Police Trial Begins for Officers in Bell Shooting; Two Offer to Retire

From NYTimes.com

Two detectives who fired their guns in the police fusillade of 50 bullets that killed Sean Bell, a 23-year-old black man, in 2006, are offering to retire from the New York Police Department, while two other police officers involved in the shooting defended their actions at a departmental trial that began on Monday.

The shooting, which occurred in the early morning hours of what was supposed to have been Mr. Bell’s wedding day as he and two friends were driving away from a strip club in Jamaica, Queens, led to intense criticism of the tactics of undercover officers.

In 2008, three of the five officers who fired at Mr. Bell — Marc Cooper, Gescard F. Isnora and Michael Oliver — were tried on criminal charges in State Supreme Court in Queens. In acquitting the three, the judge hearing the case said, “Questions of carelessness and incompetence must be left to other forums.”

Those forums have since included Federal District Court, where Mr. Bell’s relatives and two friends injured in the shooting settled a civil lawsuit with the city for more than $7 million, and now the trial rooms on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters, where the department metes out discipline to officers found to have acted outside of internal guidelines.

In the department’s trial room on Monday, before an audience that included Mr. Bell’s fiancée, two officers, Detective Isnora and Officer Michael Carey, fought for their jobs, which currently involve clerical duties. Detective Isnora’s lawyer, Philip E. Karasyk, pursued the same defense that led to the acquittal in 2008: that Detective Isnora believed that Mr. Bell and his friends were planning a drive-by shooting, based on a threat that the detective had heard outside the strip club.

But the police lawyer prosecuting the case, Adam Sheldon, argued that Detective Isnora’s subsequent actions — confronting Mr. Bell’s car with his gun drawn and shooting 11 times after Mr. Bell tried to peel away, clipping Detective Isnora in the process — constituted a lack of judgment.

“Not only were these actions improper, they were dangerous,” said Mr. Sheldon, who called the shooting “one of the most tragic” in the department’s history.

As for Officer Carey, Mr. Sheldon said he should not have fired without more evidence that Mr. Bell or his friends, who did not in fact have guns, were firing on the police.

“By his own admission, he never saw a gun,” Mr. Sheldon said of Officer Carey, who fired three shots.

But Mr. Carey’s lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, said Officer Carey was relying on cues from fellow officers that suggested Mr. Bell and his friends presented a danger. Those indicators, Mr. Worth said, included a report over the police radio of a gun, as well as the fact that Detective Isnora was firing at the car.

“That’s an overwhelming amount of reason to fire his weapon,” Mr. Worth said in Officer Carey’s defense.

Of the five officers who fired a combined total of 50 bullets at Mr. Bell’s car, only one, Detective Paul Headley, has left the Police Department, a police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. But now two more are likely to follow: Detective Oliver and Detective Cooper have recently agreed to retire and forfeit some pay related to accumulated vacation days to settle the department’s internal disciplinary case against them, the president of the detectives union, Michael J. Palladino, said. He added that the negotiations were “in the works” and had not been made final.