Rev. Al Sharpton: Cut off cop cash

BY STEPHANIE GASKELL
Stephanie Gaskell

Tuesday, May 13th 2008

The Federal government should withhold millions of dollars in funding to the NYPD unless the department can prove itdoesn't discriminate against blacks, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Monday.

"You gotta hit them in the pocket and let them know we mean business," Sharpton said during a community forum in lower Manhattan. "Cut the money off, and they'll take you seriously."

The hearing, led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), was billed as a community forum on law enforcement accountability in the wake of the verdicts in the Sean Bell case.

Bell was shot and killed by police on Nov. 25, 2006, as he left a strip club in Queens the morning of his wedding.

Sharpton said federal funding to police departments across the country should be contingent on their policies.

"They would have to explain why there's a continued racial disparity in stop-and-frisks, in arrests, in brutality claims, and why the top echelons of the NYPD are still disproportionately against what the population is," Sharpton said.

Bell's parents; his fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, and his friend Joseph Guzman attended the hearing, but made only brief remarks urging the panel to make changes to prevent another such shooting.

 NYPD stop-and-frisk tactics labeled racist, abusive at forum

By TOM HAYS Associated Press Writer May 12, 2008 NEW YORK

The New York Police Department's practice of stopping and frisking pedestrians in record numbers is plagued by racism and prone to excessive force, a panel of civil rights advocates and legal experts warned lawmakers on Monday.

"It's time for the federal government to step in and protect the citizens of this city," the Rev. Al Sharpton said at a forum in lower Manhattan held by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Sharpton and other panelists advocated stricter independent oversight of the NYPD, and withholding federal funds from its coffers unless it adopts reforms to root out racism. Some also questioned why Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and other police officials weren't there to respond.

"They have disrespected your chairmanship by their absence today," Sharpton told Conyers.

Congressional aides said an invitation through City Hall to include Kelly had been turned down. Kelly's spokesman insisted he never received one.

The event came in the wake of last month's acquittal of three police officers in the shooting of an unarmed black man, Sean Bell, on his wedding day and amid recent reports that police had stopped about 145,000 people for searches during the first quarter of this year _ the most of any quarter since the numbers were first made public in 2002.

Slightly more than 50 percent of the people stopped were black, while about a fourth of the city's residents are black, according to 2006 data.

"We see a clear pattern of racial profiling in the stop and frisk statistics we've seen in the past week," said U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., one of several elected officials on hand to hear the testimony.(To Read the Full Article Click Here)

Paterson Meets With Bell’s Family and Sharpton By Sewell Chan New York Times

Gov. David A. Paterson met Thursday afternoon with the parents and fiancée of Sean Bell and with the Rev. Al Sharpton, saying afterward that he understood and respected the large-scale protests that occurred on Wednesday, resulting in 216 arrests, and also that he accepted a Queens judge’s decision to acquit three New York City police detectives charged in Mr. Bell’s shooting. Mr. Paterson said he would review proposals to require alcohol testing for police officers who fire their weapons and to review protocols governing undercover police work.

“I must commend the advocates, many of them, over 200 arrested, for participation in civil disobedience in a way that made their point without any excess activity,” Mr. Paterson said at a news conference at his Midtown Manhattan office after meeting with the Bell family. He said the advocates on behalf of Mr. Bell’s family had acted in “a completely professional way.”

Mr. Paterson met with Sean Bell’s parents, William and Valerie Bell, and his fiancée, Nicole Paultre-Bell. Earlier on Thursday, the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, and members of the team that prosecuted the three detectives met with Mr. Bell’s family. “The meeting was very cordial and, while there were expressions of frustration, Nicole Paultre-Bell and Mr. Bell’s parents thanked the district attorney’s office for their efforts in the case,” Kevin R. Ryan, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said in a statement.

Mr. Paterson, discussing the protests, stopped short of endorsing them:

• The process of civil disobedience, by its definition and by its nature, inconveniences fellow residents, fellow citizens. That is the art of civil disobedience; it’s a disruption. No public servant can condone civil disobedience, because we represent all the people and we do not like to see any members of our society inconvenienced. Therefore, we would rather that this group have not gone to the extent that they did to demonstrate their issues. However, from the point of view of advocacy, which was very well explained to me by Valerie and Nicole and by Reverend Sharpton, the reason that the civil disobedience occurred, from their point of view, is because the other redress opportunities of society had failed them. Legislation in the past, though it has in some respects set up new guidelines, did not stop that incident from occurring last year that claimed the life of Sean Bell. The meeting with different organizations, the protests in the past, the involvement of elected officials in the past, the calls for justice and peace by our clergy, could not stop that incident from occurring. And so they felt that they had no other choice but to take the action that they took. I respect the decision that they made to take that action.
• Mr. Paterson noted that federal authorities had begun a criminal investigation into whether the officers violated Mr. Bell’s civil rights.

Asked about the inconvenience experienced by drivers stuck in traffic as a result of the protests, Mr. Sharpton said: “We did not interfere with subways yesterday. We did it purposely on motorists because we wanted them to think as they were going home that all Sean Bell was doing that night was going home in a car.” (To Read the Full Article Click Here)

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216 Held in Protests of Police Acquittals By THOMAS J. LUECK NY TIMES

In the largest public protest against the acquittal of three detectives in the shooting death of Sean Bell, 216 people were arrested on Wednesday in carefully orchestrated demonstrations that halted traffic at busy intersections in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the police said. The demonstrations, described by the Rev. Al. Sharpton as “pray-ins,” played out on a bright spring afternoon as boisterous displays of civil disobedience in which people signed up to be arrested, assuring organizers and lawyers that they were carrying proper identification to show to the police.

Once positioned at the intersections, demonstrators dropped to their knees or sat and prayed briefly before hundreds of police officers escorted them to buses and police vehicles. “We believe deeply in what we are doing today,” said Hazel Dukes, the president of the New York State chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., who was one of a dozen people arrested after they knelt and blocked traffic about 4:30 p.m. on the Canal Street ramps to the Holland Tunnel. “We have come to raise our voice for justice,” she said before being placed in white plastic handcuffs and taken to a police van. In all, it appeared that more than 1,000 people participated in the protests, although they attracted so many onlookers that it sometimes became difficult to distinguish protesters from tourists or people out for a stroll after work who had stopped to watch the commotion.

“It’s good to see people stand up for their rights,” said Julia Mordaunt, 27, a graphic designer from Burlington, Vt., who was on her way to buy jeans and stopped to watch about 100 demonstrators who had gathered at the southwest corner of 60th Street and Third Avenue, near an entrance to Bloomingdale’s. About 3:50 p.m., that group marched east toward the Queensboro Bridge, linked arms and sat along Second Avenue, blocking traffic on and off the bridge. Thirty-six people there were arrested. The protests were staged at six locations in the city. In the largest one, about 400 people assembled about 4:30 on the Centre Street approach to the Brooklyn Bridge and blocked Brooklyn-bound traffic for more than an hour. About 60 people in that demonstration were arrested, including Mr. Sharpton and Nicole Paultre Bell, who was to have married Mr. Bell on the day he was killed in a hail of 50 bullets fired by the officers outside a nightclub in Jamaica, Queens, in 2006. (To Read the Full Story Click Here).

Click Here to see Photos from the “Day of Outrage” when the injustice of the Queens Criminal Court Verdict was first Announced.

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