Acquittal in Wedding Day Shooting Sparks NYC Protests

Vowing that “this city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell,” the Rev. Al Sharpton joined hundreds of New Yorkers in a march through Harlem to protest this week’s acquittal of three police officers involved in the 2006 shooting that claimed the 23-year-old Bell’s life and injured two friends on his wedding day.

AP via My Way News:

The rally at Sharpton’s office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem’s main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out “Kill the police!”

Fifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.

Sharpton urged people to return for a meeting this coming week “to plan the day that we will close this city down” with the kind of “massive civil disobedience” once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“They never accused Sean Bell of doing anything. Then why is he dead?” Sharpton asked, his voice roaring with anger. Authorities “have shown now that they will not hold police accountable. Well, guess what? If you won’t, we will!”

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AP photo / Stephen Chernin

Sean Bell’s mother, Valerie (center), with Bell’s father, William (left), and fiancée Nicole Paultre Bell at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters on Saturday in New York.