and so it the right of self defense.
NYC where gangs rule and the city tries to buy them off.
I think its standard slang these days, aided by a lot of cop shows, etc. I think I first heard the term on NYPD Blue reruns about five years ago.
The anarchists and their wannabes use that term here in Portland...but, I have never heard any black person use the term.
Noted, but here in New York - in the urban areas they do use that term to describe the police, po-po./Just Asking - seoul62........
NYC where gangs rule and the city tries to buy them off.
Hedge fund gangs?
Re: NYPD detectives acquitted in 50-shot killing Sean Bell YOUTUBE
12 seconds is all it takes to fire 31 shots. Three officers from a racial mix of society. The case is over-Sunny's Law Summary says it best, review if any question(above)... unless one is on the side of Sharpton and a $50 million dollar law suit suddenly found on the flat ground end of a one manned teeter totter.
Good luck trying to shut down New York City with a couple of hundred people.
31 shots ? Is this a normal response? Would someone on this board know?
In a chaotic situation, absolutely normal.
. . . some bystanders yelled out “Kill the police!”
Attaboy, “Rev’rund”. Whip up the crowd into a frenzy.
Well if things get that bad, my husband was thinking of working in Singapore - it is safe there and they still cane for crimes./Just Asking - seoul62........
In 1990, Justice Cooperman, elected to a seat on the Civil Court bench in 1979 and, two years later, to the Supreme Court; presided over the criminal trial of Jay Harrison, a Rikers Island inmate accused of killing two detectives who were driving him back to jail from Queens Borough Hall on the Grand Central Parkway in 1989. Mr. Harrison had stolen a gun from a detective’s locker in Borough Hall earlier, and he shot the two detectives in the vehicle, Richard J. Guerzon and Keith L. Williams, from the back seat while wearing handcuffs, the police said. He was captured hours later in Elmhurst.
After a jury convicted Mr. Harrison, Justice Cooperman handed down the maximum sentence, 52 years to life in prison. The judge called the crime a “brutal and callous attack” while levying the sentence, drawing applause from the police officers in the courtroom gallery.
Years earlier, the stun-gun case had brought the police to the other end of the verdict. Sgt. Richard Pike and Officer Jeffrey Gilbert were convicted of shocking and searing a high school senior, Mark Davidson, with a stun gun in a station house in hopes of forcing him to confess to selling an undercover officer $10 worth of marijuana.
Justice Cooperman sentenced both men to two to six years in prison. The judge said the use of the stun gun “calls to mind the vicious brutality associated with corrupt regimes in other countries,” and called it “an affront to the honest and honorable police officers who carry out their sworn duties in conformance with the law.”
Those who have appeared before Justice Cooperman have called him a straightforward, thoughtful jurist.
“He’s a down-the-road, very fair judge who will not be influenced by the emotions of the case and who can decide it fairly for either side,” said Barry M. Kamins, a Brooklyn defense lawyer and president of the City Bar Association. “I think both sides will get a very fair trial.”
Dennis W. Quirk, president of the New York State Court Officers Association, agreed. “Distinguished guy, hard-working, dedicated, no-nonsense type of guy,” he said. “I think he’ll do a good job. He’ll listen to the evidence in the case. He’ll apply that to the law, and he’ll make a decision.”
It's traditional for guys to have a bachelor party the night before the wedding.
It's also traditional for NYC cops to murder people in cold blood and get away with it.
It's also traditional for right wing nutters to cheer when that happens. Liberty minded Americans, OTOH, decry the rise of the police state, and grieve whenever cops get away with murder.
Which camp to you belong to?
Yeah, they do, but I think it’s a crime being a Christian there.......
I figured the anarchists had to borrow it from somebody.
Has been aptly stated:
"Singapore still appears to be just another table with four layers of cloth wrapped around it.
"Two layers for implementing fear and illogical ideas in the minds of the people."
"An additional two layers of cloth for spreading propaganda to the people." --a/k/a Singapore
The old school camp. I didn't go look at naked broads the nite before my wedding and wouldn't have married my wife had she gone to see naked studs the nite before our wedding. Your comments are rather presumptuous, given that I made no comment about the victims actions or the police actions.
Don’t go anywhere near a big city unless you are ready to defend your life with lead against the Thuggies.
Di you hear about the new item at BK called the Tawana Brawley Burger? You take it home and put your own $h!+ on it.
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