Police tactics questioned after New York shootings

Tom Hays

NEW YORK — It began as a routine undercover operation involving unarmed police officers patrolling a sketchy nightclub by trying to blend in with patrons.

But by the end of the evening, a 50-bullet police barrage — likened to a “firing squad” by the Rev. Al Sharpton — killed a groom-to-be, injured two of his friends and ignited concerns over police tactics and firepower.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that the police response seemed “unacceptable” and “inexplicable” to him, but he was steadfast in his support for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who has been denounced by some activists since the shooting.

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said Monday that his office was investigating the Saturday morning shootings and the results would be presented to a grand jury.

“I will be guided only by the law and the facts,” Brown said in a statement. “I will reach no conclusions until the investigation is complete. There will be no rush to judgment.”

The groom, Sean Bell, 23, was killed and two of his friends wounded after a bachelor party at the strip club the night before his wedding. The men were unarmed.

Some have questioned whether the shooting was racially motivated because the victims were all black men. The five officers who fired their guns included two blacks, two whites and one Hispanic.

The undercover operation that began 1 a.m. Saturday at the strip club Kalua Cabaret was part of a citywide crackdown sparked by the case of a New Jersey teenager who was abducted, raped and killed following a night of partying earlier this year at a Manhattan nightclub.

Police said they had received several complaints about prostitution and drug dealing at Kalua Cabaret in Queens before sending in two undercover detectives who left their guns behind because of searches at the door.

The detectives apparently spent the next few hours nursing drinks and mingling with the crowd. Critics have questioned why the officers were allowed to consume alcohol, but police officials said the officers weren’t impaired.

“We authorize them to have two drinks, and not more,” said Kelly.

The situation began to unravel when one of the officers alerted the back-up team outside that a man inside was possibly armed. During a later altercation among patrons, police claim they heard a member of Bell’s bachelor party, say, “Yo, get my gun.”

One of the undercover detectives responded by retrieving his weapon and confronting Bell and his friends after they entered their car. Kelly suggested that it was unorthodox for the officer to blow his cover rather than rely on other officers to make the arrest.

“He was still acting in an undercover capacity when he followed the group down the street and apparently took some enforcement action, and that was unusual,” Kelly said.

Union officials insist the detective took out his badge, identified himself and ordered the men to stop before the car, driven by Bell, lurched forward and bumped him. The vehicle then smashed into an unmarked police van, backed up and smashed the van again before the shooting began.

The crashes — along with the fear that one of the men had a gun — seem to be what escalated the situation to a hail of gunfire by five officers.

It is not immediately clear if the men in the car knew they were dealing with a police officer. Friends and family have speculated Bell got spooked by having a gun pointed at his vehicle, possibly crashing the car in a panic.

The NYPD discourages officers from firing on a moving vehicle. But Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, argued that the officers had a right to fire if the car posed a lethal threat.

“The driver of that vehicle — his actions were a contributing factor,” Palladino said. “The amount of shots fired does not spell out excessive to me.”

In her first public comments on the shooting, Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre, told a radio station Monday that the people who shot her husband shouldn’t be called officers.

“They were murderers, murderers,” she told hip-hop station Power 105.1. “They were not officers. No one gives anyone the right to kill somebody.”

None of the five unidentified officers had ever fired their 16-shot semiautomatic pistols on patrol before that morning, officials said. The undercover officer fired first, squeezing off 11 rounds; another, a 12-year-veteran, fired 31 times, meaning he paused to reload.

Officials said all the officers would have received training to combat against “contagious or sympathetic fire” — when police become disoriented by the sound of friendly fire and blast away at a phantom threat.

“We stress when officers go to the range that they fire no more than three rounds and then assess what the situation is,” Kelly said.

The 37,000-officer New York Police Department, the nation’s largest, trains its members on “how to defend themselves and not use excessive force,” Bloomberg said Monday. “What exactly happened here, we do not know.”

Contagious fire would not be a valid excuse, Sharpton said.

“To say that one gun causes an atmosphere where you keep shooting is to tell me that if one policeman makes a mistake, you could be subjected... to what amounts to a firing squad,” he said.

The survivors were Joseph Guzman, 31, who was shot at least 11 times, and Trent Benefield, 23, who was hit three times. Guzman was in critical condition, and Benefield in stable condition Monday.

(Associated Press)