The yellow crime scene tape had barely come down on a glass-strewn stretch of Liverpool Street, an unremarkable road in the Jamaica district of Queens, New York, before mourners got to work transforming it into an improvised shrine. The shabby mosaic created by the hand-scrawled notes, angry street poems, graffiti and scraps of fabric packed all the narrative punch of a New York tabloid. "50 Shots," read a T-shirt someone had affixed to a wall. "Cops need to be held accountable," read another. "I hate cops," someone had scrawled in fat blue letters on the brick. Others were personal, mournful messages written to the man who had died there only hours earlier.

A few weeks later, the little shrine is still drawing visitors. On a mild, sunny December morning, people come to see the spot where Sean Bell, an unarmed, 23-year-old black man, was shot to death on his wedding day by New York City police. Even in the brilliant sunshine, the area has a depressing feel: a few private homes, decorated with lights for the holidays, sit alongside a live poultry market ("free delivery," the sign says) and an auto repair shop, which is guarded by a large, menacing dog. A nearby carpark is surrounded by razor wire. Yet curious drivers guide their cars slowly down Liverpool, looking for the site of the shooting. Pedestrians - black, Asian, Hispanic - pause to read the messages and exchange thoughts. Some know every detail - that one officer fired 31 of the 50 rounds discharged into Bell's car, that Bell had been celebrating his bachelor party at a seedy strip club around the corner, the Kalua Cabaret. "They killed another one in the Bronx last night," says one man. "That was different," replies another. "The guy they got last night had a loaded gun."