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NYC: Thousands March to Protest Police Killing of Sean Bell

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

The New York Times via Truthout - Dec 17, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121806H.shtml

Protesters Denounce Police Killing

By Robert D. McFadden
The New York Times

A protest march cut a solemn swath through crowds of Christmas
shoppers and the joyous mood of the holiday season in Midtown Manhattan
yesterday in a rebuke to the police for the fatal shooting of an unarmed
black man in Queens on his wedding day last month.

Three weeks after Sean Bell was killed and two friends were wounded
in a hail of 50 police bullets, a coalition of civil rights groups,
elected officials, community leaders, clergymen and others marched down
Fifth Avenue and across 34th Street in a "silent" protest that sputtered
scattered chants, but was largely devoid of shrieks, speeches and most
of the usual sound-and-fury tactics of demonstrations.

Billed as a "Shopping for Justice" march and led by the Rev. Al
Sharpton, the army of protesters, many carrying placards, moved
grim-faced between hordes of holiday shoppers and tourists clogging the
sidewalks of two of the city's busiest commercial arteries.

The police had set up metal barricades to confine the marchers to a
single traffic lane, but the throng quickly swelled beyond expectations
and the barricades were shifted to widen the line of march to four of
the five lanes on Fifth Avenue and five of the six on 34th Street.
Traffic on side streets leading to the march was halted as the
protesters swept on.

Here and there, marchers shouted "No shopping, no justice," or
"Shot" and numbers from 1 to 50. Others carried signs proclaiming: "Stop
NYPD Racist Terror," and "Justice for Sean Bell." But most stared
straight ahead, ignoring those on the other side of the barricades.

The size of the protest, strung out for 10 blocks, was anybody's
guess. The organizers said thousands marched. The police, as is
customary, gave no estimate. In any case, there were no confrontations,
arrests or untoward incidents during the march, the police said.

"We're not coming to buy toys, we're not coming to buy trinkets -
we're coming to shop for justice," Mr. Sharpton, a man never at a loss
for words, said at a morning rally in Harlem, explaining what could not
be said in a nonverbal march. "Our presence is a bigger statement than
anything we could ever say with our mouths."

In Midtown, shoppers gawked. Tourists snapped pictures and wondered
what it was all about. Salvation Army carolers sang on, and the
protesters, who had been admonished repeatedly by organizers to remain
silent, kept discipline only in the front ranks, where members of
Congress, the Legislature, the City Council and other V.I.P.s marched
alongside a stone-faced Mr. Sharpton.

"It's New York, you always see crazy things," Margaret Rajnik, a
nurse from Atlantic City, said at Rockefeller Center, where mobs of
shoppers jammed the plaza in front of the skating rink, the giant
Christmas tree and the golden Prometheus.

A sampling of shoppers found many against the protest. "We just came
here to go shopping at the American Girl store and go see the
Rockettes," said Cherrie Ostigui, 38, of Odenton, Md. "Now we can't even
cross the street to get our lunch."

Steve Diomopoulos, 22, a student from Livonia, Mich., called it "a
weird time to be doing this," and added: "It's an inconvenience to
people like myself who came from out of town and want to get some
Christmas shopping done. It's almost like a hostile atmosphere. I don't
think that's what people came here to see."

But Seleah Bussey, 22, a Brooklyn College student, said, "I think
it's good because it's a tourist area and tourists need to know what's
really happening."

Mr. Sharpton, who called the Queens shooting a case of excessive
force, said the march was a moral appeal to the city to change police
policies.

Hours before he was to be married on Nov. 25, Mr. Bell was killed
and his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were wounded in a
barrage of police bullets as they left a bachelor party at a strip club.
The police, conducting an undercover operation at the club, said they
believed the victims were going to get a gun, and opened fire when the
men's car hit an officer and an unmarked police minivan.

Mr. Bell and his friends were black; the officers were white,
Hispanic and black. No guns were found among the victims, and while the
police say they are examining reports that a fourth man who ran away may
have had a gun, the case has generated vigils and protests that
culminated in yesterday's march.

Besides the complaints of annoyed shoppers, the march generated two
negative responses that were aimed at Mr. Sharpton.

Before the march, Steven A. Pagones, a former assistant prosecutor
in Dutchess County who won a defamation suit against Mr. Sharpton and
two others in 1998, showed up near the marchers' rendezvous point to
remind reporters that he had been falsely accused of being one of a
group of white men who abducted and raped a black teenager, Tawana
Brawley, in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., in 1987. The case stirred racial
tensions nationally, but was investigated by a grand jury and found to
be a hoax.

"I want people to understand that for years he's made reckless
allegations in furtherance of his own agenda," Mr. Pagones said of Mr.
Sharpton.

Michael J. Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment
Association, also cited Mr. Sharpton's role in that matter. "I think
it's all about credibility, something the Rev. Al had forsaken a long
time ago in the Tawana Brawley case," Mr. Palladino said. "He's trying
to deny our police officers their civil rights and due process. But in
the end, a grand jury will hear the evidence and they'll come to a
decision."

The protesters, many of whom arrived in buses from Queens, Brooklyn
and elsewhere, were joined by Representative Charles B. Rangel, City
Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., and other politicians; by the
singer Harry Belafonte; by leaders and members of the N.A.A.C.P.; the
Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; Mr. Sharpton's National
Action Network; and relatives and friends of Mr. Bell, Mr. Guzman and
Mr. Benefield.

The group included Mr. Bell's fianc