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Sharpton: Toxicology test 'irrelevant' in police shooting

By VERENA DOBNIK | Associated Press Writer

3:00 PM EST, December 23, 2006

Supporters of police shooting victim Sean Bell demanded to know Saturday whether police officers who fired 50 times at his car had received toxicology tests, a day after law enforcement officials said that Bell was legally drunk behind the wheel of his car on the morning he was killed.

Rev. Al Sharpton said that the officials' statements to The Associated Press that Bell was legally drunk, perhaps twice the legal limit, was not significant in the investigation of the Nov. 25 shooting that killed the 23-year-old on his wedding day and wounded two companions.

"There was no shooting by any of the victims, including Sean Bell," Sharpton said. "Their judgment one way or another is irrelevant, because they didn't do anything."

Sharpton asked whether the five officers who fired at Bell's car outside a Queens strip club had too much to drink or received toxicology tests.

It wasn't clear that the undercover officers, who were allowed two drinks each according to department policy, had been tested. But department spokesman Paul Browne said Saturday that a supervisor at the scene after the shooting found the officers fit for duty, "meaning they were not intoxicated."

On Friday, law enforcement officials said Bell's blood had tested well above the state's 0.08 percent blood-alcohol limit. One put his reading at "double the legal limit." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation has not been completed.

A lawyer for Bell's parents called the information "another attempt to denigrate the victim of a police murder."

"Sean Bell was not charged with drunk driving. He is the victim in this case," attorney Neville Mitchell said

On Saturday, Sharpton said in a telephone interview, "The question is, why we don't have toxicology tests on how much the undercover police were drinking?"

Referring to Bell and his two companions, Sharpton said, "The issue here is, if they were drunk _ and I'm not saying they were _ how does that lead to the policemen approaching them and shooting?"

Police have said that Bell's car lurched forward and bumped an officer before shots were fired, and officers' lawyers have said their clients believed Bell and his friends were going to retrieve a gun from his car. Bell's companions have said the first officer to fire never identified himself as a policeman and have disputed accounts that a fourth man may have fled the car with a gun.

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