NYPD Detectives Acquitted On All Charges in Bell Shooting

The verdict is in in the shooting of Sean Bell: Not guilty.

NEW YORK (AP) -- UPDATE: Three NYPD officers have been acquitted of all charges in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed man on his wedding day.

More to follow.

Update here.

Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day after a trial that that put the NYPD at the center of another highly charged case involving allegations of excessive firepower.

Justice Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict in a Queens courtroom packed with spectators, including victim Sean Bell's fiancee and parents, as at least 200 people gathered outside the building.

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.

Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 - his wedding day - as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends.

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged only with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren't charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.

A conviction on manslaughter could have brought up to 25 years in prison; the penalty for reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor, is a year behind bars.

The case brought back painful memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo - an African immigrant who was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a storm of protest, with hundreds arrested after taking to the streets in demonstration.

Update: Suitably Flip has reaction and a video clip from a few months back of racial arsonist Charles Barron promising trouble.

NYCLU Sues NYPD Over Alleged Harassment

The New York Civil Liberties Union is doing their part in the war on terrorism.

Apparently there is nothing they won't do to assist terrorists.

New York City sued for harassing photographers

New York City police officers need better training to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who snap pictures of city landmarks and those suspected of plotting terrorism, a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

The lawsuit was filed against the city and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on behalf of Arun Wiita, 26, a Columbia University graduate student of Indian descent who said he was handcuffed and detained after a police officer spotted him snapping pictures near a Manhattan subway station in July.

I guarantee these jerks would be the first one filing dereliction of duty lawsuits against these same officials if a bomb goes off.

So what specifically was this Wiita fellow doing?

Wiita had undertaken a project to photograph all 468 subway stations and their surrounding streets and post them on a Web site.

But the humiliation of being held in handcuffs for almost half an hour had convinced him to scale back the project, he said.

"Most reasonable people would say that you shouldn't be able to slap handcuffs on someone just because they're holding a camera near a New York City subway station," Wiita said.

In other words, Wiita was photographing the buildings and approach/escape routes and posting them on the web. I think most reasonable people would say Wiita was doing a scouting project for potential terrorists.

And the NYCLU is doing everything they can to make that happen.

It's not as if Al-Qaida hasn't thought already about attacks on the NYC subways.

More from the NY Times

Third Suspect in NYPD Shooting Nabbed in Pennsylvania

A shame he was captured alive. An even bigger shame is these scumbags will never be executed.

The third man sought in the shooting of two New York City police officers was arrested shortly before 8 o'clock this morning, Eastern time, along the side of a highway near Pocono Township, Pa.

The man, Robert Ellis, 34, was captured near the intersection of Interstate 80 and Interstate 380 following a brief pursuit by a team of officers from the Pennsylvania State Police, the United States Marshals Service and the New York City police.

Mr. Ellis, whom the police said was unarmed and was not injured, was taken to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Swiftwater, Pa. Before he was found, the police had considered him armed and dangerous.

The arrest, announced by Capt. James Murtin of the Pennsylvania State Police at a press conference this morning, took place near milepost 292 on Interstate 80, west of Stroudsburg, Pa. and about a half-mile from where another man sought in the shooting, Dexter Bostic, 34, was captured Wednesday evening.

The police said they saw Mr. Ellis fleeing into the woods at the time of Mr. Bostic's arrest, and that search teams and dogs were converging on the same wooded area this morning when Mr. Ellis was apprehended.

"It appears that he hunkered down for the night, with no attempt to escape," Captain Murtin said. "From what we can see, he didn't travel much at all." Mr. Ellis had various personal items and some food with him when he was taken into custody, Captain Murtin said, but no weapons.

The New York City police say they believe Mr. Bostic and Mr. Ellis fired the shots that gravely wounded Officer Russel Timoshenko and inflicted less serious injury on his partner, Officer Herman Yan, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn early Monday.

The first suspect, Lee Woods, 29, was arrested Monday in Far Rockaway, Queens, and was arraigned in criminal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday

Three NYPD Officers Indicted

Maybe racial arsonists Al Sharpton and Charles Barron can shut up for a couple of minutes now. But I doubt it.

Three indicted in NYPD shooting

A grand jury Friday indicted at least three of the five police officers whose 50-shot barrage killed an unarmed man on his wedding day, lawyers for the officers said.

It was not immediately disclosed if the other officers were also charged.

Attorneys for officers Marc Cooper, Gerscard Isnora and Michael Oliver said their clients had been indicted, but they did not know what offenses the officers had been charged with.

The three officers fired the most shots — Cooper, 4, Isnora, 11, and Oliver, 31 — in the confrontation that killed 23-year-old Sean Bell and wounded two of his friends.