Pressure on Black Governor of NY to Act in the Wake of the Sean Bell Case

From The New York Sun,
By SARAH GARLAND
Civil rights groups are aiming to rouse the activist side of Governor Paterson this week in the aftermath of a not guilty verdict for three detectives who killed an unarmed black man, Sean Bell.

Doubting that federal prosecutors will bring new civil rights charges against the detectives, the activists are resting their hopes for action on the former state senator from Harlem, who once protested alongside them after the 1999 shooting of another unarmed black man, Amadou Diallo.

Mr. Paterson was arrested for civil disobedience during the Diallo protests on almost the same spot where yesterday a civil rights lawyer, Norman Siegel, a state senator, Eric Adams, and leaders of a civil rights group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, called on him to use his new power as governor to make changes to a system they say is ineffective in punishing police brutality.

Some of the changes proposed by the activists are ones Mr. Paterson himself has called for in the past, including the creation of a permanent post for an independent state prosecutor to investigate and prosecute police corruption and brutality - a post the governor has the power to create.

"I can't think of anyone better," Mr. Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said of Mr. Paterson. "If we don't get it in the next year-and-a-half or two years, we will probably never get it."

Paterson said he was surprised by the verdict "to a certain degree, maybe just because of the number of shots that were fired." The governor said he understood why some people are upset and protesting, referring to marches around the city that have taken place since the verdict. He noted that cases such as the Bell shooting "arouse a mistrust" in the criminal justice system "among people who live in these neighborhoods," but he said the verdict must be accepted. "It is the way our criminal justice system works," he said.

 

In a separate news conference yesterday at the headquarters of the National Action Network in Harlem, the Rev. Al Sharpton seemed to have greater hopes that federal prosecutors would file charges against the detectives. Bell's fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, also promised to lead the protests Rev. Sharpton has promised would shut down the city in the next few weeks.

Rev. Sharpton said he is meeting today with the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jr. of Michigan, to discuss the case.

Activists are convinced that Mr. Paterson will line up on their side, however, citing his activism in the past.

Mr. Paterson has spoken in the past at the National Action Network and is also reported to have donated as much as $16,000 to Rev. Sharpton's organization in the past few years, according to a 2007 report by the Daily News.

When Mr. Paterson was arrested during the Diallo protests - one of three reported arrests in his life on civil disobedience charges for civil rights causes - he was quoted in the Amsterdam News as saying: "99% of African-Americans feel that police brutality is a problem in New York City and 70% of white New Yorkers do not. While we respect that their opinions are shaped by their personal experiences, we feel that for anyone to treat the concerns expressed by 3 million New Yorkers as merely politically motivated ... shows a blatant disregard for the people of our community."

Yesterday, responding to the activists' calls for him to take action, a spokeswoman for the governor, Erin Duggan, said Mr. Paterson had not yet received a copy of the proposals but that "he will of course review them carefully and consider the complex issues they address."