The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A jail inmate admitted that he tried to hire a hit man to blow up the New York Police Department’s headquarters and kill its commissioner, prosecutors said Wednesday.
David Brown, 39, pleaded guilty to criminal solicitation in a deal with prosecutors. He will receive three to six years in prison but would have faced up to seven years if convicted after trial. Sentencing is set for November.
Brown’s lawyer, Justine Olderman, declined to comment Wednesday but said in March that his threats were just idle talk.
“There is absolutely no indication that this was anything other than mere words,” she said.
Prosecutors said Brown admitted he met an undercover police officer he believed to be a hit man and agreed to pay as much as $150,000 to kill Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and blow up headquarters in lower Manhattan.
The conversations happened by telephone twice and once in person while Brown was being held in jail for violating an order of protection in a domestic-violence case, prosecutors said.
He spoke about wanting to avenge the fatal shooting by detectives of an unarmed man on his wedding day, authorities said.
“I want people to feel my wrath and my rage,” Brown told the undercover officer, according to court papers.
Brown’s lawyer had said he was mentally ill. He was convicted in 2001 of trying to kill his wife and served about five years in prison.
In November 2006, five police officers fired 50 shots at a car driven by groom Sean Bell because they believed he and two friends were going to retrieve a gun to settle a dispute. No weapon was found, and the officers were acquitted of criminal charges.