The United States Department of Justice announced Tuesday that after a "careful and thorough review" it will not pursue federal civil rights charges against police officers involved in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell citing insufficient evidence.
there is not enough evidence to prove that New York Police Department detectives "acted willfully" when they fired approximately 50 bullets at Sean Bell and his friends the night of November 25, 2006. Bell, 23, had been at a nightclub in Queens for a bachelor party with friends hours before he was to marry the mother of his two young children. The shooting occurred after an altercation with the plainclothes detectives in a parking lot. Neither Bell nor his friends were armed. Two of his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were seriously injured when the officers opened fire.
Detectives Gescard Isnora, Marc Cooper, and Michael Oliver -- who fired his gun 31 times that night, pausing to reload his weapon -- were acquitted of all charges in April 2008 prompting a statement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg saying the acquittal was "inexplicable...and...unacceptable...it sounds to me like excessive force was used." Rev. Al Sharpton, Bell's fiancee and 200 others were arrested in the ensuing widespread protests sparked by the verdict.
Tuesday's DOJ statement explained that federal criminal civil rights charges hinge on prosecutors establishing that officers deliberately deprived the victims of their constitutional rights, and intended to break the law.
"Neither accident, mistake, fear, negligence nor bad judgment is sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil rights violation," the statement says. Rev. Al Sharpton released a rebuttal statement expressing his "extreme disappointment in the decision" and saying he may join with the Bell family in a civil lawsuit "to try and bring some justice...Fifty shots on an unarmed man who engaged in no crime is intolerable."
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