Three NYPD detectives firing 50 bullets at one unarmed man? An acquittal? It begs the question; how many bullets are too many bullets for an acquittal? Previously, we learned that 41 bullets were not too many for an acquittal, and today we learned that 50 are not too many.

Three detectives were found not guilty Friday on all charges in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets outside a club in Jamaica, Queens, in November 2006. The verdict prompted calls for calm from the mayor, angry promises of protests by those speaking for the Bell family and expressions of relief by the detectives.

Detective Michael Oliver, who fired 31 bullets the night of the shooting and faced manslaughter charges, said Justice Arthur J. Cooperman had made a “fair and just decision.”

Justice Arthur J. Cooperman, who delivered the verdict in State Supreme Court, said many of the prosecution’s witnesses, including Mr. Bell’s friends and the two wounded victims, were simply not believable. “At times, the testimony of those witnesses just didn’t make sense,” he said.

While his decision prompted several supporters of Mr. Bell to storm out of the courtroom, and there were a few small scuffles outside the courthouse, by early afternoon there were no suggestions of any broader unrest around the city. Mr. Bell’s family members made no comment as they left, and they immediately drove to visit his grave at the Nassau Knolls Cemetery and Memorial Park in Port Washington.

Source: New York Times: 3 Detectives Acquitted in Bell Shooting

Referring to the departmental and even federal charges the officers may face, Cooperman continued “questions of carelessness and incompetence must be left to other forums.” As the judge finished his verdict, Nicole Paultre Bell, Bell’s fiancee and widow, stood up immediately and walked out of the courtroom as Bell’s father buried his head in hands sitting in silence as a friend comforted him.

About one hundred people—and three times as many cops—gathered outside State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens as police and news choppers buzzed overhead. PBA president Pat Lynch was the first to react to reporters, saying this “was a case where there is no winner and no losers, we still had a death that occurred… we still had officers who had to deal with that death.”

As an angry crowd nearly drowned him out with screams of “Murderers,” Lynch added that the verdict sent a message to New York City police officers that says “you will get fairness” which was important to officers out on patrol because “there is never a script… we have to deal with circumstances as they come.”

Bell’s family and friends—including shooting the Rev. Al Sharpton, attorney Sanford Rubenstein and shooting victim Joseph Guzman who wore a soft cast on his right leg and a white T-shirt emblazoned with a sparkly silver “Sean Bell’s Boys” logo—walked past the assembled media without comment.

Carrying banners that said “50 Shots” and “Justice for Sean Bell,” many Bell supporters chanted “Racist Cops You Can’t Hide, We Charge You with Genocide” as one small scuffle broke out when a Bell supporter took exception to a reporter’s question.

[…]

The acquitted NYPD officers Mike Oliver (L), Gescard Isnora (C) and Marc Cooper

In “Guns Gone Wild,” an examination of the frequency with which cops fire their weapons, and NYPD tactics in the wake of the Bell slaying, some observers questioned the efficacy of deploying details of detectives to stake out a two-bit strip club in Jamaica, Queens.

“Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD cop and prosecutor who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, calls such initiatives “overpolicing.” “What are these cops doing in a strip bar in Jamaica at four in the morning listening to trash talk?” O’Donnell says. “You’ve got alcohol and drugs being used and then you have cops bringing firearms and deadly force into the picture. So you have trouble. . . . We’ve got to stop overpolicing everything.”

Source: Village Voice blog Runnin’ Scared: UPDATE: Sean Bell Cops Not Guilty on All Counts As City Reacts

Photo credit: Reuters

See also:

• NYC Mayor and NYC Police Commissioner Kelly Statements on Acquittals
• The Scene Outside the Courthouse
• Officers who shot Sean Bell aquitted of all charges
• New York Times Topic: Sean Bell

Natavia Lowery has confessed.

Linda Stein’s personal assistant was arrested Friday after she confessed in the bloody beating of the punk pioneer and Realtor to the stars.

Natavia Lowery, 26, who told police she was subjected racist slurs from Stein, bludgeoned her boss with a weighted yoga-stick used for stretching exercises.

She finally snapped after Stein blew marijuana smoke in her face and told her to hurry up, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced in a press conference Friday afternoon.

Stein, whose real estate clients included high-profile celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Sting, and Steven Spielberg, was discovered on Oct. 30 in her posh 5th Avenue apartment lying in a pool of blood.

The grisly killing touched off an investigation that included many in Stein’s inner circle, including an Italian former lover, upscale pot dealers and a former assistant described as a handsome Romeo type, as well as contractors who were working on the roof of her swanky building on the Upper East Side.

Police were finally led to Lowry, whose previous brushes with the law had been unknown to Stein.

Lowery was taken to the 7th Precinct in Manhattan after being nabbed at her Brooklyn apartment, law enforcement officials said.

Sources said Stein hired Lowery in early summer after firing her previous personal assistant. Stein, an old-school style broker, conducted most of her business through personal contacts and lunch and dinner meetings.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, The New York Times’ Sewell Chan offers some commentary on the workaday life of the personal assistant.

Personal assistants are ubiquitous in New York, a city full of powerful financiers, lawyers, celebrities and other professionals who need others to answer their phones, set up their appointments, get their coffee and walk their Bichon Frisé. “The job requires walking a fine line between intimacy and professionalism, a bit like the nanny who is paid to feed, bathe and hug your child,” Patricia Cohen wrote in a 2004 article about assistants to celebrities.

Based on the police account, it appears that Ms. Stein and Ms. Lowery were caught in a deadly, real life version of this story. Even in death, Ms. Stein was remembered for having a hot temper and a combative, even pugnacious, personality. In investigating the slaying, the police interviewed the superintendent of Ms. Stein’s apartment building, who had argued with her over roof repairs. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly this afternoon that Ms. Lowery struck Ms. Stein with the exercise stick six or seven times after a torrent of verbal abuse from Ms. Stein.

The boss-assistant relationship rarely descends into violence, but it can be intense nonetheless, as Roseanne Badowski, a longtime executive assistant to the General Executive leader Jack F. Welch, explained in a 2004 book, “Managing Up.” And it is a recurring theme in pop culture, from Wilhemina and Mark on ABC’s “Ugly Betty” to Ari and Lloyd on HBO’s “Entourage”; or in the book and film “The Devil Wears Prada” and many of its forebears, including “Swimming With Sharks” and “Nine to Five.”

Here is an AP video report from a few days ago when the murder was still unsolved.

Arthur Bremer had fame on his mind, as his diary revealed, when he tried to assassinate Gov. George Wallace, a Presidential candidate in 1972. He has now been released from prison.

Arthur Bremer, the man who stalked President Richard M. Nixon before shooting and paralyzing Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace in 1972, was released from a Maryland prison today, with 17 years shaved off his sentence.

State officials said that, under state law, Bremer’s model behavior and consistent work while incarcerated mandated he be released.

When he was last free, Bremer came to Maryland armed with a snub-nosed revolver and a plan to make himself famous. He stalked Nixon for weeks and then settled, reluctantly, on an easier target.

“Wallace will have the honor,” Bremer wrote in his diary May 4, 1972, less than two weeks before he opened fire on the presidential candidate at a campaign appearance in Laurel.

Although he yearned for fame at the time of the shooting, Bremer, now 57, has not spoken publicly since his trial that year, and he now appears intent on slipping back into society as quietly as possible.

David Blumberg, chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission, said Bremer is “certainly a different person.”

“At the time of his offense, he wanted notoriety,” Blumberg said, “and now he actively disdains it.”

[…]

On May 15, 1972, Bremer pressed through a crowd in a parking lot outside the Laurel Shopping Center and opened fire, striking Wallace and three others, all of whom survived. Bremer was convicted of four counts of assault with intent to murder and other charges after a jury rejected his insanity defense.

Wallace spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and in constant pain. Before his death in 1998, he sent letters to Bremer saying he had forgiven him. “If you’ll accept Jesus Christ into your heart like I’ve done, we’ll be in heaven together, Arthur,” Wallace wrote, according to his son, George.

Here is a link to the May 16, 1972 Washington Post article reporting on the assassination attempt:

Surrounded by a crowd of 1,000, the 52-year-old governor was shot at close range following his speech at the Laurel Shopping Center, about 14 miles northeast of Washington.

Wallace, campaigning in his third bid for the presidency, was hit in the chest and stomach by two bullets that caused four or five wounds.

At 2:15 a.m., a spokesman for Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring said the governor was “awake and alert” in the recovery room. “At this point, his progress is satisfactory,” the spokesman said.

At 11 p.m., after five hours surgery, his wife told a press conference that, though he is seriously injured, “I feel very optimistic about him and you know his nature. He didn’t earn the title of ‘Fighting Little Judge’ for nothing … ”

Mrs. Wallace said he was conscious through the ordeal, except while under surgery, and remains in good spirits. “I feel very good that he is alive and he has a sound heart and sound brain … I couldn’t thank God more for that,” she said. Three persons traveling with Wallace were also wounded in the shooting.

Police immediately arrested a blond young man identified as Arthur Herman Bremer, a 21-year-old bus boy and janitor from Milwaukee, Wis. He was charged by state authorities with four counts of assault with intent to murder and was arraigned in Baltimore on two federal charges. One of the federal charges was interfering with the civil rights of a candidate for federal office, a provision of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The Wallace second charge was for assaulting a federal officer; one of the four people shot at the rally was Secret Service officer.