Sharpton's Got a New Cause

Looks like Al Sharpton won't have much time to spend belittling and berating Michael Richards - he's got a new cause:

NEW YORK — An angry crowd demanded Sunday to know why police officers killed an unarmed man on the day of his wedding, firing dozens of shots that also wounded two of the man's friends. Some called for the ouster of the city's police commissioner.

At a vigil and rally the day after 23-year-old Sean Bell was supposed to have married the mother of his two young children, a crowd led by the Rev. Al Sharpton shouted "No justice, no peace."

At one point, the crowd of a few hundred counted off to 50, the number of rounds fired.

"We cannot allow this to continue to happen," Sharpton said at the gathering outside Mary Immaculate Hospital, where one of the wounded men was in critical condition. "We've got to understand that all of us were in that car."

So, what happened?

The shootings occurred at about 4 a.m. Saturday outside the Kalua Cabaret, a strip club where Bell's bachelor party was held. The survivors were Joseph Guzman, 31, who was shot at least 11 times, and Trent Benefield, 23, who was hit three times. Guzman was in critical condition Sunday and Benefield was stable.

Relatives of all three men — many of them stoic, and some crying — attended Sunday's vigil but none spoke publicly.

At a news conference Saturday, Kelly said the department was still piecing together what happened, and that it was too early to say whether the shooting was justified.

The car, driven by Bell, was struck by 21 of the police bullets after the vehicle rammed an undercover officer and hit an unmarked NYPD minivan. Other shots hit nearby homes and shattered windows at a train station, though no one else was injured.

Police thought one of the men in the car might have had a gun but investigators found no weapons. It was unclear what prompted police to open fire, Kelly said.

This incident will get uglier. One report I saw indicated that 50 shots were fired, including 31 by one officer. In order to fire 31 shots the officer had to reload twice. That's going to be impossible to justify. The only question now is whether Sharpton will successfully incite another riot.