7 More Officers Sidelined In Beating Investigation

7 More Officers Sidelined In Beating Investigation

PHILADELPHIA -- Seven more police officers were taken off street duty yesterday as investigators look into the videotaped police beating of three shooting suspects during a traffic stop.

Thirteen of the estimated 15 officers on hand during the incident on Monday have been taken off the streets as investigators pore over the television news footage, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said.

The video shows officers kicking, punching and beating the men, all of whom are black. On his syndicated radio show, the Rev. Al Sharpton compared it with the videotaped 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King by a group of white Los Angeles police officers.

"I've not seen anything like that since Rodney King, and it's worse than Rodney King, and we cannot allow our community to be under siege," Sharpton said.

But Ramsey denied the beating was racially motivated, saying one officer involved, a sergeant, is black.

"I know everybody's trying to make this into a racial thing. I don't believe it is," Ramsey said. "We just had a policeman murdered on Saturday . . . and emotions are running high."

Birth-Control Patch Called Riskier

A consumer advocacy group petitioned the government to pull the birth-control patch off the market, calling it far riskier than the pill. "Ortho-Evra is a poor choice for women," Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen wrote to the Food and Drug Administration. Warnings about the Ortho-Evra patch have escalated since a 2005 investigation by the Associated Press found that patch users suffer higher rates of life-threatening blood clots than women who take birth-control pills. A spokeswoman for patch maker Ortho Women's Health & Urology, a J&J company, said that "Ortho-Evra is a safe and effective hormonal birth control option."

Worth the Wait: $97 Million Prize

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Carl Hunter, a 73-year-old construction company owner from Metairie who lost two homes in Hurricane Katrina, claimed a $97 million Powerball prize. He bought the ticket at a convenience store on Jan. 16 when he stopped to buy his wife a gallon of milk, but he waited to turn it in.