Hundreds of people, mostly African-Americans, disrupted rush hour traffic in New York City with peaceful protests over the aquittal of three police officers who allegedly killed an unarmed black man on his wedding day in 2006.
 
Protestors gathered in six rallies throughout the city on Wednesday in what they called "a civil disobedience movement" to force the authorities to hold a federal civil rights probe into the 50-bullet police shooting of Sean Bell outside a night club in Jamaica, NYC, in 2006, hours before he was to have been married.

The three officers involved in the shooting -- white, black and Hispanic -- were acquitted by a court of all charges, which led to large-scale but peaceful protests across the city.

A leading African-American leader Rev Al Sharpton, Nicole Paultre, fiancee of the deceased Sean Bell, and two of his friends who survived the shooting were among the dozens arrested for disorderly behaviour.

But there was no resistance as the police handcuffed the demonstrators and asked them to get into the vehicles. The demonstrators say they do not agree with the verdict and want the federal investigations to continue.
       
Meanwhile, the attorneys of the three police officers were lobbying with Congressional leaders against the holding of a civil rights probe.