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......

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......

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 three police officers indicted in the shooting death of unarmed Queens resident Sean Bell will be headed to the Queen County courthouse today, and police presence will be increased. The lawyers for the three detectives, Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper, will be discussing issues such as change of venue, but a number of threats against the trio, including what WABC 7 describes as a "high ranking gang member" threatening to "have an......

Det. Marc Cooper is being accused of and sued for beating a man as he arrested him in another club the month before the Sean Bell shooting. Cooper has already been indicted on reckless endangerment charges related to the four shots he fired out of fifty total in the Bell incident. The latest complaint alleges that Cooper manhandled Michael Blakey and Earnest Ellison as he arrested them for selling marijuana in Queens' Club Amazura in......

The Daily News has an exclusive story in today's paper about '31-Shot Cop' Michael Oliver that spared no manpower digging into the indicted detective's past and present. Six(!) staff writers contributed to a story that paints an unflattering portrait of its subject, including details of a then-rookie Oliver assaulting a black cab driver, insinuations that he parties too much, and the possibility that he may be in violation of a state-residency rule for NYPD cops.......

Every day, there's something new related to the Sean Bell shooting case. Police arrested the boss of Ronaldo Manaya, the janitor who appeared as a last-minute witness during the grand jury hearing. Apparently, Melvin Cordero threatened to fire Manaya if he told police what he saw while working at the AirTrain terminal. The janitor ended up going to the police months later and testifying that he heard the police identify themselves before Bell drove towards......

Hot potato no more? After the local papers seized on information (leaked by police sources) that a drug dealer claimed that Sean Bell, who was shot by police in November, shot him last summer, the man has come forward to deny he identified Bell as his assailant. Anthony Jeffers told the Daily News, "Here and there I sell drugs in the neighborhood. But I didn't say nothing about Sean Bell. I don't want no trouble......

Here we go: Sources tell the Daily News that a drug dealer told the police he was shot by Sean Bell during a turf war last summer. Apparently the dealer was arrested on Sunday, and a source said, "He hoped to cut a deal somehow with this information, but so far his account seems credible." The dealer had been shot by a rival drug dealer in Queens, but he wasn't able to identify him.......

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,......

The Daily News has a few stories about the upcoming trial of three cops indicted in the shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man killed by police hours before his wedding. After surveying readers, the News finds that most people think the verdict were generally fair, though more blacks and Latinos thought the charges should have been more severe, whereas more white respondents thought the charges were too severe. You can see all the......

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......

Yesterday afternoon, demonstrators protested the Queens grand jury indictments of three police officers in the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell. Marchers, who walked from Union Square to 1 Police Plaza, were upset that only three of the five officers who shot at Bell and his two friends, all of them unarmed, were indicted. And there's a little dissonance between the coverage in the Daily News and Post about Detective Michael Oliver, who fired 31......

Yesterday, a grand jury decided to indict three detectives in the shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man who had been celebrating the night before his wedding day at a Queens nightclub. The charges were manslaughter for Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver and reckless endangerment for Marc Cooper. Isnora fired the first shot, one of 11 he eventually fired, while Oliver fired the most, 31 rounds. Cooper fired 4 times; in total, the......

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......

Yesterday, Detective Michael Oliver was the final police officer to testify in front of a Queens grand jury. The jury will determine whether criminal charges should be brought against the NYPD for firing 50 shots at three unarmed men, killing Sean Bell on the day before his wedding. Oliver, who had been undercover at the same Queens strip club Bell was celebrating his bachelor party, fired 31 of the 50 shots (which means he......

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 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......

Here is part two of our semi-chronological look back at the top stories this past year (here is part one): Queens Blackout The Blackout of 2003, as irritating as it was, happened to the whole city, could be blamed on other states and didn't last too long. When parts of Queens lost power in July, Con Ed wrote it off as an isolated event affecting only a few thousands customers. But as Queens spent days......

Toxicology reports now show that Sean Bell, the unarmed man who was killed in a barrage of police bullets hours before his wedding, had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. Which gives the groups representing the police some soundbites regarding the events of the night. The Detectives' Endowment Association president Michael Palladino said, "[This report] gives some insight into why Sean Bell acted the way he did behind the wheel. His behavior was......

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......

Yesterday, Democracy Now.org showed footage taken from the Air Train station near the club in Jamaica, Queens where Sean Bell and his two friends were shot by police. And the video (link to download MP3) is bananas. One video shows a bullet coming into the station and barely missing a man. Another video shows two Port Authority police officers ducking from the bullets and running. The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez, who co-hosts Democracy Now, explained......

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......

The fiancee of Sean Bell officially changed her surname to "Bell". Nicole Paultre was supposed to marry Bell on November 25, but Bell was killed when police opened fire on him and two friends after his bachelor party. Paultre revealed that a civil court judge signed an order for Paultre to change her name to Nicole Paultre Bell in an exclusive interview with Essence.com. ESSENCE: How does it feel to suddenly become the face......

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,......