NEW YORK — On Friday morning, a state Supreme Court judge in Queens acquitted three officers in the shooting of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day.
There were no violent protests in the hours immediately after the conclusion of the case, as some had feared. Aside from a brief scuffle between police and protesters outside the courthouse, the response was muted.
At Manna's restaurant in Harlem later in the day, two customers sat beneath a drawing of Rosa Parks and talked about the verdict. This was not the first time New York City police officers had been found not guilty in the shooting of an unarmed black man. But anger gave way to resignation a long time ago, they said.
"This is what usually happens," said Cecily Jerrell, a retired teacher.
"After a while you get jaded," said her younger brother Major Green, 48, an unemployed hotel worker. "The rioting thing is kind of old."
Judge Arthur J. Cooperman, who decided the case without a jury, found Dets. Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver not guilty of manslaughter and Marc Cooper not guilty of reckless endangerment in the death of Bell, 23, outside the Club Kalua in November 2006.
In his judgment, Cooperman said, there had been "inconsistencies in testimony among prosecution witnesses." He also said he questioned the demeanor of certain witnesses on the stand and "the motive witnesses may have had to lie."
"At times," he concluded, "the testimony just didn't make sense."
Spectators in the packed courtroom gasped as the verdict was read, and Bell's fiancee, Nicole Paultre-Bell, walked out.
As news reached scores of protesters outside, there were cries of outrage. "No, no, no!" an elderly woman yelled as tears streamed down her face. Another woman chanted through a loudspeaker: "NYPD: You can't hide! We charge you with genocide!"
Shouting epithets against the police, demonstrators carried banners that read: "The People's Verdict: Guilty."
More than 100 officers had been dispatched to the courthouse, forming a human chain on the steps and keeping watch from nearby rooftops.
Cooper, who appeared with the other officers at a news conference, apologized. "I'd like to say sorry to the Bell family for the tragedy," he said.
After the verdict, Bell's family and fiancee went to his grave site on Long Island, while the Rev. Al Sharpton took to the airwaves, calling for a federal investigation into the shooting.
