December 3, 2008
Scene back to normal at Kalua Cabaret
Kwame Henderson stood a few doors down from the Kalua Cabaret in Jamaica Saturday, waiting for his car to be fixed at a repair shop near where police shot and killed Sean Bell and seriously wounded two of Bell's friends.
On the day after a grand jury ended its deliberations, handing up indictments against three of the five cops in the Nov. 25 shooting, Henderson said he didn't want to voice an opinion about the case one way or another.
Few things about the shooting are clear, he noted. Henderson, 21, who lives in nearby Hollis, questioned the wisdom of Bell, 23, and his friends coming to the "seedy" Kalua Cabaret that night, the evening before Bell's wedding.
But he also said he had to wonder about detective Michael Oliver firing 31 of the 50 shots in the fusillade directed at Bell's car.
"If you see this place at night, you wouldn't want to be here," Henderson said.
At a protest Saturday in Manhattan's Union Square Park that drew more than 100 people, many angrily voiced opinions on the stiff penalties they think the officers should face.
But on Liverpool Street between 94th and 95th avenues -- where police actually fired upon Bell's car -- all was quiet. A poster asking witnesses to the shooting to call police remained taped to a telephone pole.
A man who lives on 95th Avenue said he believes the undercover cops working inside Kalua Cabaret that night were trying to do good work. The police were part of a special detail looking for guns and drugs in nightclubs.
"I'm on the policemen's side, because the policemen are the good guys," said the man, who declined to give his name.
People walked briskly by the sidewalk shrine of about 60 candles first created in the days after the shooting. At the back of the snow-covered display, near the brick wall of a city Department of Finance building, lay a single red rose, leaning against a 22-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor. Poems and letters to Bell's family and to the NYPD are taped to the wall.
Most of the people passing the memorial Saturday morning and afternoon didn't give it a glance. A few children took a quick look, perhaps attracted by the bright colors of the flowers there.
The club, which was closed for a time after the shooting, has reopened, residents said, and it continues to draw a crowd they consider undesirable.
A young woman walking Saturday afternoon only a few feet from where Bell was shot said she was rattled by the event. She was not aware of the indictments or latest news about the case.
"I feel police are there to protect us from harm," said the woman, who would not give her name. "When you hear a story of a case like this where the police were actually doing the shooting, it is upsetting."
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