Sharpton Criticizes Police at Coppin Funeral
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Reverend Al Sharpton rebuked the police department yesterday for discrimination in minority neighborhoods during a funeral service for Khiel Coppin, an 18-year-old man who was shot by five police officers who confused a hairbrush pointed at them with a handgun.
“Why do they operate with such strategy, caution and deliberate action in some neighborhoods, but they act with such recklessness in our neighborhoods?” Rev. Sharpton asked at the Nazarene Congregational Church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
Rev. Sharpton also criticized the police department for not properly punishing Sean Sawyer, the off-duty officer who shot and killed a man in a road rage incident last month.
The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, has said the police officers involved in the November 12 incident with Coppin acted within departmental guidelines.
