History > 2006 > USA > Gun violence (V)

As the service ended and the coffin was returned to the hearse,

dozens of mourners surged to surround it, chanting, “No justice, no peace!”

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Bridegroom’s Legacy Remembered at His Funeral        NYT        2.11.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/nyregion/02funeral.html

3 People Found Dead

in Pennsylvania Home

December 26, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:58 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) -- A man fatally shot his live-in girlfriend and her teenage son before he killed himself on Christmas Day, police said.

Joel E. Bodley, 60, called 911 on Monday afternoon and said there were three dead bodies in his home about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, Butler police said.

When officers arrived, they found his body in the living room with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The body of Debby J. Chuba, 55, was found in a second-floor bedroom, shot at close range. The body of her 17-year-old son, Andrew S. Chuba, was found in the basement, also shot at close range.

    3 People Found Dead in Pennsylvania Home, NYT, 26.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Three-Bodies.html

Gunman kills 1 shopper at Florida mall

Updated 12/25/2006 1:55 AM ET
AP
The New York Times

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A gunman fatally shot a man in a fight at a crowded mall on Sunday, then sent hundreds of Christmas shoppers running for cover as he fired at police chasing him, authorities said. Two men were in custory.

SWAT team members arrested Jesse Ceaser after he barricaded himself in a department store at the Boynton Beach Mall, north of Miami, Police Lt. Jeffrey Katz said.

Ceaser, 21, of Lake Worth, was charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder of a police officer.

Fregens Daniel, 20, of Boynton Beach, also was arrested and was charged with acting as principal accessory in the case, Katz said. Bond has not yet been set for Ceaser and Daniel.

Police did not disclose the number of shots fired. A motive for the shooting has not been determined, but Katz said the victim, Berno Charlemond, 23, of Boynton Beach, was arrested a month ago at the same mall for carrying a concealed weapon.

"We're still ironing out the details of the case, piecing things together," he said.

Katz said it was miraculous no one else was injured when the shooting broke out in midafternoon.

"The suspect ran through the mall and began to fire at officers as they were chasing him through the mall," he said. "Our officers did not return fire."

Agate Alphonse said she was on her way to a shoe store when she passed a group of 10 to 15 people punching and grabbing one another. A few moments later, shots rang out.

"Some people got down. Some people ran," said Alphonse, who crouched low and later ran out of the mall.

Sinette White, 19, of Lake Worth, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel she heard popping sounds while getting her nails done, then saw a man on the ground.

Shoppers gathered around him as police arrived to give CPR, but they heard more shots and police told them to take cover, she said.

The gunman barricaded himself in part of a Dillard's store and refused to surrender when officers contacted him through the public address system, Katz said. A SWAT team entered the store and captured him without incident, he said.

A mall spokesman, Sam Yates, said the shooting was outside a store within the shopping complex. The mall was closed for the remainder of the day.

In North Carolina, a man was charged with attempted murder Sunday after a shooting a day earlier at a Greensboro mall packed with shoppers. One man was critically wounded by gunfire shortly before the Four Seasons Town Centre closed Saturday.

It was the second shooting of the weekend at a North Carolina mall.

One man was slightly wounded at Charlotte's Eastland Mall on Friday evening when an argument between two groups of men ended with one firing through glass entrance doors. No arrests were immediately made.

    Gunman kills 1 shopper at Florida mall, UT, 25.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-24-mall-shooting_x.htm

New York Disc Jockey Dies of Gunshot Wounds

December 24, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 6:21 a.m. ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A hip-hop disc jockey has died of his wounds after being shot 13 times earlier this month in New York, police said on Sunday.

Carl Blaze, 30, born Carlos Rivera, a DJ for hip-hop and rhythm-and-blues radio station Power 105.1, died on Saturday at Harlem Hospital Center, where he was taken following the December 7 shooting, a spokesman for the New York Police Department said.

The spokesman said an investigation of the shooting, which took place in Upper Manhattan, was continuing and there had been no arrests in the case.

A police statement at the time of shooting said a diamond chain that Blaze had been wearing was missing when police arrived at the scene.

    New York Disc Jockey Dies of Gunshot Wounds, R, 24.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-dj-shooting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Phoenix slayings informant speaks out

Updated 12/24/2006 4:12 AM ET
AP
USA Today

PHOENIX (AP) — As the city shuttered itself in fear of serial killers this summer, Ron Horton found himself having an odd conversation with an old drinking buddy. "Let me ask you something," Horton remembers his friend, Samuel John Dieteman, sliding over to tell him between beers in June. "Do you know what it's like to kill a man?"

"How would I know?"

"Well," Horton recalls Dieteman saying, "neither did I until the last few months."

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Horton said Dieteman went on to describe how he and a friend poked shotguns out car windows and blasted at people as they cruised by.

"They called it 'RV'ing,'" Horton said. "Random Recreational Violence."

Horton initially thought it was just a false barroom brag from a man he thought he knew well, a former roommate who liked joking and drinking and who had punched out men who were being rough on their girlfriends.

He would come to regret not believing it sooner.

Horton led police to Dieteman, 31, and Dale Hausner, 33, who were charged this summer with slayings attributed to the so-called Serial Shooter. Police say seven people were killed and 17 wounded in the random attacks across the area dating to May 2005, which mostly came as the victims walked or bicycled alone late at night or in the early morning.

Horton's role as an informant was confirmed through a non-police source with access to documents from the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has been sealed.

Police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill said help from the public was critical to solving the case, but he couldn't comment specifically on anyone's involvement. Dieteman, who is jailed, has not responded to repeated interview requests made through authorities.

Horton, a soft-spoken 48-year-old with a shaggy blond mane, still shakes his head when thinking about his conversation with Dieteman at the Rib Shop, a west Phoenix bar.

He said he thought Dieteman was lying, that he was incapable of the cold-hearted acts he described, but later got the feeling Dieteman had been trying to get something off his chest.

Horton's suspicions grew in July, when he says Dieteman sent him a text message saying he was angry and that somebody was going to get hurt.

He went to police later that month, after hearing from a friend in his pool league about the Serial Shooter, blamed at that point for five slayings and the deaths of several dogs and horses. No one had been killed since Dieteman's conversation with Horton but several people had been wounded.

Finding Dieteman was a problem, Horton said. His living situation changed frequently — he lived with Horton in fall 2005 — and he had just changed his cellphone number.

Horton finally found Dieteman's new number through a friend and started text messaging him July 30.

Dieteman was slow to answer. When he did, he only left short, vague responses. Horton tried again: "Hey, if you're busy, call me when you're not busy," and he waited.

That night, 22-year-old Robin Blasnek was shot to death while walking along a street in Mesa. The news crushed Horton, who called police and promised to be more aggressive.

"It affected me quite a bit," Horton said. "I wasn't sure if I could have done something earlier."

Horton kept text messaging Dieteman, who finally agreed to meet at the Stardust bar in Glendale.

Undercover officers watched as Horton drove Dieteman to another bar, then to a casino on the Gila River Indian Reservation. It was getting late, and Horton asked Dieteman to get a ride home from Hausner, Dieteman's roommate at the time.

He left his old friend at the casino, eating a club sandwich. Dieteman and Hausner were arrested two days later, on Aug. 3.

Dieteman has been charged with two counts of murder — Blasnek's slaying and the May 2 shooting of Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz — and Hausner is charged with seven counts of murder. Both have pleaded not guilty.

One 2005 fatal shooting was connected to the Serial Shooter case after Dieteman and Hausner were arrested.

According to police documents, Dieteman admitted to some of the crimes, saying Hausner came up with the idea. Hausner has denied involvement and has suggested that Dieteman had taken Hausner's guns and car while he was asleep.

The county attorney plans to seek the death penalty.

Horton said it wasn't easy giving up a friend, but he'd do it again.

"He let us all down," Horton said.

    Phoenix slayings informant speaks out, UT, 24.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-24-phoenix-informant_x.htm

Fake firearms targeted in St. Paul

Posted 12/18/2006 11:18 PM ET
USA Today
By Andrea Stone

A Minnesota city is putting the finishing touches on a proposal to make it illegal to carry realistic-looking toy guns in public. It's the latest attempt nationwide to cope with dead-ringer weapons that have put police on edge.

St. Paul Councilman Lee Helgen says recent incidents in which teenagers or criminals pointed replica weapons at police prompted the bill he plans to introduce as soon as city attorneys vet legal details. The proposed ordinance would extend an existing ban on traditional BB guns to what are called airsoft weapons — fake firearms that shoot plastic pellets and are used in simulated military games similar to paintball.

"These things are really hard to tell from a real weapon, and they are being used to commit crimes," Helgen says. "We don't want these things on the street."

Neither do officials elsewhere:

•In Beaverton, Ore., police have confronted several teenagers wielding phony firearms. Last week, the city council moved a step closer to banning replica guns in public places by setting a public hearing for Jan. 22.

•In Dallas and San Diego, local officials are considering barring sidewalk vendors from selling cheap look-alike guns.

•The Michigan state Senate is weighing bills to prohibit brandishing toy firearms in public and set penalties for pointing them in an intimidating way at police officers.

•Rockland County, N.Y., in January became the second jurisdiction in the state, after nearby New York City, to ban the sale or ownership of replica guns.

Alan Sapp, a retired criminologist at the University of Central Missouri, says 6% to 10% of handgun robberies involve fakes. He says criminals use toy guns to avoid firearms charges if they're caught.

In St. Paul, at least 67 robberies, assaults and other crimes were committed using fake weapons in the first few months of 2006, Helgen says. "It's a significant problem," he says.

Officials also are responding to recent incidents in which police killed teenagers who waved toy guns that looked like the real thing.

'A vicious problem'

Police came upon the teenager in the dark stairwell on Thanksgiving 2003 as they responded to a report of an armed man in a North Miami Beach apartment complex. He was brandishing a gun. Or so it seemed.

In a moment of confusion and fear, one officer fired. Denzel Smith-Graham, 16, fell dead. He had been holding a toy BB gun.

Investigators later cleared the officer, ruling that his action was justified because the imitation gun looked real.

"These toy guns are a vicious problem," says Lorenzo Williams, a lawyer representing Smith-Graham's family in a $50-million lawsuit against police and Daisy Outdoor Products, the BB gun's maker. The company did not return calls seeking comment. "It puts citizens at great risk. It puts law enforcement officers on heightened alert because they have to make a split-second decision whether the gun is real (and) can discharge lethal force."

Fake firearms include black plastic models sold for $8 out of ice cream trucks as well as licensed metal reproductions that are authentic down to the manufacturers' serial numbers and sell for $1,000 or more over the Internet.

"We're not talking about Roy Rogers cap pistols," Dallas City Councilman Mitchell Rasansky says.

Authenticity is the main attraction of airsoft guns, says Justin Brown, who owns Aggressive Sports Joliet in Illinois. "They're so popular because they do look realistic," he says.

Brown estimates that as many as 1 million enthusiasts have donned camouflage to play at soldiering or law enforcement in competitions held on private land.

The guns, sometimes used as movie props, shoot plastic pellets using spring, electric or gas power. Brown says collectors appreciate that they can buy airsoft guns without the waiting periods, background checks or permits usually required in buying real firearms.

Federal law requires that all toy guns, including airsofts, to be sold with a bright orange tip to distinguish them from real weapons. Police say the safety marking is often spray painted or removed.

In January, police killed Christopher Penley, 15, at his middle school in Longwood, Fla., after he brandished a Beretta 9mm look-alike whose markings had been painted black.

Even properly marked replicas can be difficult to identify in the dark, says Scott Johnson, police chief in Apple Valley, Minn. His officers handle at least one pellet gun incident a week. "Imagine a police officer at night with just seconds to make up their mind whether somebody is holding a real gun or one of these BB guns," he says.

After Smith-Graham was killed, police in south Florida lobbied the state Legislature to ban real-looking guns. Former North Miami Beach police chief Bill Berger, a former president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, says the effort failed because of opposition from the National Rifle Association.

Chris Cox, the NRA's chief lobbyist, says metal BB guns and the newer plastic pellet versions are part of the traditional way young people have learned to shoot. A ban, he says, is "unrealistic" and "a solution in search of a problem."

Johnson says law-abiding citizens can avoid potentially life-threatening confusion by getting firearms safety training. If they don't, he says, "It could put their children and others in a very precarious situation."

'A little misunderstood'

Kevin Skerrett, 24, of the Minnesota Airsoft Association, says some gamers remove their gun's orange tip to better camouflage themselves in the woods, but they don't carry them in public. "Out on the street, it is no longer a toy," he says.

The Shoreview, Minn., tech support engineer owns a dozen airsoft guns, including counterfeit AK-47 and M-16 rifles and an MP-5 submachine gun.

"I feel (airsoft) is a little misunderstood," says Skerrett, a "very strong believer in gun control" who doesn't own real firearms. He says replica guns should be treated the same as the weapons they're modeled after and should always be carried unloaded and in a case.

Brown agrees. He won't sell airsoft guns to anyone under 18. "We don't think kids should have them. They're an adult toy," he says.

As for those who use replicas to commit crime, Brown sighs. "There's always going to be some bad apples but, overall, these are very safe when used properly."

    Fake firearms targeted in St. Paul, UT, 18.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-18-fake-firearms_x.htm

Man kills 5, including 3 of his kids, before fatally shooting himself

Updated 12/16/2006 5:44 PM ET
AP
USA Today

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A man killed five people, including three of his children, before fatally shooting himself Saturday morning, and a fourth child was in the hospital with life-threatening wounds, police said.

The man killed one woman around 8:30 a.m., then went to another home and shot his longtime girlfriend, their four children and himself, Capt. Rich Lockhart said.

Police did not immediately identify the shooter or the women. Relatives identified the shooter's girlfriend as Shanika King, who was in her 30s.

The slain children were a 1-year-old boy, 11-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl, police said. An 8-year-old boy was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the face.

Witnesses identified the first victim, a woman in her mid-30s, as the shooter's cousin, Lockhart said. The woman's son told police a man came to the door and asked to see his mother. The boy said he heard a "pop," but thought it was fireworks.

After the man left, the boy found his mother had been shot and went to a neighbor's house to call police, Lockhart said.

About 15 minutes later, police received a call from a woman who said her son-in-law had called her to say he had shot her daughter and grandchildren.

The man's body was found in the kitchen with a revolver nearby, police said. King and the youngest child were found dead in a bed, and the girl was found in a different bedroom. The 8-year-old and 11-year-old boys were found in the basement.

All had been shot, police said.

Two of the couple's other children had spent the night at their grandmother's house, said King's aunt, Janna Walker, who lives nearby in the neighborhood of low- to middle-income, single-family homes, about five miles east of downtown Kansas City.

Kim Drew, a neighbor whose 13-year-old son was a friend of the slain children, described the shooter as a controlling man who wanted things done his way.

"He didn't want her to smoke," Drew said. "He ran things and he was bossy. That much I did see."

Drew said the children were well-mannered. A couple of months ago, she said, she took the 11-year-old and 8-year-old to the circus with her son.

"They were very respectful," Drew said.

Sierra Saffold, 15, another neighbor who knew the family, said the children were "well taken care of" and the parents seemed to get along fine.

"Everytime I'd go down there, the mom and dad were always in the front room watching TV together, or the mom would be cooking, and the kids were playing video games," she said.

Lisa Robinson, who worked with Shanika King at a local hotel for about five years, said King always put her children first.

"She was a good lady," Robinson said. "She would go without anything to make sure her kids had what they need."

The uncle of the first woman killed called the events "an extraordinary tragedy."

"This is like being in the twilight zone," Wilbert Blackmon, whose niece was the first woman killed at a separate address, told The Kansas City Star.

He said his niece was a "fine young lady" who had four children, and that there had not been any indication of conflict or hint of impending violence in the family.

    Man kills 5, including 3 of his kids, before fatally shooting himself, UT, 16.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-16-kansas-city-shooting_x.htm

Nevada Man Arrested for Courtroom Fight

December 16, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:20 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A Nevada man whose son used an unsecured shotgun to commit suicide in 2005 was wrestled to a courtroom floor and arrested after throwing punches at uniformed court officers during a videotaped divorce proceeding.

Geoffrey Wells, 36, of Henderson, was being held Friday at the Clark County jail in Las Vegas pending a court appearance Monday on four felony charges of battery on a police officer.

Four Clark County Family Court bailiffs were treated for minor injuries at University Medical Center in Las Vegas after the Thursday altercation, authorities said.

The presiding judge of the court issued a statement Friday praising the officers and promising to use the video as a training tool.

''It shows how quickly a situation can get out of hand and how quickly a court must respond to ensure it doesn't spill out into the hallway,'' Judge T. Arthur Ritchie said.

Judge Cheryl Moss left the bench while at least nine bailiffs swarmed Wells, handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom. Moss returned to the bench to finish issuing a temporary protection order preventing Wells from having contact with his wife and children.

''I'm not happy about what happened here in the courtroom,'' Moss said in comments reported Friday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. ''In my six years on the bench, I've never had this happen.''

Moss called Wells' ongoing anger toward his wife ''very disturbing to the court,'' and noted that he had attended anger management classes.

Wells' lawyer, Gerard Bongiovanni, declined comment.

Wells was sentenced to three years' probation after pleading guilty in November 2005 to a child endangerment charge in the death of his 12-year-old son, Syber Wells. Authorities charged Wells with leaving his three boys home alone with guns in the house during a bitter custody battle with his wife, Maria Wells.

Maria Wells testified Thursday that Syber told his brothers, then ages 10 and 8, that he planned to kill himself so they wouldn't have to see their father again.

A video of the court proceeding shows the judge becoming agitated as the judge tells Wells to remain quiet and reminds him that she had ordered him before the suicide to lock up his guns.

''I'm getting screwed, and I'm supposed to sit here and take it,'' Wells shouted before throwing punches at bailiffs.

    Nevada Man Arrested for Courtroom Fight, NYT, 16.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Courtroom-Fracas.html

Police: Chicago skyscraper gunman felt cheated out of credit for invention

Updated 12/10/2006 12:17 AM ET
AP
USA Today

CHICAGO (AP) — The gunman who went on a deadly shooting spree in a downtown high-rise law office went to the building in search of an attorney because he felt cheated over an invention, authorities said Saturday.

Joe Jackson, 59, made at least one other attempt Friday to enter the offices of the intellectual property law firm Wood, Phillips, Katz, Clark & Mortimer, but was turned away because he didn't have an appointment, said Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline.

The next time he returned, Jackson had a revolver, knife and hammer hidden in a manila envelope, Cline said. He forced a security guard at gunpoint to take him up to the 38th floor, where shooting victim Michael McKenna, 58, rented office space. Jackson carried McKenna's business card in his pocket, Cline said.

Then Jackson chained the doors behind him, grabbed a hostage and started shooting, as he ranted to witnesses that he had been deceived over his invention, a toilet for a truck, Cline said.

"We know he went there for Mr. McKenna, then he continued to shoot other people," Cline said.

He was holding a hostage at gunpoint when two SWAT officers shot him in the face and chest from about 45 yards away, Cline said. There were no negotiations and the hostage was unharmed, police said.

"He had already shot four people. He had reloaded his gun," Cline said Saturday.

Jackson died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the medical examiner's office, which identified the other victims as attorney Allen J. Hoover, 65, of Wilmette, and Paul Goodson, 78, of Chicago, a retired school teacher.

Colleagues said Hoover was a partner at the firm and McKenna was a patent attorney who rented space from the firm and also had offices in suburban Northbrook and in Hawaii. They said Goodson worked part time at the firm, sorting mail and making deliveries.

A fourth victim, Ruth Zak Leib, 57, of Oak Park, was identified by police as McKenna's longtime paralegal. She was treated at a hospital and released Friday for a gunshot wound to the foot, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Wood Phillips said in a statement Saturday it would be closed Monday "as all employees gather together off site to support each other, to remember our colleagues and to meet with grief counselors."

A call to a telephone listing for Jackson at an address provided by the medical examiner's office reached a telephone company recording, which said the customer had requested the listing remain private.

Jackson had three criminal offenses on his record, Cline said. In 1968 he was arrested for unlawful possession of a weapon and in 1977 he was arrested for a stolen motor vehicle and disorderly conduct.

Authorities did not fault the security guard for taking Jackson to the 38th floor.

"This guy's telling him, 'Take me upstairs. Don't say anything,"' Cline said. "He followed instructions."

About 45 minutes elapsed between the first 911 calls and the SWAT team shooting, police said. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said police did a "tremendous" job.

Cline described a blood-spattered crime scene covered by broken glass. He praised paramedics and firefighters.

"It was a very chaotic scene. We had one of the individuals who was shot to death laying in the hallway. We had other individuals who were shot and we got them out right away," Cline said.

    Police: Chicago skyscraper gunman felt cheated out of credit for invention, UT, 10.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-09-chicago-shooting_x.htm

Gunman, 3 victims dead in Chicago tower

Updated 12/9/2006 12:04 AM ET
AP
USA Today

CHICAGO (AP) — A gunman carried a cache of weapons past security in a giant envelope Friday afternoon, chained a law office's doors closed and fatally shot three people before a police sniper killed him as he held a hostage at gunpoint, authorities said.

Officers entered through another door in the U-shaped office, and a SWAT officer shot the gunman from about 45 yards away, Superintendent Phil Cline said.

There was no negotiation and the hostage was unharmed, he said.

The shootings at the 43-story Citigroup Center, which also houses a train station, sent office workers fleeing and stranded rush-hour commuters.

Cline said the gunman, who was armed with a revolver, a knife and hammer, didn't work in the office but demanded to see one of the victims who was killed.

"He was not employed there but we feel he did have previous encounters with the individuals in that office," Cline said.

Fire officials said they received reports of shots fired on the 38th floor, which houses law offices, around 3:15 p.m.

The shooter "grabbed a hostage and he was pointing a gun alternately at the hostage's head and his own head," Cline said.

There were about 30 people on the floor during the shooting. The law office specializes in patent law, officials said.

None of the dead victims, all men, or the gunman was identified. A fourth victim, a woman, was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the foot, but was expected to be released later Friday night, Rush University Medical Center spokeswoman Kim Waterman said.

Cindy Penzick, secretary in a law firm on the 37th floor, said that after a co-worker told her she heard gunshots, a police officer with his gun drawn on their floor yelled at them to get out.

Penzick said she is usually calm, "But I have to tell you this was scary as hell."

People hurried down the escalators and ran from the skyscraper on the west side of downtown.

Keegan Greene, who works at Verizon Wireless on the first floor, was helping a customer when fire alarms began going off.

"One of the security guards came up to us and started saying, "Run, run, run, run, run!" Greene said.

Service on the Metra commuter line was suspended for more than an hour and area buses were diverted while the incident unfolded. Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said all Metra crewmembers had been locked into secure areas before train service resumed just after 5 p.m.

Janet Buswell, an office manager on the 25th floor, said her staff learned of the incident when emergency flashers went off and they were told over building speakers to secure their offices and let no one in or out.

"It was a little tense, when you don't know what's going on," said Buswell, of RBC Dain Rauscher Inc. "Of course this is the train station building, so there's always the fear that could be targeted."

    Gunman, 3 victims dead in Chicago tower, UT, 9.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-08-chicago-shootings_x.htm

With Victories, City Challenges More Gun Sales

December 8, 2006
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that the city had reached agreements with six out-of-state gun dealers, who agreed to let court officials monitor their operations to prevent illegal gun sales. He said that New York had sued 12 additional gun stores to demand similar oversight.

The expansion of New York’s legal attack from 15 to 27 gun dealers, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, reflects the city’s growing confidence that its novel approach to battling illegal gun traffic is gaining momentum.

The agreements with the gun dealers — reached over the last four months, with the latest one signed on Wednesday — give officials broad monitoring powers over the individual stores.

They let a court-appointed special master scour their financial records, put up video cameras, and require that employees take part in training sessions on when gun sales are prohibited. The city may also send undercover investigators into the six stores at any time, to make sure that all relevant gun laws are being followed.

The suits resulted from a two-month effort in April and May in which private investigators posed as buyers at 40 stores that had sold guns linked with more than 800 crimes in New York City between 1994 and 2001.

The teams, usually a man and woman, conducted what law enforcement officials describe as a straw purchase: one customer would deal with the seller until the last moment of the sale, when the second customer would step in to pay and fill out the forms for a background check.

Federal law prohibits a seller from handing over the weapon in such cases, because it lets people obtain guns without federal scrutiny of their criminal record Mr. Bloomberg said that straw purchases were one of the most common schemes used by gun traffickers, giving the city the right — with a bold interpretation of public nuisance laws — to go after out-of-state dealers for their weapons’ deadly consequences.

“This is about law enforcement, plain and simple,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “And it’s about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.”

The court cases have emerged as the most successful tactic in Mayor Bloomberg’s drive to undermine the illegal gun trade, an effort that has included lobbying Washington to tighten gun laws, convening mayors from around the country at Gracie Mansion to plot political strategy, and persuading Albany to pass a law creating a mandatory minimum sentence of three and a half years for illegal gun possession.

In October, the judge overseeing the lawsuits, Jack B. Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York, named as the special master Andrew Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann, a former assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, also directed a task force created to investigate the Enron scandal.

The dealers who settled have admitted no wrongdoing. The agreements expire after three years without a reported violation. And some of the store owners say they welcome the chance to clear their names.

“Although it is an intrusion into the privacy of my customers, the thing of it is, I don’t feel that I or they have anything to hide,” said James T. Farmer, owner of Jim’s Guns and Whatever in Dayton, Ohio.

But over all, Mr. Bloomberg’s antigun efforts have had only limited success. No other city has yet filed cases like New York’s, although Philadelphia is considering it. The effort to change the gun laws in Congress has hit Republican opposition.

Some law enforcement officials have also chafed at Mr. Bloomberg’s zeal in taking the fight against gun trafficking outside city limits.

The first wave of 15 lawsuits, filed in May, caught the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives by surprise. City officials had to smooth ruffled feathers just to get the agency — which is responsible for shutting dealers down — to look at the evidence investigators collected. This time, city officials tipped off the agency before filing the additional dozen cases.

Some gun owners, meanwhile, have fought back, denying Mr. Bloomberg’s description of them as “bad guys.”

In telephone interviews, several owners of shops named in the new set of lawsuits said that they were innocent. Adam Tullis, manager of Toccoa Pawn and Variety in Toccoa, Ga., said had he sold two guns to undercover investigators because he believed they were a married couple.

“They were both together,” he said, recalling the sale a few months ago. “As far as I know, they were husband and wife.”

A handful of gun dealers have countersued the city as well. Bob Barr, a former Georgia congressman, for example, filed a case on behalf of Adventure Outdoors of Smyrna, Ga., arguing that Mr. Bloomberg had conspired to harm the business.

Larry Mickalis, owner of Mickalis Pawn Shop in Summerville, S.C., said that he was also suing the city because he did not trust New York’s ability to trace weapons to his store.

He said that the guns found in New York, used or carried illegally and linked to his shop, might have been bought and sold several times, or stolen, before they ended up on New York streets.

“Their interpretation and their facts on trace data are wrong,” he said.

He blamed New York’s gun problem on violent movies and the lucrative nature of New York’s gun market.

“The prices of guns on the street in New York are enticing,” he said.

But John A. Feinblatt, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator, said that the gun shops that were sued clearly violated the straw purchase law and had repeatedly sold weapons linked to crimes in New York City. A typical gun dealer has only one gun involved in a crime traced back to his store over a two-year period, Mr. Feinblatt said. Mr. Mickalis’s rate is 49 guns in seven years linked to crimes.

Mr. Bloomberg — after showing reporters a video of a sale at Toccoa Pawn, which showed the female investigator filling out a background check while her male counterpart paid for the weapons — also emphasized that the city planned to address the problem both at the source and on the street.

In addition to the lawsuits, he said, a new ad campaign will appear this winter in subways, saying that illegal possession of a gun would lead to a mandatory prison sentence of three and a half years.

And Mr. Mickalis conceded that Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts had forced dealers hundreds of miles from New York to take a closer look at their buyers.

“No one in their right mind,” he said, “is going to sell someone from New York a gun.”

    With Victories, City Challenges More Gun Sales, NYT, 8.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/nyregion/08guns.html?hp&ex=1165640400&en=f766eb3b4bc42ecf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Ballistics Report Is Guide to Queens Police Killing

December 8, 2006
The New York Times
By AL BAKER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The Police Department has delivered to prosecutors in Queens a 43-page ballistics report on the shooting of Sean Bell, a crucial piece of evidence that will act almost as an annotated guide to how the 50-shot police fusillade that claimed his life unfolded.

Specific details from the report — like which of five police officers who fired that night were responsible for the shot or shots that ended Mr. Bell’s life — could not be learned, but a published report said one fatal shot came from Detective Michael Oliver, a 12-year veteran who fired 31 times during the fateful moments outside the Club Kalua strip club in Jamaica on Nov. 25.

A law enforcement official who was not privy to the ballistics report said that statistically, Detective Oliver was most likely to have fired the fatal rounds because he fired far more bullets than anyone else. Several officials declined to confirm the report about Detective Oliver, which appeared in The New York Post.

The ballistics evidence will paint a picture of the shooting that prosecutors can use to help gauge the accounts of potential witnesses, including the five officers who fired into Mr. Bell’s car, killing him on the morning of his wedding and injuring two of his friends.

In short, the bullets tell a story.

Four bullets were recovered from Mr. Bell’s body during an autopsy conducted by the office of the city’s chief medical examiner. One of his friends, Trent Benefield, was struck three times, in the leg and buttock. Another, Joseph Guzman, had at least 11 bullet wounds along his right side. Many of those bullets or fragments are in the hands of investigators.

On the other side, investigators know precisely how many bullets each of the five shooting officers fired: 31 from Detective Oliver; 11 from a detective working undercover; 4 by another officer; 3 by Officer Michael Carey; and 1 by the fifth officer, a detective.

Ellen S. Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner’s office, said pathologists were able to determine that two of the shots that hit Mr. Bell were fatal, one that hit him in the right side of his neck, perforating his larynx, and one that perforated his liver and right lung.

The pattern of shots and where the slugs and casings came to rest could also possibly shed light on whether a fourth man was in the car with Mr. Bell and his two friends, a notion embraced by some of those who have been briefed on some of the officers’ accounts but repeatedly denied by the wounded men, their lawyers and others.

Indeed, the document could become the focus of intense debate, especially if the case results in an indictment and reaches a trial, as it did in the shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, when each side tried to use parts of the analysis to support its version of events.

Still, while the hard forensic facts, like much of what is in the report, can prove invaluable as prosecutors in the office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, seek to piece together the seconds during which the shots were fired, an official involved in the investigation said that it has its limits.

“We’re living in an age where everyone watches “CSI” and thinks we can tell everything from the forensics,” the official said. “We can tell a lot, but it’s not going to give us a video of the incident. But we try and take all of the physical evidence and establish what we can establish, in addition to what the eyewitnesses and in some cases what the ear witnesses tell us.”

It remains unclear whether the five officers who fired their guns that night will provide statements to prosecutors and testify about the shooting without immunity before a grand jury, though some have suggested through their lawyers that they may.

Mr. Guzman and Mr. Benefield have already been interviewed by prosecutors in the office of District Attorney Brown, who is overseeing the investigation, and will be interviewed several times more before they testify before the grand jury. Other witnesses, as well, have described some parts of the events leading up to the shooting.

But eyewitness testimony — whether from the officers who fired, the victims, or others who may have seen the events unfold amid the fear, panic and fog-of-war frenzy that a hail of 50 bullets can bring — is sometimes unreliable.

Every bullet and shell casing has distinct characteristics. The barrel of a gun leaves grooves on a bullet, and spent cartridges are marked by the gun’s firing pin and the face of its breech. “Each firearm has unique individual characteristics,” said James M. Gannalo, who retired in 1998 as a detective in the New York Police Department’s Ballistics Unit and has testified hundreds of times as a ballistics expert.

One veteran law enforcement official who has investigated several police shootings said that both the spent shell casings and the bullets themselves, along with the paths that they traveled, can tell investigators a great deal.

In cases where many rounds are fired, the spent shell casings, because they are so numerous, can provide valuable information. In the instances where an officer fires while moving, the small round brass casings will mark his path.

“If he’s moving, you’re going to have almost like a trail of breadcrumbs, or clusters if he moves, stops, fires and moves again,” the official said. “If he stands and fires, there will be a big pool of brass.”

Sometimes the casings land on ground that is not level, and roll, or they can be kicked by people at the shooting scene, like emergency medical technicians rushing to aid a victim or careless responding officers.

Yesterday, Charlie King, a lawyer for five men who were celebrating in Mr. Bell’s bachelor party and who witnessed the shooting, said that one of those men was arrested at 10 p.m. Wednesday on a disorderly conduct charge after leaving a Manhattan deli, but was released yesterday after the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute him.

Mr. King said he was angry that his client, whom he declined to identify, apparently could not immediately be located by the “top members” of the Police Department after he inquired about the man’s status.

“These are the kind of questions that raise serious concerns about police conduct,” Mr. King said. He added, “We were told he was not arrested when he was.”

Responding to the complaint, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said, “When Chief Charles Campisi queried the system, the individual’s name was not yet in it because of a lag.”

    Ballistics Report Is Guide to Queens Police Killing, NYT, 8.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/nyregion/08shoot.html

Bridegroom’s Legacy Remembered at His Funeral

December 2, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

There were to have been two people taking wedding vows last week at the altar of the Community Church of Christ in Queens. Yesterday, there was just one person there, lying in a coffin.

It was an open coffin, and it held the body of Sean Bell, 23, killed last Saturday in a hail of 50 police bullets on the day he was supposed to have been married.

At his funeral last night, Mr. Bell was mourned as a father, a bridegroom, a man whose life had been taken but whose legacy will remain.

Hundreds stood in line for a chance to view his body, which lay at the altar with his hands clasped at the waist. They passed in, then out of the church. His father wept and gospel music was played.

Instead of bridal white, Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre, wore a widow’s black veil. As the service ended and the coffin was returned to the hearse, dozens of mourners surged to surround it, chanting, “No justice, no peace!”

For nearly a week, the death of Mr. Bell — killed while leaving his bachelor party at the Club Kalua strip club in Queens — has been held up as a symbol of racial injustice and a primer on the ambiguities of police work. Whatever one may think of the case, there was something painfully familiar in the spectacle of another black man laid to rest after dying at the hands of the police.

His funeral came at the end of seven days of formal New York ritual. There were headlines, news conferences, meetings, statements and promises of a full and fair investigation. But in the rain last night, formalities like those were swept aside for the older and more primal rite of grief.

That began with organ music and a reading from the Gospel of St. John. It was Chapter 14, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “Let not your heart be troubled. You have faith in God. Have faith in me.”

The Sanctuary Choir sang “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior,” and the congregation sang along. The church is small, and a large crowd massed behind a fence in an empty field across the street. As Mr. Bell was eulogized, they pressed their bodies to the fence, bowed their heads and said, “Amen.”

The first to speak was the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has advised the grieving family. Mr. Sharpton noted that 51 years ago, to the day, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Ala. She had faced down injustice and made history, he said. Now it was Mr. Bell’s turn.

“They took his life, but they cannot take his legacy,” he said.

“We don’t hate cops,” Mr. Sharpton added. “We don’t hate race. We hate wrong. There’s a difference between peace and quiet. Quiet means shut up. Quiet means suffer in silence. Peace means justice. We want peace, but we won’t get quiet until we get justice.”

At the end of his speech, he called out, “Goodnight, Sean, sorry you had to leave us so soon, but we’ll make sure they don’t forget you!”

Before the funeral began, the field was like a county fair, packed with people on the damply fragrant grass. There were communists, anarchists and men from the Nation of Islam. There was a sound truck playing gospel tunes and members of the X Ryders truck club.

And there was Tony Modica, who owns La Bella Vita, the catering hall where Mr. Bell’s wedding reception was supposed to have taken place.

It was a lively scene of discussion and debate. People shouted back and forth about the 50 shots fired at Mr. Bell’s car as he and two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, sat inside. Then there was debate about what the police have described as a possible fourth man in the car who may have had a gun.

“I’m a law-abiding person,” one woman said to friends. “I love peace, but I’m tired. I’m sick of peace.”

The crowd erupted into loud applause when Kadiatou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo, arrived and made her way into the church. Mr. Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, was shot and killed by the police in 1999, in a barrage of 41 shots.

Early in the day, Ms. Diallo said, that after learning that “three young men were gunned down, and one was killed, and 50 bullets were fired, I knew then change had not happened as we wished.”

Later, as the formal wake proceeded at the church, a less formal gathering took place about 20 blocks away, in the courtyard of the Baisley Park housing complex, where Mr. Bell had lived. A few of his friends stood around a shrine of candles made to form a heart. They were drinking beer and brandy and refused to discuss the death.

Still, the funeral itself was fairly calm, unmarked by scenes of violence. Early in the day, the police had said they would have a “sufficient number” of officers on hand to keep control, and their presence last night was modest and unobtrusive.

The Police Department had sent scores of officers into the streets on Wednesday and Thursday to scour the shooting scene on Liverpool Street for evidence, search for witnesses and execute search warrants. Yesterday, the department defended the actions in the face of criticism.

“The N.Y.P.D. Internal Affairs Bureau is conducting appropriate follow-up inquiries and providing all information to the Queens district attorney,” said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman.

Still, officials did not announce any new details about the inquiry, and the intensity of the investigation seemed to ebb as the funeral began.

At the same time, a new song by Papoose, a New York rapper, popped up on the Internet.

It criticized the shooting and included a direct attack on Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the police officers’ union.

“He said they wasn’t wrong for firing those shots,” the song says.

Albert W. O’Leary, a spokesman for Mr. Lynch, declined to comment on the song.

After the funeral ended and the hearse had driven off, a clutch of a few dozen people stood outside the church yelling things like, “50 bullets, 50 cops!”

Bishop Lester Williams, the pastor of the church, who presided over the funeral, asked one mourner, the rapper Mos Def, for help in dispersing the crowd.

Mos Def was reluctant, saying: “If you’re young and you’re black the police are raised to treat you in a more hostile manner. They’re programmed to be hostile.”

The one bit of civil disobedience last night came as a man, Donald Murray, marched down the middle of Merrick Boulevard, stopping traffic with a sign that read, “Either We Strike or Riot or Kill.”

Mr. Murray held his sign up to a city bus, stopping in its tracks.

The bus was packed with passengers, and as Mr. Murray flashed his sign the driver flashed his own.

“Justice for Sean Bell,” it read.

Al Baker, Daryl Khan and Michelle O’Donnell contributed reporting.

    Bridegroom’s Legacy Remembered at His Funeral, NYT, 2.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/nyregion/02funeral.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Music

After a Shooting, a Rapper Stages a Protest in Rhyme

December 2, 2006
The New York Times
By KELEFA SANNEH

At midnight on Thursday night, listeners who were tuned into the New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97 got a bracing surprise. Over some familiar strings, a voice said, “R.I.P. to Sean Bell,” the black man who was killed by the police in Queens early Saturday morning. “R.I.P. to Kathryn Johnston,” he continued, naming the 88-year-old woman who was killed by the police in Atlanta last week. “R.I.P. to Amadou Diallo,” he said naming the African immigrant who was shot by the police in the Bronx in 1999. “The list goes on. A change gon’ come.”

The voice belonged to Papoose, a rapper from Brooklyn whose new song, “50 Shots,” is a furious — and surprisingly detailed — response to the shooting of Mr. Bell. In the last few days, the song has been circulating online. And DJ Kay Slay, who has become a mentor to Papoose, began his midnight radio show by playing it. Papoose has made a name for himself by releasing dozens of mix tapes over the last few years; in one of his best-known songs, “Sharades,” he rapped in the voice of “the hip-hop police,” promising to throw more rappers in jail.

His style is heavy-handed and quite often dull; he often seems content merely to shout his rhymes over the beat. But he is ambitious and relentless, and with Kay Slay’s help, he got a contract with Jive Records.

Certainly he wasted no time in responding to the events of Saturday morning, when five police officers fired 50 shots at a car, killing Mr. Bell, who was to be married later that day, and wounding two others, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield.

Papoose’s song uses a sample of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Near the beginning, he says, “Make the whole hood feel sad, it’s sadness/But we feel mad — it’s madness.” Then he delves into the details.

He assails the officers by name: “Mike Oliver said his gun jammed, he the main one/12-year veteran and don’t know how to use a gun.”

He paraphrases the Police Department’s Patrol Guide: “The law states a cop is not permitted to shoot at a moving car.” (That’s true, unless the officer is responding to some “deadly physical force” besides the car itself.)

He offers measured praise for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, comparing him to his predecessor: “He got some better manners, but let’s see if we get some better policy.”

Papoose even finds time to respond to a column by John Podhoretz from Tuesday’s New York Post; this is a rhyme that sometimes feels more like a vituperative blog entry.

Listeners sometimes wonder why hip-hop doesn’t produce more fiery protest music. “50 Shots,” an unsubtle little song that packs a thrilling little charge, is proof that the protest tradition lives on.

It may also help listeners understand why this sort of thing isn’t more common.

Your average hip-hop track is more freewheeling than this one, and much more fun. If most rappers prefer boasts to brickbats — well, you can see (and hear) why.

    After a Shooting, a Rapper Stages a Protest in Rhyme, NYT, 2.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/nyregion/02papoose.html

Police Shooting Reunites Circle of Common Loss

December 2, 2006
The New York Times
By SARAH KERSHAW

The bus from Miami rolled into the Port Authority station at 6:25 p.m. Thursday, 28 hours after Marie Rose Dorismond set out for New York City, alone on her grim pilgrimage.

It was not the first time she had returned to the place she fled after her only son, Patrick M. Dorismond, was killed at age 26 by the police in 2000; she comes back every Feb. 28, on his birthday, and stays through March 16, the day he was shot in a scuffle with undercover detectives only a few blocks from the bus station. He is buried in Queens.

This time, clutching a rolling suitcase and three sets of neatly pressed dress clothes on hangers, Mrs. Dorismond was returning for the funeral of Sean Bell, the 23-year-old bridegroom who died in Queens on Saturday in a storm of 50 police bullets.

And in doing so, she returned to join again what amounts to an anguished club: the widening circle of unintended friends made up of the relatives of those killed by the police in the city’s streets.

She was here to make herself available to the Bell family, people she had never met but who felt to her like instant sisters and brothers. And when she could not find a flight that would get her to New York on time, Mrs. Dorismond, 59, traveling alone for the first time, decided to take a Greyhound bus.

“I don’t know what I would have done without them,” Mrs. Dorismond, a Haitian immigrant who came to New York at 18 to study nursing, said of the relatives of Amadou Diallo and others who died in encounters with the police. “Nobody can understand that pain but me, Mrs. Diallo and the others. When it was my turn, everybody came.”

They had come and been there for her, rushing to her side to introduce themselves — at her son’s wake, at his funeral, at the protests on the streets. Amadou Diallo’s mother, Malcolm Ferguson’s mother, Nicholas Heyward Jr.’s father, Abner Louima himself.

At Sean Bell’s wake yesterday, in a crowded church in Jamaica, Queens, Mrs. Dorismond was weeping in the second row of pews, only a few feet from the open coffin, when Amadou Diallo’s mother, Kadiatou, arrived. Mrs. Dorismond rushed to her friend, the two hugged for several minutes, and Mrs. Dorismond shouted: “Again? Again? Again?”

As hundreds of people passed through the church to view the coffin, a crowd of protesters ebbed and flowed on the streets outside, swelling to about 500 people by the time the funeral was over and Mr. Bell’s coffin was carried out of the church at 8:30 p.m. Many held signs that said, “Justice for Sean Bell,” and demonstrators denounced police brutality over loudspeakers, but the event was largely peaceful.

It was Mrs. Dorismond’s first such funeral since her son was killed, but others, like Nicholas Heyward, whose son was killed in 1994, could count off half a dozen.

In addition to his son, 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr., who was playing with a toy gun when he was killed by a housing officer in Brooklyn, recent victims of violent encounters with the police included Amadou Diallo, killed in a hail of 41 bullets in the Bronx; Malcolm Ferguson, a drug suspect whose death came only five days after officers were acquitted in Mr. Diallo’s death; Gidone Busch, a mentally ill man killed by the police in Brooklyn; Patrick Dorismond, killed by an undercover narcotics detective in Manhattan; and Sean Bell, killed in Queens when five undercover detectives opened fire on his car.

In the days before Mr. Bell’s funeral, the anguished club’s grapevine was in full operation: Mrs. Dorismond heard, but was not positive, that Mrs. Diallo, whose son was killed in 1999, would come from Maryland.

Mrs. Diallo, meanwhile, was in close contact with the mothers of Gidone Busch, whom she speaks to every month, and Timothy Stansbury Jr., an unarmed man killed in 2004, but neither was able to attend the Bell funeral.

Mr. Heyward had said he was going and was pleased to hear that Mrs. Dorismond was coming. Juanita Young, whose son Malcolm Ferguson was killed in 2000, told Mr. Heyward, now a very close friend, that she really wanted to go, but he talked her out of it because she had just been released from the hospital.

“I know what the families are going through right now,” Mr. Heyward had said before the funeral. “It’s really, really tough right now. Right now they are completely lost. Sometimes you may think they are all right, but they are completely lost.”

Mrs. Dorismond recalled feeling exactly that way in the chaotic and surreal days after her son’s death, which a grand jury found to be unintentional and which resulted in no charges against the officer.

There was also the overlaying public spectacle, with protests at her son’s funeral erupting in violence and dozens of people being arrested. There were marches, with the Rev. Al Sharpton by Mrs. Dorismond’s side, the constant glare of television cameras, a public battle between the Dorismonds and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Mrs. Dorismond’s and Mrs. Diallo’s meeting with Gov. George E. Pataki.

Two weeks after her son died, Mrs. Dorismond, a retired pediatric nurse, said she was looking out the window of her fourth-floor apartment in East Flatbush, where she had lived for 30 years, and saw a dead body on the building’s steps. Mrs. Dorismond and her husband, André, a well-known singer among Haitians whom fans called the “Haitian Frank Sinatra,” had already decided to move to Florida, where they were building a house.

The body, appearing so soon after their son’s death, persuaded them to leave New York as quickly as possible, and they settled in the quiet town of Port St. Lucie with their daughter, Marie, 35, and one of Patrick Dorismond’s two daughters, Infinity, now 11.

As she made her way from the bus terminal to a friend’s car on Thursday and rode to Brooklyn, where she is staying with a brother in East Flatbush, Mrs. Dorismond’s anger boiled up. With every passing police car, every sound of a siren, she fumed.

“You might as well stay away,” Mrs. Dorismond said. “You cannot live with Satan. New York City is like a jungle place.”

Mr. Dorismond’s other daughter, Destiny, 7, is living with her mother in New York. The city settled a civil lawsuit in the case and paid the family $2.25 million. Mrs. Dorismond said all the money was in a trust fund for her son’s daughters, who will be allowed access to what she estimated would grow to $10 million only after they turn 25.

Mrs. Dorismond, who spent yesterday morning on Flatbush Avenue having her nails and hair done for the Sean Bell funeral, said that both of the girls talked about wanting to become police officers, “so they can find out what really happened.”

Infinity seems especially focused on what happened to her father, writing songs that she sings aloud to him, asking her aunt and grandmother all kinds of questions.

“I am young and I don’t know,” begins one of Infinity’s songs. “I’m going to be a police, I want to know how they killed you.”

For a while, her aunt said, Infinity worried about what her father was wearing when he was buried.

“Did my daddy have shoes on his feet when he was in the box?” she asked her aunt.

“No shoes, I don’t think so,” Ms. Dorismond replied. “But he was buried in a cream suit.”

Sean Bell was buried in a pinstriped suit, and yesterday Mrs. Dorismond and Mrs. Diallo spent four hours sitting next to each other, catching up — Mrs. Diallo is now the grandmother of triplets; Mrs. Dorismond has retired — and watching mourners file by the coffin.

When Mr. Bell’s mother, Valerie, approached her son’s body, Mrs. Dorismond burst into tears and laid her head on Mrs. Diallo’s shoulder.

A few minutes later Mrs. Dorismond and Mrs. Diallo walked over to the next pew, introduced themselves to Ms. Bell and said they were sorry. The three of them hugged, and Ms. Bell told the two other mothers she was sorry, too, for their losses.

When they returned to their seats, Mrs. Diallo said, “She’s numb.”

Mrs. Dorismond said, “I know.”

    Police Shooting Reunites Circle of Common Loss, 2.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/nyregion/02victims.html?hp&ex=1165122000&en=cf09d9b4869a4091&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Police Statements Vary on Firing at a Vehicle

November 30, 2006
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

In the days after the groom-to-be Sean Bell died in a 50-shot fusillade fired at his car by five police officers, city officials have gone into detail about the Police Department’s guidelines for shooting at a moving vehicle.

The rules, in the department’s Patrol Guide, are clear: “Police officers shall not discharge their firearms at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly physical force is being used against the police officer or another person present, by means other than a moving vehicle.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, by citing the guidelines, raised the possibility that the five officers who shot at Mr. Bell might have been in violation of the department’s internal rule.

“You should know that it is not the policy of the Police Department, where a police officer can shoot at a car when the car is being used as a weapon,” Mr. Bloomberg said Monday at a City Hall news conference. “So at least, in that case, it would appear that the policies of the Police Department were broken.”

Mr. Kelly said, “As far as the policy of using deadly force against a vehicle — we have a policy that prohibits that if the only deadly force that’s being used against you is the vehicle itself.”

But in a series of other recent confrontations in which police officers shot at drivers trying to run them down, police officials voiced unambiguous support for the officers involved. In two police shootings since last month — one in which an officer fatally shot a driver — the police said the shootings appeared reasonable, at least after preliminary investigations.

On Nov. 11, when a driver in Brooklyn was killed by the police, the officers saw him pointing a gun. In the other, in the Bronx, on Oct. 27, a loaded 9-millimeter gun was found in the driver’s waistband and a second gun was in the car, according to the police.

In Saturday’s case, at least one police officer appeared to have believed the men in the car had a gun, but no gun was found.

The three police shootings — and the official statements about them — underscore the nettlesome aspects of trying to set rules for unforeseeable, potentially deadly situations that unfold in seconds. To some, including many retired officers, the guidelines are confusing, even contradictory, particularly since an overarching statement in the Patrol Guide states that the primary function of all officers is “to preserve human life.”

Andrew Quinn, a lawyer who is general counsel to the Sergeants Benevolent Association, observed that the policy is more restrictive than the state’s penal code. And a veteran prosecutor who has investigated previous police shootings suggested that the hard-and-fast rule is contrary to common sense.

“The Patrol Guide definitely states that, and it’s hard to believe that it says it, that you can’t use deadly force against a vehicle,” said the prosecutor, who refused to be named.

“Every cop you say that to says, ‘Oh, come on,’ ” the prosecutor said. “It seems at best to be selectively enforced.”

Still, some defended the policy as written. John C. Cerar, a retired commander of the Police Department’s firearms training section, said, “Guidelines are guidelines, and they can be violated without breaking the rules.”

When asked about the policy, Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said, “What we look at is the totality of the situation.”

He added: “We don’t know the totality of this event yet.” But of the two previous shootings, Mr. Browne said, “There was more than the threat of the automobile alone involved.”

Indeed, in the Oct. 27 shooting, Mr. Quinn said that Sgt. Edward Warren was not shooting at a car, but “at a driver who was armed and who was about to shoot a cop.”

“It is idiotic,” he said of the policy. “There are absolutely circumstances where a car can be used as a deadly weapon, and the only way a cop can save his life or the life of a fellow officer or the life of a civilian is to use his handgun.”

Mr. Kelly has been careful not to characterize the conduct of the five police officers involved in the shooting of Mr. Bell. None of those officers have been interviewed by officials.

Talk of a gun, however, has colored the early reports of what happened.

In a confrontation before the shooting outside a Queens strip club, Joseph Guzman, an acquaintance of Mr. Bell’s, shouted, “Yo, get my gun,” the police said. Later, according to the account of a police lieutenant at the scene, a detective working undercover who was shadowing Mr. Bell and his acquaintances called the lieutenant just before the shooting to say the situation was getting “hot,” and, “I think there’s a gun.”

Cara Buckley and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

    Police Statements Vary on Firing at a Vehicle, NYT, 30.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/nyregion/30cars.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Arrests Made in Playstation Shooting

November 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PUTNAM, Conn. (AP) -- State police arrested two men Tuesday in the shooting of a man waiting in line to be one of the first to buy a PlayStation 3 game console.

State police said William J. Robertson, 20, of Woodstock, and Andrew Patnaude, 17, of Putnam, were charged with attempted murder, robbery, assault and other crimes. They were being held in lieu of $1 million bail pending court appearances set for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Early the morning of Nov. 17, Michael Penkala was shot by two gunmen who tried to steal his cash as he waited in line to buy one of the new PlayStations at a Wal-Mart in Putnam.

Penkala, 21, of Webster, Mass., said he was shot when he refused to give up his wallet, which held more than $2,500 in cash. He is still recovering.

    Arrests Made in Playstation Shooting, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-PlayStation-Shooting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Bloomberg Visits Family of Man Killed by Police

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN and JOHN HOLUSHA

Mayor Michael Bloomberg went to Queens today to reach out to relatives and communities affected by the death of one young man and the wounding of two others Saturday in a hail of police bullets.

The mayor met this morning with the family of Sean Bell, 23, who was killed after he left a nightclub in Queens following his bachelor party. Attending the meeting at the Community Church of Christ in Jamaica were Mr. Bell’s parents, his finance Nicole Paultre and her mother.

Also attending were Bishop Lester Williams, the pastor of the church, the Rev. Al Sharpton and State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a Queens Democrat. The mayor met privately with the group for about an hour.

Then, at about 10:25 a.m., he arrived at Tomasina’s Restaurant, a catering hall in St. Albans, to meet with about 50 community leaders and clergy, including Rev. Timothy Mitchell.

Outside the hall, Linden Avenue was closed to traffic because of the mayoral visit. A crowd of pedestrians quickly gathered near the barriers.

Reaction to the mayor’s presence varied.

“I appreciate it,” said Anthony Childers, 54, of St. Albans. “I’m glad he wants to talk to the family — it shows he’s concerned.”

But Stokely Roberts, 27, of Cambria Heights, was skeptical. “It’s a show,” he said. “It’s an effort to make it look like they really care. It’s not genuine.” He also said police are heavy-handed in their approach to policing in minority communities.

    Bloomberg Visits Family of Man Killed by Police, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/nyregion/29shootcnd.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=a4752c494b2152b5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Atlanta Officers Suspended in Inquiry on Killing in Raid

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN and BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, Nov. 27 — The police chief placed all eight members of a narcotics investigation team on leave Monday after a confidential informant said they had asked him to lie during the investigation of the death of an 88-year-old woman, shot and killed by police officers during a drug raid last Tuesday.

Chief Richard J. Pennington said the Federal Bureau of Investigation would investigate the death of the woman, Kathryn Johnston, who was killed after she fired at three officers who breached the door of her small house, with its green shutters and a wheelchair ramp. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is also examining the case.

The informant’s claim fueled more outrage over Ms. Johnston’s death, which had already prompted Chief Pennington to announce a review of the Atlanta Police Department’s policies on the use of no-knock warrants and confidential informants. Since the shooting, civil rights activists and community groups have demanded a federal investigation, saying excessive force was used.

In a news conference Monday afternoon, Chief Pennington said the officers involved and the informant had given contradictory accounts.

“There are many unanswered questions,” he said. “But we must all exercise patience as we examine and re-examine every aspect of these tragic events.”

Chief Pennington’s announcement came as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York suggested that the shooting death by the police of a groom-to-be in Queens seemed to be the result of excessive force. And another Atlanta-area police force, in DeKalb County, has been the subject of investigative reports of 12 fatal shootings since January.

The events leading to the death of Ms. Johnston, whose photograph in news reports showed her with a cane and a birthday crown, began with a warrant stating that an unnamed informant had bought two bags of crack cocaine from a man at the house, near Vine City, the neighborhood where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family once lived. The warrant was known as a no-knock, giving the police the authority to burst through the door without warning in order to prevent the destruction of drugs.

But in an interview broadcast Monday by the local Fox affiliate, the informant, whose identity was concealed, said he had never been to the house in question and had not bought drugs there. Ms. Johnston’s family has said that she lived alone.

“They were going to pay me just to cover it up,” he said in the interview, arranged after he placed a call to one of the station’s reporters on Thursday. “They called me immediately after the shooting to ask me, I mean to tell me, ‘This is what you need to do.’ ” He added that the officers told him explicitly that he was needed to protect their story.

The reporter, Nicole Allhouse, said in her report that the informant had told her Ms. Johnston’s death had prodded him to come forward.

Mr. Pennington said it was not clear if the drug dealer, referred to in the warrant only as Sam, existed. He said the officers claimed they had found a small amount of marijuana, but no cocaine, in the house.

In asking a judge for the no-knock warrant before the raid, the narcotics investigator named in the warrant, Jason R. Smith, had said it was needed because a drug dealer inside had several surveillance cameras and monitored them closely.

But Chief Pennington said it was not clear if that was true, either.

He confirmed that the informant’s account in the television interview was the same as what he had told the internal affairs division of the Police Department.

Department procedures call for investigators to observe drug buys conducted by informants, and to watch them enter and exit if a deal takes place indoors. But again, Chief Pennington said it was not clear if that had occurred. He said the informant was considered reliable and had been involved in previous cases.

Once the search warrant was signed, three officers appeared at Ms. Johnston’s door with bulletproof vests and raid shields emblazoned with the word “police.” Department officials have insisted that the officers went to the correct address. They announced themselves as the police after cutting through the burglar bars and forcing down the door.

But Ms. Johnston was already at the door with her revolver, which neighbors said she kept for self-defense in an area where drugs are rampant and an elderly woman was recently raped.

She shot Officers Gary Smith, 38, Gregg Junnier, 40, and Cary Bond, 38, in the face, chest, arm and leg, prompting them to release a volley of bullets. Ms. Johnston died of a bullet wound in the chest; the officers are expected to recover.

Ms. Johnston was initially said by family members to have been 92, but the medical examiner and public records indicate that she was 88.

At the news conference, David E. Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, issued a warning. Now that the case is under federal investigation, he said, “anyone who lies or obstructs justice is committing a serious crime.”

    Atlanta Officers Suspended in Inquiry on Killing in Raid, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/us/28atlanta.html

Mayor Calls 50 Shots by Police ‘Unacceptable’

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL and SEWELL CHAN

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg convened an extraordinary meeting of black religious leaders and elected officials at City Hall yesterday to calm frayed tempers over the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Queens, calling the circumstances “inexplicable” and “unacceptable.”

“It sounds to me like excessive force was used,” the mayor said of the conduct of the officers, who fired 50 shots outside a Queens nightclub early Saturday, killing Sean Bell, 23, hours before he was to be wed, and injuring two others. “I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired.”

Mr. Bloomberg made the remarks after meeting with some of the city’s most influential black politicians and community leaders, including Representative Charles B. Rangel, the Rev. Al Sharpton and dozens of others.

The mayor’s decision to meet with Mr. Sharpton and other black leaders was a stark turnabout from the approach of Mr. Bloomberg’s predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who did not reach out to black leaders in the immediate aftermath of the fatal 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant who died in a hail of 41 police bullets.

Mayor Bloomberg’s blunt assessment of events still under investigation was striking, although he took pains to point out that the facts were not all in, saying several times that he did not yet know what happened in the shooting, but that he expected that a grand jury would be impaneled by the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown.

In a move that suggests the officers feel their actions were justified, the lawyer representing the men said he had contacted Mr. Brown’s office and offered to have the officers speak to prosecutors and appear before a grand jury voluntarily without immunity. The police have not released the officers’ names, saying they are trying to protect them from retaliation or harassment.

Philip E. Karasyk, who is a lawyer for the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said, “We feel confident that once all of the facts and circumstances of this tragic incident are known, then our detectives will be exonerated.”

“This was a tragedy, but not a crime,” he said.

Mr. Brown said in a statement that he intended to convene a grand jury to hear evidence in the case. While Mr. Karasyk has represented the four men who are detectives in the preliminary stages of the investigation, three of the four will get new lawyers, possibly as soon as tomorrow, because each must have his own and it remains unclear whether they will pursue the same strategy. The fifth man, an officer, has different representation.

Participants at the private meeting at City Hall, which included Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and several high-ranking Bloomberg aides, described the discussions as frequently heated, with the mayor sitting next to leaders whom he counts as supporters. Those more critical of the administration’s response to the shooting, including Mr. Sharpton and City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, sat on the opposite side of the table.

Mr. Bloomberg’s approach of reaching out to community leaders has drawn praise, and he plans to go to southeast Queens today to meet with community leaders there. But his efforts have left some unconvinced that the underlying conflicts between the police and predominantly black communities are being addressed.

“We prefer talking than not talking, but the object is not a conversation, the object is fairness and justice,” Mr. Sharpton said as he left City Hall. “Because we’re not just interested in being treated politely, we’re interested in being treated fairly and rightly. And that will happen when police are held as accountable as anyone else.”

Mr. Bloomberg pledged to do just that, saying that the city would review its policies and training procedures to ensure fair treatment, but he added that he did not believe that the shooting was racially motivated. Of the officers who fired on Mr. Bell’s car, two are black, one is black and Hispanic, and two are white.

“I do not at this point believe that there was anything racially motivated here, but we’ll wait and see whatever the facts are,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “A lot of people feel that this on top of other incidents that have happened in the past is a pattern that is unacceptable. I find that pattern unacceptable as well,” Mr. Bloomberg continued, adding that he saw the shooting as an isolated case.

“There is no evidence that they were doing anything wrong,” he said of the men who were shot, referring to the moments leading up to the confrontation with the police.

Some policies appear to have been violated in the shooting, which occurred when, according to the police, undercover officers fired 50 bullets at Mr. Bell’s car after he drove into one of the officers and an unmarked police van.

Officers are trained to shoot no more than three bullets before pausing to reassess the situation, Mr. Kelly said in his most detailed assessment of the shooting yet. Department policy also largely prohibits officers from firing at vehicles, even when they are being used as weapons.

Although several of the leaders at City Hall expressed confidence in the mayor and the police commissioner, the emotional meeting, which began with outbursts of anger and ended calmly, laid bare some of the rifts among New York’s black leaders themselves. Some expressed support for the mayor’s handling of the case or refrained from criticizing him. Many, however, expressed concerns that the administration was failing to deal with what they described as continuing tensions between black residents and police officers even when the officers are not white.

“There were some heated exchanges,” said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, an influential Pentecostal minister in Brooklyn. “We all agree that there is a pattern of police abuse of power, and this abuse of power ranges from police killing to police brutal behavior to disrespect. We reiterated that over and over again.”

Mr. Daughtry warned the mayor not to confuse patience with complacency. “There is a temperature in our communities that is rising, and the tension is intensifying,” he said. “While we don’t want to try to ignite anything, we’d be blind to overlook what’s happening and not to sound the alarm.”

But other leaders played down the anger in the room, saying that some participants seemed determined to bring up past history or to pursue agendas with little bearing on this specific case.

“There’s always anger after incidents like this and there’s always a lot of people that bring up other incidents,” said City Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr. of Queens. “People confuse history, and specific people are concerned about their individual actions.” He added: “You have different people that don’t know each other, there’s always room dynamics, you know, because people come in with different agendas or some people are off topic altogether.”

The shooting happened as the police were undercover in the club, Club Kalua, to investigate reports of prostitution and drug dealing. There was a dispute outside between two groups of men, and one group of three or four left. One undercover officer followed them, believing they might have been going to get a gun before returning to the club. In the officers’ version of events, the undercover officer confronted the men in Mr. Bell’s silver Nissan Altima, and they tried to run him over, prompting the fusillade from him and his backups.

Some of the leaders expressed dismay over Mr. Kelly’s revelation that one of the undercover officers had had two beers in the course of the operation inside the nightclub, but was not given a breath analyzer test. Mr. Kelly said that undercover officers are allowed the two drinks and are not normally tested for intoxication. He said they were deemed fit for duty by their superior.

While the office of Mr. Brown, the Queens district attorney, will oversee the criminal inquiry, the tactics employed by the detectives and their supervisor during the events leading up to the shooting and the shooting itself will also be reviewed by the Police Department. Several people who have been briefed on the detectives’ version of events raised questions about their tactics.

For instance, they said that one undercover officer who had been inside the club without his weapon retrieved it from a police vehicle and then engaged the men in the Altima, even though that task should have been left to the backup team. Mr. Kelly said that sequence of events was unusual.

Saying there was a “grave crisis” of confidence in his southeast Queens community, Bishop Lester Williams, who was to have performed Mr. Bell’s wedding, said there had been no improvement in police-community relations since the height of tensions under Mayor Giuliani.

“It’s Little Iraq, I’m sorry, especially toward the blacks in the community,” he said before attending the meeting. “We don’t feel protected.”

But others said that Mr. Bloomberg had made some progress simply by setting a new tone. “Just the simple fact of meeting, or discussion, or expressing concern and outrage on the part of this administration, was different,” said Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., the city’s top black elected official.

Shortly after 5 p.m., many of the same black leaders who had attended the meeting with Mr. Bloomberg went to a briefing at the Queens County Courthouse with Mr. Brown.

Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre, 22, the mother of their two daughters, arrived with her father and Mr. Bell’s mother, Valerie, and uncle.

Nearly two hours later, Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Bell’s family left, pushing past reporters without saying anything. Several other civic leaders said the meeting had been emotionally difficult, with Ms. Paultre and Ms. Bell bursting into tears. The civic leaders declined to discuss the meeting’s specifics, but said they were satisfied with what they had heard.

While officials met and discussed the case, Mr. Bell’s father, William, 53, stood by his house on a quiet, suburban street near Cambria Heights and said that they were all missing the point.

“It’s more about politics than human life,” he said. Mr. Bloomberg has spoken with Sean Bell’s fiancée and said he plans to visit the family soon, but William Bell said none of the officials had reached out to him.

“At least they could say ‘I’m sorry,’ ” he said. “Say ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to find out what’s going on.’ ”

“He’s gone,” he said of his son. Then, patting over his chest, he added, “Not here in my heart he’s not gone, but he’s gone.”

Daryl Khan, Michelle O’Donnell and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

    Mayor Calls 50 Shots by Police ‘Unacceptable’, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/nyregion/28shoot.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=20a135cccb2bda67&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mayor Meets With Leaders to Discuss Shooting

November 27, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL

Expressing their frustration over New York City’s response to the shooting death of an unarmed black man in Queens hours before he was to be married Saturday, dozens of ministers and elected officials descended on City Hall this morning for a briefing with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

Saying that there was a “grave crisis” of confidence in the police in his southeast Queens community, Bishop Lester Williams, the minister who was to have performed the wedding of Sean Bell, 23, said there had been no improvement in police-community relations since the height of tensions during the Giuliani era.

“It’s little Iraq, I’m sorry, especially toward the blacks in the community,” he said before attending the meeting. “We don’t feel protected.”

While some officials, like City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, called for Mr. Kelly’s resignation over the shooting, which also injured Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23, others said they were eager to hear an explanation for the shooting, in which officers fired 50 shots.

Representative Charles B. Rangel said his judgment would depend “on what we hear.”

“I haven’t got the slightest clue as to how something like this could happen in my great city,” he said outside City Hall.

But the question remained whether administration officials, who have won political points in the past for adopting a more conciliatory and welcoming stance with black and Hispanic communities than their predecessors, would be able to assuage those concerns. As the meeting started, police officials had yet to interview the officers involved because the Queens district attorney’s office needed to investigate the case first.

    Mayor Meets With Leaders to Discuss Shooting, NYT, 27.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/28shootcnd.html?hp&ex=1164690000&en=dadfdb36261d8d2d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

50 Shots Fired, and the Experts Offer a Theory

November 27, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON

It is known in police parlance as “contagious shooting” — gunfire that spreads among officers who believe that they, or their colleagues, are facing a threat. It spreads like germs, like laughter, or fear. An officer fires, so his colleagues do, too.

The phenomenon appears to have happened last year, when eight officers fired 43 shots at an armed man in Queens, killing him. In July, three officers fired 26 shots at a pit bull that had bitten a chunk out of an officer’s leg in a Bronx apartment building. And there have been other episodes: in 1995, in the Bronx, officers fired 125 bullets during a bodega robbery, with one officer firing 45 rounds.

Just what happened on Saturday is still being investigated. Police experts, however, suggested in interviews yesterday that contagious shooting played a role in a fatal police shooting in Queens Saturday morning. According to the police account, five officers fired 50 shots at a bridegroom who, leaving his bachelor party at a strip club, twice drove his car into a minivan carrying plainclothes police officers investigating the club.

The bridegroom, Sean Bell, who was to be married hours later, was killed, and two of his friends were wounded, one critically.

To the layman, and to the loved ones of those who were shot, 50 shots seems a startlingly high number, especially since the men were found to be unarmed. And police experts concede that the number was high. Yet they also note that in those chaotic and frightening fractions of a second between quiet and gunfire, nothing is clear-cut, and blood is pumping furiously. Even 50 shots can be squeezed off in a matter of seconds.

“We can teach as much as we can,” said John C. Cerar, a retired commander of the Police Department’s firearms training section. “The fog of the moment happens. Different things happen that people don’t understand. Most people really believe what it’s like in television, that a police officer can take a gun and shoot someone out of the saddle.”

The five officers involved in the shooting were placed on administrative duty yesterday — without their guns — as the Police Department and the Queens district attorney investigated the circumstances surrounding the shooting, and relatives of Mr. Bell, joined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, staged a rally and a march to demand answers.

The officers have not yet been interviewed by police investigators or prosecutors to give their account.

Again and again, the focus of the day returned to the number of bullets that went flying.

One of the officers fired more than half the rounds, pausing to reload, and then emptying it again, 31 shots in all, according to the police. Another officer fired 11 shots. The others fired four shots, three shots and one shot apiece, the police said.

But it is the total number of shots that shook and angered the families of the men and community leaders. “How many shots?” Mr. Sharpton asked yesterday, over and over, in a chant at a rally in a park near Mary Immaculate Hospital, where the wounded men were being treated. The crowd called back, “Fifty!”

Statistically, the shooting is an aberration. The number of shots fired per officer who acted in the 112 shooting incidents this year, through Nov. 19, is 3.2, said Paul J. Browne, a department spokesman. Last year, that number was 3.7 shots fired per officer in 109 incidents. They are down from 4.6 in 2000 and 5.0 in 1995.

But shootings with high numbers of shots fired, however rare, call to mind dark events of the city’s past, like the 1999 killing of Gidone Busch, who was clutching a hammer when officers fired 12 times, and, most notably, the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who died in a hail of 41 bullets, also in 1999.

In the 1995 Bronx bodega robbery in which officers fired 125 shots, the suspects did not fire back. “They were shooting to the echo of their own gunfire,” a former police official said at the time.

The shooting on Saturday unfolded in a flash. An undercover officer posted inside the Club Kalua, a site of frequent drug, weapon and prostitution complaints in Jamaica, overheard an exchange between a stripper and a man that led the officer to suspect the man was armed, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Saturday. The undercover officer alerted the officers acting as backup outside — there were seven officers in all — about 4 a.m., setting into motion the events to follow later.

Eight men left the club and argued briefly with another man, with one from the group saying, “Yo, get my gun,” Mr. Kelly said.

The eight men apparently split into two groups of four, with one group piling into a Nissan Altima driven by Mr. Bell, Commissioner Kelly said. As an undercover detective who had been following the group on foot approached the vehicle, Mr. Bell drove into him, striking his leg, before plowing into a minivan carrying two backup officers, the commissioner said.

The Altima reversed, mounting a sidewalk and hitting the lowered gate of a building before going forward and striking the van again. The officers opened fire, striking Mr. Bell, 23, twice, in the right arm and neck, Commissioner Kelly said. The critically wounded man, Joseph Guzman, 31, was struck 11 times, and the third man, Trent Benefield, 23, three times. Mr. Kelly said it was unclear whether there was a fourth man in the car and what became of him.

A person familiar with the case who knows the detectives’ version of events said yesterday that it was Mr. Guzman who asked for his gun, and that the first undercover detective on foot clearly identified himself to the occupants of the car and, gun drawn, told them to get out. Instead, the person said, they roared toward him. That detective fired the first shot.

In the ensuing barrage, one shot struck the window of a house, another a window at an AirTrain platform, injuring two Port Authority police officers with flying glass. It appeared that the Altima was struck by 21 shots, fewer than half of the number fired, the police said.

The whole thing most likely took less than a minute. The officer who fired 31 times could have done so in fewer than 20 seconds, with the act of reloading taking less than one second, Mr. Cerar said. The 49 shots that followed the undercover detective’s first may have been contagious shooting, said one former police official who insisted on anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

“He shoots, and you shoot, and the assumption is he has a good reason for shooting. You saw it in Diallo. You see it in a lot of shootings,” the official said. “You just chime in. I don’t mean the term loosely. But you see your partner, and your reflexes take over.”

The phenomenon of officers’ firing dozens of shots at a time dates back in part to 1993 and the department’s switch from six-shot .38-caliber revolvers, cumbersome to reload, to semiautomatic pistols that hold 15 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The change, like any of its magnitude, followed years of studies and differences of opinion, and finally came into effect after the 1986 murder of a police officer, Scott Gadell, who was reloading his six-shooter when he was fatally shot.

Commissioner Kelly, during his first term in the office, in 1992 and 1993, ordered a switch to semiautomatics, but ordered the clips modified to hold only 10 rounds. That modification was later undone, prompting him, after Mr. Diallo’s shooting six years later, to speculate in a New York Times op-ed article, “Now may be the time to re-impose it and to intensify training that teaches police officers to hold their fire until they know why they are shooting.”

Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College, said a high number of shots fired underscores the threat the officers felt.

“The only reason to be shooting in New York City is that you or someone else is going to be killed and it’s going to be imminent,” he said. “It’s highly unlikely you fire a shot or two shots. You fire as many shots as you have to, to extinguish the threat. You don’t fire one round and say: ‘Did I hit him? Is he hit?’ ”

Mr. Cerar said, “Until we have some substitute for a firearm, there will always be a situation where more rounds are fired than in other situations.”

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

    50 Shots Fired, and the Experts Offer a Theory, NYT, 27.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/27fire.html

A Day After a Fatal Shooting, Questions, Mourning and Protest

November 27, 2006
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The undercover police officer who fired the first shots at a carload of men in Queens early Saturday, setting off a storm of police bullets that killed a bridegroom and injured two of his friends, suspected at least one of the men had a gun and was intent on returning with it to a nearby strip club, according to a person briefed on the officers’ version of events.

In all, five plainclothes officers — two of them detectives working under cover — fired 50 bullets at a silver Nissan Altima, killing Sean Bell, 23, who was to be married Saturday, and injuring Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23. Moments earlier, just after 4 a.m., the three had left a bachelor party at Club Kalua, a strip club under surveillance on 94th Avenue in Jamaica.

The undercover detective who fired first had been monitoring the group in the club. Once outside, the detective heard Mr. Guzman say “Yo, get my gun, get my gun,” and head with the others to his car, according to police. The undercover officer followed the group on foot, then positioned himself in front of their car.

According to the person briefed on the accounts, the detective, his police badge around his neck, then pulled out his gun, identified himself as a police officer and ordered the occupants to show their hands. They did not comply, the person said, but instead gunned the car forward, hitting the undercover officer and, seconds later, an unmarked police minivan. The undercover officer fired the first of 11 shots, yelling, “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!”

The undercover officer’s version of Saturday’s shooting came on a day when he and the four other officers involved in the shooting were put on paid administrative leave and stripped of their weapons. The police publicly offered few additional details about the shooting, refusing to even release the names of the officers involved.

At the same time, hundreds of people in Queens angrily protested the shooting, prayed and mourned in vigils, and demanded that the officers resign.

But one law enforcement official who had information about Mr. Benefield’s account said the young man told investigators that Mr. Bell panicked when he saw the undercover officer with a gun because he did not realize the man was a police officer.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for his part, on Saturday night called Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre, 22, who is also the mother of the couple’s two young daughters, to express sympathy, city officials said.

No weapons were found in the Altima, which Mr. Bell had been driving.

In numerous previous police shootings, officers who fired their weapons were reassigned to administrative duties and allowed to keep their guns. Often after those shootings, police spokesmen quickly stated that the shootings appeared to be within department guidelines, and thus justified.

But Saturday’s shootings may have violated department rules, which largely prohibit officers from firing at vehicles. According to police guidelines, officers can fire only when they or another person is threatened by deadly physical force, but not if that physical force comes from a moving vehicle alone.

“The theory is that if the cops have time to set up a clean shot, they have time to get out of the way,” said Eugene O’Donnell, professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “The cops shouldn’t be firing unless they have a clean line of fire. If they have the time to establish that shot they probably have time to get out of the way.”

But Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said it was too early to characterize the shootings. Mr. Browne said it was the department’s prerogative to put the officers on leave until the department learned more about how the night’s events unfolded.

Police investigators will not be able to interview the five men who fired their weapons — four detectives, two of them working undercover in the nightclub, and one police officer in plain clothes — until the Queens district attorney’s office finishes its investigation.

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said yesterday that there would be "a full and fair investigation," but that his inquiry was in the preliminary stages. He said it would include a review of autopsy and medical reports, the police reports of the shootings, 911 tapes and video recordings from inside and outside the club.

He said it was too soon to say whether the case would be presented to a grand jury. Mr. Brown said that later today, he planned to meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton, other community leaders and some of the victims’ family members.

But in past police shooting cases, when the facts were in dispute, evidence was put before a grand jury. He said the inquiry likely would go on for a number of weeks, but could not say precisely how long.

Roughly 300 protesters gathered at a fiery rally led by Mr. Sharpton in front of Mary Immaculate Hospital yesterday, where Mr. Benefield and Mr. Guzman were recovering from their bullet wounds. Some protesters called for the ouster of Mr. Kelly; others demanded that the five officers resign.

Malcolm Smith, a Democratic state senator from Queens, urged calm, saying an impartial investigation was under way, but was drowned out by a chorus of shouts and boos. When Thomas White Jr., a councilman who represents the 28th District in Jamaica, said “We are not going to be angry,” the crowd roared back: “Oh, yes we are!”

Many at the protest saw parallels between Saturday’s shooting and the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Western African immigrant who was fatally gunned down by police officers in 1999. One sign read, “41 now 50,” a reference to the number of shots fired at Mr. Diallo and the number fired Saturday night.

In Mr. Diallo’s shooting death, though, the four officers who fired at him were white. The undercover officer who fired the first shots Saturday was a Hispanic black, according to the police. Two other officers who fired at the Altima were black, and another two were white, one of whom went through one clip and reloaded his pistol, firing a total of 31 shots.

Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Ms. Paultre, collapsed while walking from Community Church of Christ, where supporters were gathered, to the rally, her face twisted with grief. After the rally, protesters marched around the hospital, filling the street and sidewalks and chanting. They marched to the 103rd police precinct station, where officers stood at metal barricades, but the tension broke, and the crowd returned to the hospital.

After night fell, people gathered in front of Mr. Benefield’s apartment building on 123-65 147th Street in Queens, holding candles, laying flowers and murmuring prayers.

“Those shootouts are like the Wild Wild West out there,” said Bishop Lester Williams, the pastor at the Community Church of Christ, who was going to officiate at the wedding. “That’s an execution — that’s like putting someone in front of a firing squad.”

Mr. Benefield, who had been struck three times in the leg and buttock, was alert and in stable condition, and Mr. Guzman, who had at least 11 bullet wounds along his right side, was in stable but critical condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. Mr. Guzman, according to the state Department of Correctional Services, has a criminal record including convictions for robbery, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal sale of a controlled substance.

Sanford Rubenstein, the lawyer representing the two men and their families, said he had not yet spoken with either man and did not know their accounts of the night’s events.

The police, in describing the events leading to the shooting, said that undercover officers and detectives from the Manhattan South vice enforcement squad and the department’s narcotics division were patrolling Club Kalua Saturday following a string of violations there for prostitution, under-age drinking and weapons complaints. Eight of the violations this year had resulted in arrests, three of them involving patrons who were arrested for criminal possession of a weapon, the police said. One more violation at the club would result in its closing, the police said.

The undercover officer who eventually fired the first shots Saturday had been in the club, the police said. He saw one patron pat his waistband, indicating he had a gun; the undercover officer then radioed his supervisor, who was in an unmarked police car outside.

The undercover officer then went outside, and saw a group of eight men, including two men believed to be Mr. Guzman and Mr. Bell, arguing with another man. Mr. Guzman then asked for his gun, according to the police.

The group then apparently split up into two groups of four, though it was unclear whether that patron who had patted his waistband was with them, the police said. Mr. Guzman and Mr. Bell’s group turned the corner onto Liverpool Street and got into the Altima.

James M. Moschella, a lawyer for the detectives’ union who is representing the four detectives during the preliminary stages of the investigation, defended their actions yesterday.

“Each officer who discharged their weapons believed that their lives and the lives of their partners were in imminent danger,” he said.

Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detective Endowment Association, insisted that deadly force was being used against the detectives, which could have justified their response. “The amounts of shots that were fired do not necessarily spell out the word excessive,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Sewell Chan, Stephen Heyman, Daryl Khan, Angela Macropoulos, Michael Wilson and Emily Vasquez.

    A Day After a Fatal Shooting, Questions, Mourning and Protest, NYT, 27.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/27shot.html

New York police shoot 3 men, kill 1 near nightclub

Updated 11/25/2006 11:44 AM ET
AP
Reuters

NEW YORK (AP) — Police shot three young men who had just left a bachelor party at a strip club early Saturday, killing one man on the day of his wedding, according to police and witnesses. One of the survivors was in critical condition.

The shooting happened just after 4 a.m. near Club Kalua in Queens, said Officer Kathleen Price. She said there were no reports that any officers were wounded.

It was not immediately clear what sparked the shooting. As many as eight officers may have been involved, said Sgt. Mike Wysokowski, another department spokesman.

"All I know, they was celebrating," said Denise Ford, who said her son was one of the survivors. She said the man who died was the groom. "The guy was getting married today."

Relatives said the dead man was Sean Bell, 23.

Robert Porter, who identified himself as Bell's first cousin, said he was supposed to be a DJ at the wedding.

"I still don't want to believe it, a beautiful day like this, and he was going to have a beautiful wedding, he was going to live forever with his wife and children. And this happened," Porter said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said family members told him that there were no guns in the young mens' car and "there was no reason for the police to shoot."

"On the face of it, it seems to me to be certainly something that causes extreme alarm and must be thoroughly investigated," said Sharpton, who said he was called by a relative of the man who died.

Abraham Kamara, 38, who lives a few blocks from the scene of the shooting, said he was getting ready for work when he heard gunfire.

"First it was like four shots," he said. "And then it was like pop-pop-pop like 12 times."

Roy Brown, who said he works as a photographer at the club, said sirens sounded not long after the three men left the club.

"They weren't rowdy or nothing like that," said Brown, 57.

A message seeking comment was left at one phone listing for the club; another phone was not answered.

One of the wounded men was in critical condition at Mary Immaculate Hospital and the other was listed as stable.

The three men ranged in age from 23 to 31 years old.

    New York police shoot 3 men, kill 1 near nightclub, R, 25.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-25-police-shooting_x.htm

2 Killed in Chicago Standoff, Police Say

November 24, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CHICAGO (AP) -- A gunman and a female hostage were killed during a 23-hour standoff on the city's South Side, police said early Friday.

The gunman apparently shot the hostage and then himself, police said.

''At no time did the Chicago Police Department fire a weapon,'' 1st Deputy Superintendent Dana Starks said at a press briefing.

Starks said the gunman and victim were the only people found in the apartment. An additional hostage may have escaped earlier, he said.

The standoff began early Thursday after an armed man took his young neighbor hostage inside their apartment building.

Police SWAT team members entered the apartment just after 1 a.m. Friday after officers heard a shot fired, Starks said.

Inside, police found the gunman and his 22-year-old hostage gravely wounded. The two were transported to a hospital and later pronounced dead, Starks said.

Police have not yet released their identities. Starks confirmed that the two were neighbors, but added ''the extent of their relationship we don't know.''

Sherry McKenzie said Thursday that one of the hostages was her niece, Tasha Cooks, 22.

She said Cooks used the apartment phone to call her great-grandmother earlier in the day. When asked if she was OK, Cooks responded, ''Not really,'' and hung up, according to McKenzie.

The gunman's sister pleaded with her brother to cooperate with authorities Thursday afternoon. Later, frustrated relatives and neighbors began shouting at police to do more to end the standoff.

Officers had been negotiating with the man, and Superintendent Phil Cline had held out hope late Thursday that the situation could be ended peacefully.

    2 Killed in Chicago Standoff, Police Say, NYT, 24.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Chicago-Hostage-Standoff.html?hp&ex=1164430800&en=f4ff064938067707&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Woman, 92, Slain in Shootout With Police

November 22, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:37 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- The niece of a 92-year-old woman shot to death by police said her aunt likely had reason to shoot three narcotics investigators as they stormed her house.

Police insisted the officers did everything right before entering the home Tuesday evening, despite suggestions from the woman's neighbors and relatives that it was a case of mistaken identity.

The woman, Kathryn Johnston, was the only resident in the house at the time and had lived there for about 17 years, Assistant Chief Alan Dreher said. The officers had a legal warrant, ''knocked and announced'' before they forced open the door and were justified in shooting once fired upon, he said.

Sarah Dozier, the niece, told WAGA-TV that there were never drugs at the house.

''My aunt was in good health. I'm sure she panicked when they kicked that door down,'' Dozier said. ''There was no reason they had to go in there and shoot her down like a dog.''

As the plainclothes Atlanta police officers approached the house about 7 p.m., a woman inside started shooting, striking each of them, said Officer Joe Cobb, a police spokesman.

One was hit in the arm, another in a thigh and the third in a shoulder. The officers were taken to a hospital for treatment, and all three were conscious and alert, police said.

Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights leader, said Johnston's family deserves an apology.

''Of the police brutality cases we've had, this is the most egregious because of the woman's age,'' Hutchins said.

Hutchins said he would try to meet with Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington and would also meet with lawyers.

    Woman, 92, Slain in Shootout With Police, NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Elderly-Shootout.html

Four People Shot to Death in Mo. House

November 17, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Four people were shot to death early Friday in a Kansas City house, and a woman who was in an upstairs room reported seeing a man running from the area, police said.

The victims were two men and two women believed to be in their 20s and 30s, said police spokesman Darin Snapp.

A woman in an upstairs apartment in the home said she heard several gunshots around 2 a.m. and saw a man wearing a black jacket run from the house, Snapp said.

He said the shooter appeared to have known the victims, but authorities had yet to determine a motive.

    Four People Shot to Death in Mo. House, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Kansas-City-Shootings.html

7 Shot at San Francisco Halloween Party

November 1, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:07 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Seven people were shot as a massive Halloween street party in the city's Castro district wound down Tuesday night, police said.

The shootings occurred around 10:40 p.m., as authorities began dispersing thousands of revelers under a new curfew that was aimed at controlling the traditionally raucous event.

Two people were taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, and five others were injured by gunfire, said police spokesman Sgt. Neville Gittens.

Several people were detained in the shooting and a motive was not immediately clear, he said.

The once-spontaneous and unsanctioned party was taken over by the city four years ago after police recorded five stabbings and a number of assaults in a crowd of 500,000.

Officials and members of the district's gay community said the party began attracting gay bashers along with colorful costumed characters, and many gays and lesbians stopped coming.

On Tuesday night, city officials had ramped up police presence by 25 percent, reduced the number of entertainment stages from three to one and cut off the festivities at 11 p.m. amid concerns of more violence.

    7 Shot at San Francisco Halloween Party, NYT, 1.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Halloween-Shooting.html