A grieving black community, still irate from the November 12 shooting of a mentally ill teenager in Brooklyn, is demanding full disclosure of any videotaped footage that may have been retrieved when police opened fire on the unarmed, Caribbean youth.

According to NYPD reports, the building security director at 590 Gates Avenue confirmed initial assumption that on the night 18-year-old Khiel Coppin was gunned down in a hail of 20 bullets, the cameras on the site were inoperative and had been for three weeks.

But skeptical community residents believe a tape exists and may be deleted if police are allowed to investigate their own misdeeds.

“It is absurd that all of a sudden the camera was not working,” an outraged resident said. “It worked before the shooting,” the individual, who wished to remain anonymous, added.

Amidst an emerging theory of suppression of evidence, some believe a videotape of the police shooting may be in existence.

“Someone doesn’t want the public to see this tape,” State Senator Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) said.

The former police officer added: “If there’s a tape, which we believe there is, it can answer many questions of what happened that night.”

Criticisms were lodged against police commissioner Ray Kelly who quickly justified the shooting by disclosing portions of the 911 phone call that prompted police intervention.

After an emotional farewell to the slain Caribbean immigrant, charges of police brutality were levied against the NYPD with accusations of recklessness, racial disparity and police impropriety.

Witnesses to past crime scenes made comparisons, which they are convinced credibly confirm why evidence that could implicate members of the NYPD would now be irretrievable.

“We want to see the tape. Where is the evidence?”

At the Nazarene Congregational United Church of Christ in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where funeral rites were held on November 20, aggrieved congregants questioned why Owens called 911 to control her unstable son who had not taken his anti-psychotic medication on that ill-fated day.

“We cannot call police for help. They are not here to help us, black people should know that,” an outraged mourner said.

“What is this city... when a mother’s cry for help is answered with 20 rounds of ammunition?” Rev. Al Sharpton asked during the sermon.

Coppin’s biography described the troubled youth to be “highly intelligent, opinionated and strong-willed if not stubborn – yet so sweet and funny.” The funeral program described Coppin as “a loner who loved music and loved writing poetry.”

Coppin also suffered from psychiatric problems and had reportedly refused to take his medication, and he also spoke about committing suicide, all of which may have contributed to his tragic demise.

Rev. Conrad B. Tillard Sr. of Nazarene Congregational told the mourners, “I hope that never again will we be afraid to discuss in our pulpits the issue of mental illness and depression in our communities.”

In the presence of Congressman Ed Towns, Council members Al Vann and Charles Barron, Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, Rev. Herbert Daughtry, Dr. Harold Robertson, Consul General of Trinidad and Tobago and mourners, Rev. Sharpton pointed to a consistent pattern of police record by asking: “Why do they act with such deliberate caution in some neighborhoods and such recklessness in our neighborhoods?”

As if the question represented one an entire congregation pondered, the crowds cheered in approval.

Although Coppin seemed uncontrollable to his mother, the teenager posed no danger to five armed members of the NYPD.

He carried a hair brush in his hand when police claimed they mistook the bristled item for a gun.