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May 12, 2008 7:22 pm US/Eastern
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Federal Oversight Of Cops Proposed At NYC Hearing
In Wake Of Bell Shooting, Congressmen Meet With Civil Rights Leaders To Discuss Police Action
NYPD: Commish Kelly Not Invited To Meeting
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Fallout from the Sean Bell shooting verdict is reaching the highest levels of the U.S. government. There was a Congressional hearing Monday in downtown Manhattan looking at ways the government can prevent such police shootings in the future.
The 50 shots fired by NYPD officers reverberated in the halls of the U.S. Customs House auditorium.
"It is the ongoing killing of unarmed African American men," said Hazel Dukes. President of the NAACP N.Y. "We bring you back here today to our city because we are under siege."
Before members of Congress and the Bell family, expert after expert testified the federal government must get more involved.
"We found that some things that you think work, don't work to change departments," said Prof. Mary Francis Berry of the University of Pennsylvania. "It's good to have diversity. So long as the police culture operates the way it operates, you can have black officers, Latino officers, who will shoot people from their own group."
One of the proposals was having permanent federal oversight of the NYPD and other police departments around the nation.
"This would not be the police department in the nation that went into some kind of strict federal supervision on a day-to-day basis in terms of its behavior," Rep. Jose Serrano said.
"We need to move beyond the idea that police oversight only happens to bad police agencies," said Prof. Chris Stone of Northeastern University.
The Rev. Al Sharpton said federal funds should be withheld from cities where police are too quick to use deadly force.
"Let them figure out how to prosecute cops," Sharpton said. "Cut the money off, and they'll take you seriously."
Most notably absent from the hearing was anyone from the NYPD or the police union. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's office says he was not invited. But this confusion is perhaps a symbol of the division and the mistrust that Congress is now being asked to resolve.
Kelly's office said even if he had been invited to the hearings, his participation would be limited because of the possible disciplinary action against the officers involved in the Bell shooting.
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