A man was arrested Monday for trying to hire a contract killer to behead the city’s police commissioner in revenge for the police shooting that left a young groom dead on his wedding day, authorities said.
David Brown, 47, was charged with criminal solicitation after he offered an undercover officer $65,000 to kill Commissioner Raymond Kelly and blow up police headquarters in Manhattan, police spokesman Paul J. Browne said.
“I want his head chopped off,” Brown told the undercover officer, according to a partial transcript provided by police of the taped conversation.
According to police, Brown, who is in jail on a separate charge, asked a man to find someone who was willing to undertake the contract killing. That led to the undercover officer contacting Brown, who promised to pay $15,000 for the killing and another $50,000 for the bombing.
Police said in two taped telephone conversations and a meeting at the Rikers Island jail in late February, Brown told the undercover officer that he was “fed up with the case where the guy got shot 50 times.”
Brown was referring to Sean Bell, the 23-year-old Queens man police shot to death on his wedding day in November. Police have said 50 shots were fired in the incident. A grand jury is considering possible charges against the five officers involved.
In the taped conversations, Brown blamed Kelly for not taking the “initiative to prosecute the officers. That kind of got me frustrated to the point where I want him murdered.”
Brown was convicted in 2001 of trying to kill his wife, and he was serving time in Rikers for violation of an order of protection for the same woman.
Police said Brown was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. Police did not have the name of his lawyer.