Sean Bell Protesters Slow City; Sharpton, Paterson Will Meet

The Reverend Al Sharpton is meeting with Governor Paterson today after as many as 200 people were arrested in protests in support of Sean Bell that clogged the major gateways into Manhattan yesterday.

Rev. Sharpton will be appealing to Mr. Paterson's activist past following a day that echoed protests the governor participated in a decade ago. So far, Mr. Paterson has been relatively quiet about the Bell verdict. He was arrested while protesting during the Amadou Diallo trial, a case that has been compared to Bell's.

Rev. Sharpton said yesterday's protests "dispelled the myth" that outrage after the case was limited, and he promised more in the weeks to come.

Nearly 200 protesters were arrested at locations across the city, where they gathered just before the afternoon rush hour to block the Holland Tunnel, the Midtown Tunnel, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Queensboro Bridge. After praying, they offered their hands to police to be cuffed.

As police led them away, some chanted and some, including Nicole Paultre Bell, fiancée of the man killed by police, Sean Bell, walked silently.

Downtown, at the focal point of the protests, the largest contingent of demonstrators gathered first at police headquarters. From inside a metal pen monitored by dozens of police officers, a diverse group of demonstrators, led by Rev. Sharpton, counted down the number of shots fired at Bell — 50 — and shouted "Guilty!" at the closed windows of the building. Then they turned to march toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

At the front of the group were Rev. Sharpton and Ms. Paultre Bell, but the pace of the march was set by Bell's friend Joseph Guzman, limping after being injured in the hail of police bullets that killed Bell in late 2006.

Mr. Guzman, along with another friend of Bell's who marched yesterday, Trent Benefield, were attending a bachelor party for Bell at a strip club in Jamaica, Queens, before they were fired on by three undercover detectives. The detectives have said they believed the men were armed.

No gun was found, and the detectives were acquitted on manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges two weeks ago.

The group led by Rev. Sharpton had planned to meet another group of protesters coming from Brooklyn in the middle of the bridge. But as the protesters marched toward the entrance ramp to the beat of a drum and the honks of frustrated commuters, they were blocked by police.

At 4:30 p.m., the group on the Manhattan side dropped to their knees to pray. A few minutes later, police warned them to move out of the street as curious onlookers and a crush of reporters pressed in. After the second warning, they were told that they would be arrested on charges of disorderly conduct.

One woman who said she planned on being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge had traveled from the Catskills. The Reverend Debra Romano-Hepkins, 50, said she had been drawn to participate in her first-ever act of civil disobedience because her son had died in an accident at age 18 and she felt sympathy for Bell's mother.

"I'm here as a mother," she said. "The agony is inexplicable to lose a son to the people who are here to protect you."

Rev. Sharpton was one of the first to be cuffed. Ms. Paultre Bell was next, followed by Messrs. Benefield and Guzman, who kept his arm wrapped around Mr. Benefield's shoulders until the moment before he offered his hands to police.

The Queens Supreme Court judge who acquitted the detectives cited his disbelief in Mr. Guzman's testimony during the trial as one of main reasons behind his decision.

Protesters have called the judge's ruling flawed and are urging federal prosecutors to bring civil rights charges against the police; the federal government is considering the case. Besides the protests, Rev. Sharpton has enlisted the support of 10 members of Congress to press his cause.

Elsewhere around the city, the protesters were rounded up relatively quickly, though they still managed to snarl traffic and draw crowds of onlookers.

At the Holland Tunnel, roughly 20 protesters in two separate groups blocked two entrances to the tunnel at about 4:30 p.m. The arrests began about 10 minutes later.

The group was led by the New York State NAACP president, Hazel Dukes.

"We want to keep our voices raised," she said. "This is not just about Sean Bell. There has been a long history of injustice."

The Bell case has been compared to the case of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant who was shot by police in 1999. In protests during the Diallo trial, thousands marched through the city, and numerous elected officials, including state legislators, among them Governor Paterson, were arrested daily in front of One Police Plaza.

Yesterday, Council Member Charles Barron was arrested in Brooklyn, but two other council members who appeared at the protests, Melissa Mark-Viverito of East Harlem and Letitia James of Brooklyn, said they were not planning on being arrested yesterday afternoon.

Asked why, Ms. James replied: "This is just one day. There is more to come."