Stag night shooting 'excessive' - Mayor

New York’s mayor said police appeared to use excessive force when they fired 50 shots at an unarmed man in a confrontation outside a strip club, hours before his wedding.

“I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired, but that’s up to the investigation to find out what really happened,” Michael Bloomberg said yesterday, after meeting elected officials and community leaders including the Rev Al Sharpton, a black civil rights leader, and congressman Charles Rangel.

Sean Bell, 23, was killed and two of his friends wounded early on Saturday after a stag night at the strip club. Suspecting that one of the men had a gun, police fired 50 rounds into the vehicle. The men were unarmed.

Joseph Guzman, 31, was shot at least 11 times, and Trent Benefield, 23, was hit three times. Guzman is in a critical condition.

In her first public comments on the shooting, Bell’s fiancee, Nicole Paultre, told a radio station last night that the people who shot her husband should not 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.”

Sharpton called the conference of leaders a “very candid” meeting. He said the message to Bloomberg was “this city must show moral outrage that 50 shots were fired on three unarmed men”.

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

Of the victims, Bloomberg said: “There is no evidence that they were doing anything wrong,” referring to everything leading up to the moment they struck the officer with their car.

For a mayor to question the actions of the officers and defend the shooting victims – while reaching out immediately to the grieving community – sets a decidedly different tone than in the past.

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani was hounded for what some viewed as a slow response to the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot 19 times in the Bronx by four white officers. They were later acquitted of criminal charges.

The gunfire in the current case stemmed from an undercover operation inside the Kalua Cabaret, where seven officers in plain clothes were investigating alleged prostitution and drug use.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the groom was involved in an argument outside the club after 4am and one of his friends made a reference to a gun. An undercover officer walked closely behind Bell and his friends as they headed for their car. As he walked towards the front of the vehicle, they drove forward - striking him and an undercover police vehicle, Kelly said.

The officer who had followed the group on foot was apparently the first to open fire, Kelly said. One 12-year veteran fired his weapon 31 times, emptying two full magazines, he said.

Bloomberg also said police appeared to have broken the policy stating that officers could not shoot at a vehicle being used as a weapon if no other deadly force was involved.

But Bloomberg was steadfast in his support for Kelly, who has been denounced by some activists since the shooting.

The five officers were placed on paid administrative leave and stripped of their guns during the investigation.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said the results of his office’s investigation would be presented to a grand jury.

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

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, defended the officers’ actions and said police were responding to the threat of the car.

“The amount of shots fired does not spell out excessive to me,” he said.

Bloomberg said he did not believe the shooting was racially motivated but added: “It’s clear that people in this city do feel that they are sometimes stopped, frisked, whatever, based on their ethnicity.”