By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer Sun Apr 27, 6:37 PM ET
NEW YORK - A coalition of civil rights advocates on Sunday urged changes in the handling of police misconduct and
brutality complaints after the acquittal of three officers involved in
the shooting death of an unarmed man on his wedding day.
They also called for a permanent state-level special prosecutor to investigate such cases.
"The verdict in the Sean Bell case proves
it is almost impossible to successfully prosecute cases of police
misconduct, especially in homicide cases," said lawyer Norman Siegel, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"The verdict underscores the need for systemic change in the way New York handles these important and at times high profile cases, and to improve
community relations," said Siegel, an outspoken advocate on civil rights and law enforcement issues.
Three city police officers were cleared Friday in the November 2006 shooting death of Bell outside
a night club where he had just left his bachelor party. Two friends
were wounded in the volley of 50 shots fired by the undercover officers
and two colleagues.
The officers charged said they thought they were in mortal danger, but no gun was found in Bell's car.
Siegel was joined at a news conference outside police headquarters by state Sen. Eric Adams and retired police
officer Marq Claxton. Adams and Claxton co-founded 100 Blacks in Law
Enforcement Who Care.
Adams, a former police captain, said the state-level special
prosecutor's office should be reinstated permanently by law. A previous
special prosecutor's office was created by former Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1974 but abolished in 1993 by Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, whose office prosecuted the Bell shooting case, had
said there was no basis for the appointment of a special prosecutor.
The special prosecutor should have power to investigate
allegations of police misconduct and brutality, as well as corruption,
they said. The previous office was created primarily as a result of
corruption exposes in the NYPD, and that was its primary focus, Siegel
said.
"They looked the other way on cases of brutality," Siegel said.
Adams also urged passage of legislation to give the state attorney general's office power to take immediate control of a crime scene in cases like the Bell shooting to make sure all evidence is preserved.
"I don't believe a police department involved in a shooting should be responsible for the crime scene," he said.
Siegel and Adams said they looked for support on the issues from Gov. David Paterson, who recently replaced the disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer,
saying that as a legislator and minority rights spokesman Paterson had
been a strong voice in previous police shooting controversies.
Erin Duggan, a spokeswoman for Paterson, said the governor
had learned of the proposals only from media reports and would review
them.
He "takes the issue of police wrongdoing very seriously, but
he also believes that the overwhelming majority of police officers
perform their duties honorably and conscientiously each and every day,"
Duggan said.
Also Sunday, more than 200 people, including elected officials and civil rights leaders, gathered at the Rev. Al Sharpton's
National Action Network in Manhattan to renew calls for officials of
the U.S. Department of Justice to bring federal charges against the
three officers.
https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080427/ap_on_re_us/police_shooting