Officers Acquitted in Sean Bell Killing

By Matthew Williams
17:35, April 26th 2008
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Three New York City police officers were acquitted on Friday in the killing of unarmed Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day, Reuters reports. However, their worries are far from over, as outside the courthouse, crowds began swearing and screaming “Murderers! Murderers!” Meanwhile, inside the courtroom, Sean Bell’s mother started to cry and his fiancée walked out of the room after the verdict.

Bell, 23, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman. The police officers were doing an undercover prostitution sting at the Kalua Cabaret and claimed that they heard Joseph Guzman saying “Yo, go get my gun,” after a conflict with a man outside.

One of the detectives walked toward Bell’s car with the gun raised while shouting “Police, show your hands!” However, the car kept going forward knocking down police officer Gescard Isnora, who thought that Bell was armed. The three policemen started to shoot and only a few minutes after the shooting, they found out that the young man had no gun.

Oliver and Gescard Isnora were acquitted of charges that included manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment. The third officer, Marc Cooper, faced lesser charges.

After the verdict, the U.S. attorney's office mentioned it would look into the case and “take appropriate action if the evidence indicates a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes,” the Associated Press reports.

“An ugly pattern is emerging in New York,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson declared after the verdict was announced in the Bell trial. “This was a massacre. This was not a shootout. And the U.S. attorney general must give America the assurance that we all have equal protection under the law,” he added.

Police assigned extra officers to the courthouse and had helicopters in the air in order to help deal with any unrest Friday, as the angry, weeping crowd outside the courthouse made long-standing allegations of racism. However, no arrests were made.



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