Photograph of Nicole Paultre-Bell heading to the Queens County Courthouse today by Craig Ruttle/AP Lawyers made closing arguments in the Sean Bell shooting trial today to Judge Arthur Cooperman, who is presiding over the bench trial. Defense lawyers argued that the police officers on trial were acting in self-defense. One lawyer, Paul Martin, blamed Bell's friend Joseph Guzman, for intimating he was going to get a gun to even a score. Martin said, "He......

Yesterday, a doctor who treated police shooting victim Joseph Guzman was the prosecution's last witness, detailing how Guzman was riddled with bullets. Guzman's friend, Sean Bell, was killed in the gunfire, and two undercover detectives face manslaughter charges while another faces reckless endangerment charges for the shooting. Surgeon Dr. Albert Cooper testified that on November 25, 2006, Guzman was brought into the Mary Immaculate Hospital, "He was telling me in somewhat of a mumbling voice......

Joseph Guzman dramatically described the night he was hit 16 times, with 19 wounds all over his body, and his friend Sean Bell was killed in a hail of police gunfire. In recalling the man holding a gun, who turned out to be an undercover detective, stood near Bell's car, "He shot me. I’m looking in his eyes, man. He shot me. Everything slowed down. But I’m looking at him shooting me. He’s continuing to......

Undercover detective Hispolito Sanchez testified for a second day, with prosecutors playing the 911 call he made on November 25, 2006, the night police fatally fired at Sean Bell 50 times. Sanchez's colleagues detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard face manslaughter charges while detective Marc Cooper faces reckless endangerment charges in the bench trial at the Queens courthouse. Sanchez, who did not fire any of the 50 shots at Sean Bell or his friends, heard but......

Photograph of protesters outside the Sean Bell shooting trial in Queens by Gary He/AP; the protesters are holding signs counting down the 50 shots fired Under intense scrutiny from the community and media, the trial of three police officers in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man started today. Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora face manslaughter charges while Detective Mark Cooper is charged with reckless endangerment in the 2006 death of Sean Bell,......

If lawyers for the detectives involved in the Sean Bell case get their way, the venue for a trial may be moved out of Queens. The attorneys for Detectives Mike Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper met with Judge Arthur Cooperman and prosecutors yesterday to notify them of their intent to move the case out of Queens. Oliver and Isnora are charged with manslaughter while Cooper is facing reckless endangerment in the shooting death......

On November 25, 2006, groom-to-be Sean Bell and his friends were leaving the Kalua nightclub in Queens when undercover police confronted them. In the confusion that ensued (the police thinking the men were armed or were going to the car to retrieve a gun, uncertainty over whether the police identified themselves leading Bell and his friends to think they were being carjacked) five undercover cops fired 50 times at Bell's car. His friends Joseph......

Trent Benefield, one of the victims in the undercover police shooting of three unarmed men outside a Queens nightclub last year, was arrested Tuesday night for attacking is girlfriend on a street. Plainclothes officers reportedly saw Benefield yelling, "F------ bitch!" before, per the Daily News, "he leaned out his car window and punched Nyla Page-Walthrus, 19, in the throat," "smacked her with the vehicle's door, grabbed her by the neck and hit her in the......

On August 9, 1997, a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant taken into police custody (and eventually found innocent) was beaten and sodomized with a broken broomstick by police officers at the 70th Precinct in Brooklyn. Today, Abner Louima is back in New York and is attending an event at the Reverend Al Sharpton's The National Action Network tonight. From the National Action Network:ABNER LOUIMA AND REV. AL SHARPTON, ALONG WITH OTHER VICTIMS OF POLICE BRUTALITY, TO......

Lawyers for the detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper, the three police officers indicted in the fatal November shooting of Sean Bell, demanded that prosecutors turn over evidence in the case. The NY Times reports their lawyers feel that the prosecutors are withholding evidence:“It’s like having the fox guarding the chicken coop,” [Karasyk] said. Late in April, prosecutors handed over 2,100 pages of evidence in Mr. Bell’s shooting, as well as videotapes and......

The NY Post reveals what many people were wondering in the Sean Bell shooting: Who fired the shots that actually killed Bell and hit his friends Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield. It turns out Detective Michael Oliver fired the shots. Oliver fired the most shots, 31, of the detectives and was charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter last week. The other detective charged with manslaughter, Gescard Isnora, fired 11 times, but didn't hit anything. However,......

Three detectives were charged in the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell outside a Queens nightclub, and all three pleaded not guilty. Two of the police officers, Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora, face serious charges that include first-degree and second-degree manslaughter (it was originally thought they would only face second-degree manslaughter), while Detective Marc Cooper faces charges of reckless endangerment. When asked how he would plea, Isnora's lawyer Philip Karasyk said, "Not guilty......

At 7AM, the three detectives indicted in the shooting of Sean Bell last November turned themselves. WNBC reports that Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper will be fingerprinted and processed before their arraignment this afternoon. The grand jury came to a decision last Friday, but said it would wait until today to make the official announcement. However, news of the indictments got out when defense lawyers for the cops involved found out whether their......

Update: The NYPD will have to be on alert on Monday now? Earlier, WNBC reported that the grand jury investigating the fatal police shooting of Sean Bell has reached a verdict but will wait until Monday to release it. But now a defense lawyer says the jury voted to indict three of the detectives involved: Michael Oliver who fired 31 shots, Gescard F. Isnora who fired the first of 11 shots, and Marc Cooper.......

The first day of grand jury deliberations in the Sean Bell shooting case ended without a verdict, but a new witness may have emerged. A janitor who went to a Queens police station house yesterday claims to have seen police shooting of three unarmed black men - and says he saw a "fourth man. The NYPD had always claimed there was a fourth person with a gun that made Bell and his friends "targets"......

With the grand jury delivering a decision about the Sean Bell shooting case any moment, the city is on alert. The Mayor met with Queens community leaders yesterday. Mayor Bloomberg also called Bell's mother, fiancee Nicole Paultre-Bell, and the Reverend Al Sharpton. The Mayor said:We are very sensitive to emotions and I don't expect any trouble. People have a right to express themselves. Some people will be happy no matter what, some people will......

Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, who were in their friend Sean Bell's car when police fired 50 times at them, testified before the grand jury yesterday. While they did not tell reporters what they said about the shooting that after Bell's bachelor party, Benefield said, "We just need justice." Guzman, who was hospitalized for two months and is still in a wheelchair due to his wounds, said, "We've been waiting for this for a......

The grand jury for the Sean Bell shooting is hearing from witnesses this week and next. Yesterday, three friends who saw when Bell, was fired upon by police last November, testified, saying that the car Bell was driving was moving slowly. The undercover police officers who fired on the unarmed Bell and his friends maintained that Bell was driving quickly and had hit one of the officers, therefore allowing the officers to claim self-defense.......

The City Council questioned Police Commissioner Ray Kelly about NYPD tactics in the wake of the fatal shooting of Sean Bell. The Council was aggressive and straightforward; for instance, Councilman David Yassky said , "Too many African-American New Yorkers feel that they are at risk or that their family members are at risk of mistreatment, whether it be to be stopped without reason or to be victimized by excessive force." Councilman Charles Barron asked Kelly......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: "loose horses" in Queens, a stabbing in Soho, and a fatal person struck by train at 86th on the 4/5/6. No surprise: the richer a neighborhood is, the more landmarks get designated within it. Here's a pretty video of a Williamsburg Brooklyn Sunrise, from Youtube. Joseph Guzman, the survivor of the Sean Bell shooting in Queens, was released from the hospital today, nearly two months after the attack. Birds......

The NYPD released photographs of four of the five police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell last November. The NY Times says the photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request (the photograph of the fifth officer, the one who fired the first shot, was not released, due to his undercover status). This gave Detectives' Endowment Association president Michael J. Palladino opportunity to say, "The photos of......

Yesterday, thousands of people walked down Fifth Avenue in to protest a police shooting against three unarmed men. Sean Bell was shot to death just hours before his wedding while his two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were wounded in a barrage of 50 bullets in less than a minute; undercover police claimed they saw a fourth man with a gun. The march was organized by the Reverend Al Sharpton, with the theme......

The Reverend Al Sharpton announced the "shopping for justice" protest march he's been talking about since the shooting of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield by the police."Many will be shopping for trinkets and toys. We will be shopping for justice and making a moral appeal to this city and this nation. The fact that we are going on probably the most visible street in the world tomorrow, you don't have to talk......

The NYPD released its preliminary report about the shooting on November 25 which left Sean Bell dead and Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield injured. The NY Times got a copy of the report and has an in-depth article about the report and we found these points from the story intriguing and/or crazy:- [The report] includes no meaningful discussion of a fourth man, a mysterious figure who some in the Police Department have suggested may......

Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered for two different marches in Queens to protest the police shooting of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield and police conduct in the community overall. A chapter of the NAACP organized a march of hundreds of people from Jamaica Avenue and 168th Street to where the shooting took place, at Liverpool and 94th Avenue. The other march was organized by the New Black Panther Party, which started at......

Last night, Trent Benefield left the hospital a week and a half after he and his friends were shot by police outside a Queens nightclub. His friend, Sean Bell, was killed while the third friend, Joseph Guzman, remains in the hospital with around 19 wounds. Benefield thanked the Reverend "Al Sharpton, the community, the community leaders for sticking by" him. And he told NY1 that there was "no fourth man," as police have claimed,......

Last night, Larry King spoke to the Reverend Al Sharpton and Nicole Paultre. Paultre is the fiancee of Sean Bell, who was killed in a barrage of police bullets outside a Queens club hours before his wedding, and this marked her first television appearance. She was remarkably calm and poised for most of the interview, though very emotional when describing how she found out that Bell, the father of her two children, was dead. But......

Illinois Senator Barack Obama was in New York yesterday as speculating about the 2008 Presidential race started to reach a fever pitch (or as much of a fever pitch as possible this early on). He spoke at a fundraiser for Kids in Distressed situations, saying, "We have an empathy deficit. It's time for a sense of empathy to infuse our politics in America. It is time to stop making excuses for inaction." The Daily......

Yesterday, the police arrested four people while trying to locate the "fourth man" allegedly at the scene of a fatal police shooting. Marijuana and a loaded gun unconnected to the shooting were seized as well. The undercover officers involved in the confrontation outside a Queens strip club say a fourth man wearing a beige jacket was seen leaving or near a car carrying Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield; the police had fired upon......

Ever since the Saturday police shooting outside a Queens club that killed one man and injured two others, there has been talk of a fourth man in the group. Police have claimed that the undercover officers shot at them because they feared the men were armed, but no weapons were found on the men or in their car. The officers on the scene have insisted a fourth man in a beige jacket was near......