Inmate Charged in Kelly Hit Plot

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The New York Sun

NEW YORK (AP) – A Rikers Island prisoner enraged by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man on his wedding day by undercover detectives sought to pay someone $65,000 to behead Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and bomb police headquarters, authorities said

David Brown, 47, was arrested Monday on a charge of criminal solicitation after he offered an undercover officer the payout to kill Kelly and blow up One Police Plaza, said Paul J. Browne, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information.

“I want his head chopped off,” Brown told the undercover officer in a taped conversation.

Brown, who’s currently behind bars at Rikers Island on a separate charge, asked a man to contact someone who was willing to undertake the contract killing. That led to the undercover officer making contact with Brown, who promised to pay $15,000 for the hit and another $50,000 for the bombing, police said.

Police said in two taped telephone conversations and one meeting that took place at Rikers in late February, Brown told the undercover officer that he was “fed up with the case where the guy got shot 50 times.”

Brown was referring to Bell, the 23-year-old Queens man whom police shot to death on his wedding day in November. Two of Bell’s friends were also shot but survived with serious injuries. Police have said 50 shots were fired in the incident. A grand jury is considering possible charges against the five officers involved.

In the taped conversations, Brown blamed Mr. Kelly for not taking the “initiative to prosecute the officers. That kind of got me frustrated to the point where I want him murdered.”

Brown was convicted in 2001 of trying to kill his wife, and he was serving time in Rikers for violation of an order of protection for the same woman.

Police said the Brooklyn man has been convicted previously on 30 charges – 14 of them felonies that included five violent crimes.

Police said Brown was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. Police did not have the name of his lawyer.


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