Plot to Behead NYPD Commissioner Kelly Foiled by Police

Police authorities told reporters Monday that they had uncovered a grisly plot by a man already serving time in prison to avenge the shooting of Queens resident Sean Bell by the NYPD on his wedding day last November.

David Brown, 47, was already currently serving time in Rikers Island on a charge of violating an order of protection for his wife. Brown, a resident of Brooklyn, had been convicted in 2001 of trying to kill his wife. Police said that Brown has been convicted of 30 different charges, 14 of them felonies, including five crimes of a violent nature.

Brown was arrested Monday for offering an undercover officer $65,000 to kill NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly and then blow up One Police Plaza. According to Paul Browne, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information, Brown told the undercover officer, "I want his head chopped off." Brown has been charged with criminal solicitation.

Authorities said that Brown asked a man to contact someone who might be willing to undertake the task of killing Kelly. That person informed police, leading to an undercover officer getting in touch with Brown. Police said that Brown promised to pay the officer $15,000 for killing Kelly and another $50,000 for bombing the police station. In two taped telephone conversations and one meeting at Rikers last month, Brown said to the officer that he was "fed up with the case where the guy got shot 50 times."

Bell, 23, was killed last fall the day before his wedding. He and some friends were at a bachelor party at a topless bar in Queens where police were conducting an undercover operation because of response to complaints about prostitution occurring at the bar. Lawyers for the officers have argued that their clients heard Bell and his friends arguing with another person at the bar, and they were on their way to get a gun from their car when Bell's car bumped an officer and hit an unmarked police minivan.

Police have said that at least 50 shots were fired in the incident, and two of Bell’s friends were seriously injured, but survived. The survivors have said that officers never identified themselves as police before opening fire on the group. Prosecutors have not discussed the case with the media, but a grand jury is deliberating whether to charge the five officers involved.

In trying to arrange revenge for the shootings, Brown said he was angered by Commissioner Kelly not taking "initiative to prosecute the officers. That kind of got me frustrated to the point where I want him murdered."