Progress in Promoting Black Officers, but Police Department Faces Hurdles

Progress in Promoting Black Officers, but Police Department Faces Hurdles
James Estrin/The New York Times

Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in 2006 with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at a news conference on the killing of Sean Bell.

By AL BAKER
Published: May 11, 2008

The fatal police shooting of Sean Bell, a black man killed in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day, spurred widespread public anger and put the Police Department’s relationship with some black New Yorkers under a microscope.

Tension rose last week after the acquittals of three police detectives indicted in the 2006 shooting. More than 1,000 demonstrators blocked traffic in Manhattan and Brooklyn and scores were arrested.

That tension coincided with the release of new figures about the police practice of stopping and sometimes frisking people on the streets, a tactic in which blacks account for more than half of those stopped. The figures showed that police officers stopped more people — 145,098 — during the first three months of 2008 than during any other quarter in the six years the department has reported the data.

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