Mayor: 'Excessive force' used in wedding day slay

By Amanda Y. Barrett, Chau Lam, Reid J. Epstein and the Associated Press | amNY.com and Newsday Staff Writers

3:40 PM EST, November 27, 2006

Mayor Michael Bloomberg emerged from a meeting with the police commissioner and community leaders Monday and said that it seemed like "excessive force was used" when a groom was killed on his wedding day by a flurry of police gunfire outside a Queens strip club.

The mayor said he expected Queens District Attorney Richard Brown to open a grand jury investigation into the shooting, which took place early Saturday morning outside the club where the 23-year-old victim, Sean Bell, had been celebrating his bachelor party with friends.

"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," Bloomberg said at a news conference after the meeting at City Hall.

The undercover officer who was inside the club did not have any contact with Bell or his friends, Bloomberg said. "There is no evidence that they were doing anything wrong," the mayor said.

While saying he was "deeply disturbed" by the shooting, Bloomberg expressed strong support for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, whose resignation some community leaders have sought.

Bloomberg said he had "complete confidence" in the police commissioner and said he would remain in the job as long as he was mayor.

Along with Kelly, the mayor met with a wide range of activists and politicians, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel and the Rev. Herbert Daugherty.

Sharpton called it a "very candid, a very blunt meeting." He said the message to Bloomberg was: "This city must show moral outrage that 50 shots were fired on three unarmed men."

Saturday, undercover police fired 50 shots at a car carrying a Bell, a deliveryman and father of two, as he left his bachelor party at the Kalua Cabaret in Jamaica about 4 a.m. Two other men were injured; one remains in very critical condition.

"We don't know exactly what happened," said Bloomberg, who repeatedly promised a fair and complete investigation. "We don't have all the answers. There is a lot that has to be explained."

Rangel said before the meeting that in addition to owing the families an answer, police needed to tell the public what happened.

"This warrants an answer," the congressman said as he arrived for the meeting. "Not just to the families of those that were shot and killed but to the people of the city of New York."

Rangel said the incident "reminds me of a tragedy that took place with Mr. Diallo. And we can't have that. We can't have that."

In 1999, police killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot 19 times in the Bronx.