Officers have raided at least one home, picked up the son of a clergyman for an unpaid ticket and scoured vacant lots with a leave-no-stone-unturned intensity akin to a manhunt in a murder case. But the search has nothing to do with a fugitive killer.
Instead, police are trying to locate a key witness -- and perhaps a missing gun -- in hopes of explaining why five police officers unleashed a 50-shot barrage that killed a man on his wedding day outside a strip club last week.
Police critics on Friday warned of a backlash: They claim the search has created a climate of fear in a community already outraged by the death of Sean Bell, 23, and the wounding of two other unarmed men who attended his bachelor party at the club.
PHOTO: EPA
They say police have concocted a "phantom gunman" in a desperate effort to show that officers were justified in opening fire.
"This kind of police conduct is frightening, and it serves as a chilling impact on those witnesses who want to come forward and simply tell what they saw, what they heard, so that justice can be served," said Charlie King, an attorney who said he represents several potential witnesses, including a man who could be the one intensely sought by police.
Police said clues gathered during a raid on a Queens home suggested the man, identified by his lawyer as 27-year-old Jean Nelson, was with three unarmed men early last Saturday moments before officers fired at their car.
The shooting has sparked outrage in the city and brought cries of racism. Bell was black; two of the officers are black, two are white and one is Hispanic.
Nelson, who was detained on Thursday but released, saw the shooting, but he "did not have a gun, nor was he in the car as police have suggested," King said.
A law enforcement official said on Friday that investigators have taken statements from civilian witnesses that put a fourth man, possibly Nelson, near the car at the time of the shooting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
The first officer to shoot at Bell's car has claimed that he believed there was a gun in the car and that the men were retrieving it to settle a street dispute. No weapon was found, but police union officials have suggested a fourth man fled with one.
"[Police] seem hellbent on finding a phantom gunman who didn't exist," King said.
Police picked up the son of the Reverend Lester Williams, the pastor who conducted Bell's funeral, for questioning at 6am Thursday, using an unpaid US$25 ticket as an excuse, King said.
Williams later said that investigators "definitely did strong-arm" his son over why he visited the two wounded men, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, in the hospital.
The hospitalized survivors also have claimed through their lawyer that a fourth person was never involved. Benefield was in stable condition on Friday and Guzman in critical condition.
Shakeema Chavis, 25, knew Bell from high school and said she was disturbed by the police's behavior in the search for witnesses in Jamaica, a notoriously crime-plagued neighborhood.
"They're just bullet-happy. They're just gun-happy," she said through tears. "I think 99 percent of the black and Hispanic community would agree with me."
An unidentified undercover officer and four others have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a grand jury investigation.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
SKEPTICAL: Given the challenges, which include waste disposal and potential domestic opposition, experts warn that the 2032 nuclear timeline is overambitious Indonesia is hoping going nuclear can help it meet soaring energy demand while taming emissions, but faces serious challenges to its goal of a first small modular reactor by 2032. Its first experiment with nuclear energy dates to February 1965, when then-Indonesian president Sukarno inaugurated a test reactor. Sixty years later, Southeast Asia’s largest economy has three research reactors, but no nuclear power plants for electricity. Abundant reserves of polluting coal have so far met the enormous archipelago’s energy needs, but “nuclear will be necessary to constrain the rise of and eventually reduce emissions,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior research fellow at the
RSS