N.Y. Police on Trial in Wedding-Day Killing

50 Shots Fired At Unarmed Man

NEW YORK, Feb. 25 -- Police who fired 50 shots at an unarmed man, killing him on his wedding day, showed "carelessness verging on incompetence," a prosecutor asserted Monday in opening statements as the racially charged trial of three undercover detectives began.

The detectives fired a barrage of bullets at Sean Bell and two of his friends, killing Bell outside a strip club where the trio had been celebrating Bell's bachelor party in the early morning hours of his wedding day.

Assistant District Attorney Charles Testagrossa also said the detectives in a special unit devoted to making drug and prostitution arrests in clubs were eager to make an arrest that morning because they had heard that their ranks might be reduced.

Defense attorneys, delivering their opening statements, said the detectives had reason to believe that one member of Bell's party had a gun and acted appropriately to confront that threat. They contended that the focus on the number of shots fired has distracted attention from the danger the detectives faced and noted that Bell hit a police officer with his car during the melee.

The case has sparked protest and debate in New York as another example of police excess in their treatment of young black men. Days after the 2006 shooting, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, "I can tell you that is to me unacceptable or inexplicable, how you can have 50 shots fired." He added that "it sounds to me that excessive force was used, but that's up to the district attorney to find out."

Two of the three detectives on trial are black, as are all three of the victims. But opponents of their tactics maintain that white or black officers might have behaved differently if they had confronted three young white men leaving a bar.

The Rev. Al Sharpton led a prayer vigil outside the courtroom Monday morning and sat with Bell's fiancee in court. Councilman Charles Barron called the trial a last opportunity "for this system to show that they value black life the same as they value white life."

Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, which could bring them sentences of 25 years in prison. Detective Marc Cooper has pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment, which carries a one-year sentence.

The three chose a bench trial before Justice Arthur Cooperman in Queens after losing a request to have the trial moved outside the borough because of intense pretrial publicity.

Bell, 23, was leaving Club Kalua in the Jamaica section of Queens on Nov. 25, 2006, with friends Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23. Defense attorneys said that Bell and his friends argued with a man outside the club and that undercover officers followed them to their car, suspecting that they were retrieving a gun.

They had no gun, the defense acknowledges. But Isnora pointed his handgun at Bell's car. Testagrossa, the prosecutor, said Isnora did not effectively display his badge before confronting Bell and his friends, who, he asserted, never understood that he was a police officer.

Defense attorneys said Bell drove his car into one of the detectives and then crashed into an unmarked police van.