Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott’s primary job is to oversee the Department of Education and several other city agencies, but as the senior African American member of the Bloomberg administration and as a resident of southeast Queens, Mr. Walcott is playing a key role in handling Mayor Bloomberg’s response to this weekend’s fatal shooting.

Mr. Walcott got a call about the shooting — which left an apparently unarmed 23-year-old groom dead after police fired 50 shots — early Saturday morning. The deputy mayor and his wife had been getting ready to host a surprise 90th birthday for his aunt at their home.

With Mr. Bloomberg reportedly out of town, Mr. Walcott was the face of City Hall at the crime scene and then at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens, where he spoke with the mother of the victim, Sean Bell. Bell was to have been wed later in the day.

Mr. Walcott, whose own son was shot in the leg earlier this year, said he was in “constant contact” with the mayor on Saturday and Sunday and that he was in touch with Rev. Al Sharpton and other community leaders throughout the weekend.

“I’m a Southeast Queens resident,” Mr. Walcott said during a telephone interview.”I have extensive contacts with both elected and community leaders.”

“The beauty of our staff is that we are all team members and we are able to fit into a variety of areas,” he added.

In addition to being the key liaison at a meeting yesterday morning between Mr. Bloomberg and more than 30 elected leaders and clergy members, Mr. Walcott made the rounds with interviews on the hip-hop radio station POWER 105 and an appearance on NY1, where he repeatedly highlighted the mayor’s immediate outreach to the community. That note was sounded throughout the day and seemed designed to squelch comparisons between this latest police shooting and the Amadou Diallo shooting of 1999, when Mayor Giuliani waited to gather community leaders.

This was not the Mr. Walcott’s first time playing cheerleader and primary point man for Mr. Bloomberg. After the shooting of Timothy Stansbury Jr. by police in 2004, Mr. Walcott served as an a key mayoral emissary, visiting the victim’s family and, according to the Daily News, bringing a plate of jerk chicken. He served a similar role the year before when a Harlem woman died after a botched police raid.

During the interview with POWER 105 radio host Ed Lover, Mr. Walcott, said his background is part of what he offers. “I had my son, who was shot at one point, not by police, but by others in the street,” Mr. Walcott said. “So I bring, I think, a different perspective as far as people who have seen it from different angles.”

Yesterday, a variety of African American leaders praised Mr. Walcott. The city’s comptroller, William Thompson Jr., said the deputy mayor was “very effective.” And, City Council Member Robert Jackson, the co-chairman of the Black, Latino, and Asian caucus, said Mr. Walcott’s history as head of the New York Urban League, which he ran for 12 years, offered “credibility.”

But others said he could be more effective. Council Member Charles Barron, an outspoken critic of the Bloomberg administration, said: “Dennis can be more effective,” and should exert “more influence on the mayor after the meetings.”

And, when asked about Mr. Walcott, Rep. Charles Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who is the dean of New York’s congressional delegation, said: “I have some issues there that I don’t want to discuss publicly.” He did not elaborate.