HUNDREDS of angry people marched through Harlem in New York on Saturday after U.S. civil rights activist Al Sharpton promised to “close this city down” to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day.

“We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians,” Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood.

Sharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell — a black man — and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club.

Fifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.

“Shut it down! Shut it down!” the crowd chanted, standing up and applauding wildly.

Sharpton said Bell’s supporters could demonstrate all over the city, from Wall Street to the home of Justice Arthur Cooperman, who on Friday acquitted the three detectives after a nonjury trial.

Sitting behind Sharpton were Bell’s parents, his sister and Nicole Paultre Bell, who took her fiance’s name after his death. “The justice system let me down,” Paultre Bell told the crowd. “April 25, 2008: They killed Sean all over again. That’s what it felt like to us.”

(SD-Agencies)