By: Verena Dobnik, Associated Press
NEW YORK - (AP) Demonstrators plan to pray on their knees and be arrested for civil disobedience to protest the acquittals of three police officers in the death of an unarmed man shot on his wedding day, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Saturday.
The civil rights activist, who has promised to "close this city down" to protest last month's verdict, said protesters would stage a "pray-in" Wednesday at half a dozen places in the city, including the police headquarters.
Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem a day after the officers were cleared in the November 2006 death of Sean Bell, 23. Two friends were wounded in the barrage of 50 shots fired by the undercover officers and two colleagues outside a night club where Bell had just left his bachelor party.
Sean Bell was black. His death rekindled long-standing tensions over alleged racism and excessive force by police, even though two of the officers charged are also black.
Bell's fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell -- who took his name after his death -- plans to participate in Wednesday's protest and any other action "till justice is done," she told several hundred people gathered at Sharpton's National Action Network headquarters in Harlem, the historically black Manhattan neighborhood.
Sharpton said participants would gather at 3 p.m. in at least six places around the city and then fan out to undisclosed locations.
"Where we go from there is anybody's guess," Rachel Noerdlinger, Sharpton's spokeswoman, said later, adding that wherever protesters end up, "they'll be arrested praying."
The "pray-in" is only the start of whatever actions are necessary to oppose the verdict.
"It's going to be a long struggle, but the race isn't given to the swift or the strong, but to those who endure," Sharpton said.
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