NEW YORK, March 15, 2007
New Witness Emerges In NYC Groom Shooting
Five Cops Are Accused Of 50-Bullet Barrage That Killed Man On His Wedding Day
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Play CBS Video Video Thousands March For Sean Bell CBSNews.com RAW: Large crowds gathered on New York's 5th Avenue in support of Sean Bell, a city resident shot at 50 times and killed by NYPD officers. Protesters offered a range of views.
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Video Officials On NYPD Shooting CBS News RAW: New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly shared details on the police shooting that killed one man and injured two others.
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Rev. Al Sharpton, third right, gestures during a news conference along with Trent Benefield, left, and Sean Bell's fiance Nicole Paultre-Bell, right, in New York on March 15, 2007. (AP Photo/Shiho Fukada)
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Interactive Crime Beat Statistics and specifics on crime in America.
"It certainly is rare," said Stephen Scaring, a defense attorney and former chief of the homicide bureau for the Nassau County district attorney's office.
Typically, Scaring said, grand jurors who hear new evidence would then disregard their previous deliberations and start them from scratch.
The timing of the grand jury's decision was uncertain. But city officials were on alert, and extra police officers were put on standby in anticipation of the news.
The shooting that killed Bell and wounded his friends stirred outrage around New York, and officials were bracing for more of the same if the officers avoid charges. Bell was black, as are the other victims; three of the officers are black, and two are white.
The killing of Bell and the wounding of his bachelor party guests, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, raised questions about police tactics and prompted vigils and protests by civil rights activists.
Union representatives and lawyers for the officers have said their clients, who were conducting an undercover investigation at the strip club, became convinced Bell and his friends were going to retrieve a gun from a car parked around the corner after overhearing them argue with another patron. No gun was found.
The officers testified in ascending order, based on the number of bullets they fired: Detective Paul Headley fired one round, Officer Michael Carey fired three, Officer Marc Cooper fired four shots, and Officer Gescard Isnora fired 11 shots. Michael Oliver, who reloaded, fired 31 shots.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 85 CommentsPosted by cmp271 at 08:12 PM : Mar 15, 2007
Without people like Al Sharpton, these murdering police will just lie to a white jury and walk to repeat their crimes again and again; and the family of the victims will never be compensated.
Posted by Gaye5 at 05:12 PM : Mar 15, 2007"
Who is preventing your Susan from spewing her bigoted nonsense?
I'll cut your Susan as much slack as she cuts just about the only person, Sharpton, who is willing to place his life on the line to shed light on the racist attitudes of the New York police!
You are no doubt only taking up for someone of your mentality; because you down there in your OZ are just as bigoted and despicable with the Aboriginal people you derisively call 'darkies'!
Sharpton is a black racist, anything that says a white person is innocent he is against. He is part of the problem in this country.
Let's face it, black faces are hard to see the dark.
I do think, from seeing problems in Philadelphia and New York, that more firearems training is needed. Ideally, it should be weekly. Their guns should be used often enough to be confident of their use. Fifty rounds does not seem to show that confidence.
Did they really need fifty rounds here?
A gun blast has a way of freezing the mind.
Panic is a difficult thing avoid. Abuse is apart of the history of the N.Y.P.D. This why there is a grand jury. This tragedy appears to be an accident, and it is duty of all involved to thorougly understand what happened, so there is not a repeat of a tragedy like this again.
You really do know how to read people, don't you? I'm intrigued by your powers of psychoanalysis.
Tell me, pray, what you think of this guy: Jesus Christ. He sided with the poor. Defended the weak. Spoke out against injustice. Challenged the governing powers. Was he a first class idiot too?
Dr Spock brought this on.. In My opinion, Dr Spock's Mother should Have been the first person to use Legalized Abortion!
It is very hard to know what to believe in the media as they tell lies so much, but In the beginning I thought that they had done the right thing in shooting the groom, then as I read couple more articles I started to wondered if it was because the groom was black and the police were white that it had turned against the police. we have just this sort of case here in OZ at the moment..one police man, who has worked amongst the aborigines for many years and been their friend had to shoot an aboriginal man and the whole place turned against him, he was right in what he did but at this moment it is going against him because he is white.. my son is a policeman so he knows the inside of the case...
As there is nothing in our papers here in OZ and I have only read a portion of the articles that came out, I also had begun to wonder as to why there was such a shoot out when the man didn't have a gun in his hand. Now that I have read that there were also black police in the shooting it changes my thoughts on things..... I had wondered if it was reversed racism.
I'm lost. What does this have to do with reverse racism if the police were telling the truth? And, I doubt that you will see a drop in police recruitments. What else would many of these guys do?
This witness being questionable - that was true without Sharpton saying a word. But both stories are questionable - finding the truth here is what is important. There's a lot to look at.
You do have a tremendous ability to emphasize the mundane over the important.
A man is fatally shot on the morning of his wedding day (yes, he's deceased, but the shock of his killing on a day that was supposed to be memorable makes it harder to bear). By your own admission, "no doubt the police went overboard" and that resulted in his death. Yet what you really care about is "the 'liberal bias' in the news", the "*sob* *sob* slop about the unmarried man on his wedddddddding day".
Shame on you.
If Al Sharpton has no credibility, why does he bother you so much? Seems to me that you give him a lot of credibility. If fact, I think he was on the cover of the "100 people who are *** up America" book. If that's not giving someone credibility, then what is?
The push to not allow parents to smack their children under the guise of it being child abuse is causing massive problems, and ever so many of these kids grow up to be undisciplined and a problem... Here in Australia, my Principal husband has watched the fast decline in the behaviour of children since teachers and parents were not allowed to strap their children..bullying has gone through the roof, and children are not as secure as they used to be...they seem to be more fragile, far too many children have become so rotten that many of his friends have left teaching as they feel that are no longer able to teach. they feel that too often they are only controlling the classes, and that the problem is only going to get worse as the push for no smacking takes control, and more parents put their children into day cares to get rid of them because they cant control their children any more....
Questioning this witnesses credibility is completely valid - I'm just saying he could be for real as well as he could be fake. And people who question him just based on timing have to recognize that you could question his fakeness based on timing as well.
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See all 85 Comments