Bloomberg Working Hard To Keep Queens Allies

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The New York Sun

A day after gathering more than 30 leaders and clergy members at City Hall to defuse the fallout from this weekend’s fatal shooting, Mayor Bloomberg spent yesterday jockeying to keep dozens of community leaders on his side.

Mr. Bloomberg met for the first time with the family of Sean Bell, who was shot and killed Saturday by undercover police after celebrating his last night as a bachelor with two friends.

“They are obviously feeling incredible pain and the one thing that they would like the mayor to say is the one thing the mayor can’t say,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters after meeting with Bell’s parents, fiancée, and fiancée’s mother at the Community Church of Christ in Queen. “There’s nothing the mayor can do to bring back their son or their fiancé.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton and several others were also at the church during the meeting. Afterward Mr. Bloomberg met with about 50 community leaders at Thomasina’s Restaurant, the same venue where a group of Queens’ clergy members endorsed him for re-election last year.

Mr. Bloomberg’s decision to hold another round of meetings after Monday’s summit underscores just how far he is going to court support among key African American leaders who could be crucial in maintaining calm in the city as the case is investigated by the Queens District Attorney, Richard Brown. The meetings seemed designed to help him stay in front of a situation that has emerged as one of his biggest political tests.

Surrounded by about a dozen of those who participated in the Thomasina’s meeting, Mr. Bloomberg used toned down language. He said it was still his view that the 50 shots fired by police seemed “excessive,” but said that he was not there and that “it may turn out to be that it wasn’t excessive.”

He also suggested that if the calm is not maintained a possible trial could be moved out of the city. “What we don’t want to do is to have another case — remember the Diallo case the trial actually got moved upstate because there was so much going on here,” Mr. Bloomberg said, referring to the 1999 case involving Amadou Diallo. “I certainly would rather have it here so I want to make sure we do not prejudice the case.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Bloomberg’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, declined to say whether he agreed with the mayor that the number of shots fired seemed inappropriate. He said as the head of the department with the responsibility for deciding on a punishment that he would wait for district attorney’s office to conclude its investigation.

Mr. Kelly said police were “debriefing” another witness yesterday. Sources familiar with the investigation said the police located the new witness Monday after he had been arrested outside the city.

The case seems to have unearthed tensions that have long existed in between the police and minority communities. Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday’s meeting focused more on those relations than on the Bell case. He said many attendees expressed concern about people getting stopped by police “based on the color of their skin.”

The new Democratic minority leader in the state Senate, Malcolm Smith, an African-American from Queens who has emerged as an ally to the mayor, said young black men shouldn’t be targeted simply because they are “wearing pants that are hanging down and have a hat on backwards.” He said he is looking at organizing city, state, and federal elected officials to review NYPD procedures.

Mr. Bloomberg said racial profiling is against police policy and that the NYPD is the only “big police department” in the country that has a policy against it. He said relations are not perfect, but have dramatically improved and would continue to be a city priority. And he reiterated that the Bell case did not seem to be racially motivated.

A lawyer for the Detective Endowment Association, Philip Karasyk, said last night said he was confident the detectives would be cleared and said they had reason to believe Bell and his friends had a weapon.

City Council Member James Sanders Jr. said the mayor is responding to community, but that the “temperature on the streets has increased.”

“While we are sitting in these meetings a lot of people are out on the streets and they don’t see and hear these things,” he said.

Also yesterday, the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, Michael Meyers, and civil rights attorney Norman Siegel called on Governor Pataki and Governor-elect Spitzer to appoint an “Independent, Special Prosecutor” to investigate the Bell case rather than having Mr. Brown handle it. Representatives for Messrs. Spitzer and Pataki did not return calls.


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