News Analysis

MAYOR FOCUSES ON DIALOGUE IN THE AFTERMATH

New York City police officers fire dozens of rounds of bullets, and an
unarmed 23-year-old black man is killed. In its simplest terms, the
shooting of Sean Bell by police officers in Queens on Saturday morning
has inevitably led to comparisons to the case of Amadou Diallo, an
African immigrant who died in a hail of police gunfire in February
1999.

However, as the Queens district attorney and the Police Department
investigated Mr. Bell's death and as community leaders, elected
officials, and clergy members staked out their positions yesterday,
there is much about the principals -- and indeed the city -- that has
changed in seven years.

The city's mayor has an established, politically useful record of
reaching out to black leaders at times of crisis, and his police
commissioner has shown a willingness to publicly question shootings by
members of his force.

In this case, as well, the racial makeup of the five officers involved
in the shooting -- two white, two black and one Hispanic -- reflects a
more diverse police force than when Mr. Diallo was shot by four white
officers.

Of course, much about the shooting -- what prompted it, and whether it
was justified -- remains to be settled, and nothing will change the
fact that a young man, hours from his wedding, lost his life, leaving
two children without a father.

But the first hours of the tragedy appeared to follow a distinctly
different script from the Diallo case, as city officials worked to
maintain calm. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans to meet Queens
community leaders today at City Hall to discuss the shooting; he
talked to prominent black elected officials and religious leaders
throughout the weekend, and has spoken with Mr. Bell's fiancee on the
phone.

In addition, Mr. Bloomberg's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly,
has generally received favorable reviews from minority leaders over
the course of his two terms at the top of the department. Indeed,
hours after a police officer shot and killed a 19-year-old man on the
roof of a Brooklyn public housing project in January 2004, Mr. Kelly
called the shooting unjustified, a move that many saw as a break from
the days when the city seemed to reflexively defend the use of deadly
force by its officers.

Even the one person who is playing a role similar to the one he played
in 1999 -- the Rev. Al Sharpton -- finds himself at a different moment
in his career, and in a far different relationship with City Hall. Mr.
Sharpton, who has said much about the shooting "stinks," and who has
called for a thorough investigation, has nonetheless been in direct
contact with the mayor.

The Diallo case in 1999 shook the administration of Rudolph W.
Giuliani, who was then the mayor, and led to waves of protests. Mr.
Giuliani had waged a successful, but unrelenting and unapologetic war
against crime during his first five years in office. All along, he
seemed to go out of his way to dismiss people who saw a racial aspect
to the department's work, and its use of force. When the Diallo
shooting happened, Mr. Giuliani certainly had no reservoir of good
will among the city's minority population.

It clearly, for example, would have been out of character for Mr.
Giuliani and Howard Safir, the police commissioner when Mr. Diallo was
shot, to reach out to Mr. Sharpton. In fact, it took Mr. Giuliani a
month after the shooting to meet with black elected officials to
discuss the case.

Mr. Bloomberg, by comparison, immediately enlisted his
administration's highest-ranking black official, Dennis M. Walcott,
the deputy mayor for education and economic development as his point
person on the case.

Mr. Walcott, who lives near the scene of the shooting, went to the
scene of the shooting in Jamaica, Queens, Saturday morning, has spoken
with Mr. Sharpton repeatedly, and attended a rally and prayer vigil
yesterday for Mr. Bell and two other men who were injured in the
shooting. At the vigil, Mr. Walcott also spoke with Mr. Bell's mother
and relatives of the other men.

"Relations between minority communities and the police in the
Bloomberg-Kelly years have improved considerably from before," said
Jerome H. Skolnick, a New York University law professor who has
studied the use of excessive force by the police. "The low point of
police-community relations may well have been the Diallo shooting."

To be sure, the changed dynamic and cast of characters do not mean the
new shooting will less inflammatory and painful than past fatal police
shootings have been. And there were some signs yesterday of growing
dissatisfaction with Mr. Kelly, who was police commissioner from 1992
to 1994 and again since 2002.

"Michael Bloomberg was and is a breath of fresh air since Giuliani,"
said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the pastor of Abyssinian Baptist
Church in Harlem and one of the city's most prominent black clerics.
But he added: "People really believe that the mayor does not have
control of his commissioner and that the commissioner is insensitive.
He's got the politically correct language, but not the proper
back-office training. All that glitters is not gold. Kelly is getting
another look."

Among black elected officials from Queens, however, there has so far
been praise for Mr. Bloomberg.

State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a Democrat from Queens, said he spoke
with Mr. Bloomberg by phone about the shooting at least four times on
Saturday. "He was very disturbed by the incident and very concerned
about the family," Mr. Smith said. "He indicated that he would make
sure there would be a clear, impartial investigation that would bring
out all the facts, and wherever the chips may fall, they fall."

Mr. Smith said he was at the home of Nicole Paultre, whom Mr. Bell was
to marry, when Mr. Bloomberg called him on his cellphone. At the
mayor's request, Mr. Smith said, he put Ms. Paultre on the phone.

Mr. Smith said that he believed the mayor was committed to a full
investigation.

David N. Dinkins, who was mayor from 1990 to 1993, said he received a
message from Mr. Bloomberg yesterday about the Bell case. "The
difference in the behavior and attitudes of this police commissioner,
this mayor, contrasted with Giuliani, is night and day," said Mr.
Dinkins, the city's first black mayor.

United States Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a Democrat from Queens,
whom the mayor called on Saturday, echoed that comparison. "This mayor
is more open, more inclusive, more honest and less secretive -- as
opposed to the former mayor, who basically shut everyone out and
refused to meet most of the time and was very combative," Mr. Meeks
said.

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, would not say yesterday
where the mayor was over the weekend, but said that the mayor was in
touch by phone and e-mail messages constantly with his top assistants.
The Daily News reported that Mr. Bloomberg had an appointment Saturday
at the Mid Ocean Club, an exclusive golf resort in Bermuda.

Andrew Hacker, a political scientist at Queens College, cautioned that
Mr. Bloomberg will have to walk a fine line between showing
sensitivity and giving the police -- for now -- the benefit of the
doubt. "It's always necessary for any mayor to back up his police
department; he's done this with Kelly just as strenuously as Giuliani
did with Safir," Mr.Hacker said.

And Mr. Sharpton, who led angry street protests in the wake of the
Diallo shooting, took the city to task yesterday, signaling that he
will not shirk from confrontation in this case. He compared the death
of Mr. Bell to Mr. Diallo and to Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who
was brutalized in a police station house in Brooklyn in August 1997.

"It'll be the first major case of its kind of the 21st century in New
York," Mr. Sharpton said of the Bell case. "People are very energized
about it. I think the city should be working to suspend those cops and
show they're seriously going after some justice here."