DEA Upset By Unions Joining In Bell Protest

By REUVEN BLAU

Detectives' Endowment Association President Michael J. Palladino last week blasted labor officials who attended a recent rally organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton to protest the police shooting in Queens that killed Sean Bell and injured two of his friends.

MICHAEL J. PALLADINO: Not feeling the solidarity.

"At the very least I'm disappointed in my fellow labor leaders here in New York," Mr. Palladino said during a phone interview. "I wonder if my fellow labor leaders realize that in marching with Sharpton they are taking part in trying to deny the Police Officers involved in this case a fair and impartial investigation. They are denying their due process rights."

Cites UFT, TWU Heads

The DEA president said he was especially disappointed that United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Transport Workers' Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint participated in the Dec. 16 rally on Fifth Avenue.

Ms. Weingarten, who is also the chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee, responded, "It is not mutually exclusive to call for both a fair investigation for the officers involved and an improvement in police-community relations."

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Wants fairness all around.

Mr. Palladino noted that his members helped transit workers during last year's strike. "We were out there with our food truck, trying to keep his people warm," he remarked. "I'll think twice before I lend my support a second time."

Mr. Toussaint declined to respond. The DEA president argued that the union officials would have acted differently if it were one of their members being scrutinized. "It's no wonder that organized labor is at an all-time low in this country," he added.

Deadly Confusion

Critics of the NYPD - including several City Council Members and prominent African-American community leaders - have said an undercover Detective outside the Jamaica, Queens strip club Kalua on Nov. 25 startled Mr. Bell, who didn't realize he was a cop.

Mr. Bell was killed in the shooting and two of his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were each shot multiple times by the barrage of 50 rounds fired by the five officers.

Mayor Bloomberg said two day later that he believed the undercover officers used excessive force when they fired at a car that rammed into one of their colleagues and an unmarked police vehicle, even though the probe of the incident was in its early stages.

Mr. Palladino, however, has maintained that the undercover officer was wearing his badge around his neck and clearly identified himself. Last week, he predicted that officers involved in the shooting would not be indicted by the Queens District Attorney's Office.

'Tragic, Not Criminal'

On Brian Lehrer's Dec. 20 radio show, Mr. Palladino said, "When the dust settles and the smoke clears, reasonableness will prevail in that grand jury and we'll be able to articulate that the shooting, although tragic, was not criminal and completely justified."

The New York Civil Liberties Union and Mr. Sharpton have called on outgoing State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and his successor, Andrew Cuomo, to launch an independent investigation.

But Mr. Palladino argued that Mr. Sharpton was "trying to trying to manipulate and influence the justice system. These guys are tried and convicted already in Sharpton's kangaroo court."