By AL BAKER and PATRICK McGEEHAN
Published: March 25, 2012
The dismissal of the undercover detective who fired the first of the 50 police bullets when Sean Bell was killed more than five years ago may close the final chapter of that drawn-out story. But on the Queens streets near the site of Mr. Bell’s shooting, residents expressed anger, and resentments that remain unresolved.
Some said it had taken far too long for the New York Police Department to punish the detective, Gescard F. Isnora. Others, still upset that Mr. Isnora and two other detectives were acquitted in a criminal trial in 2008, wondered why the dismissal came just as the killing of a black teenager in Florida was stirring memories of the Bell case. (Mr. Bell was black; Detective Isnora is of Haitian and Mexican descent; and another detective acquitted in the shooting, Marc Cooper, is black.)
The response among police personnel was more subdued. Many officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly, said the termination would hurt morale, though some said the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, had no choice but to cut ties to a detective whose name had been tainted.
Mr. Kelly decided to accept the recommendation of an administrative judge who presides over police disciplinary cases that Detective Isnora be terminated, and he forced the retirements of three other officers who were involved in the shooting of Mr. Bell, 23, outside a club on Nov. 25, 2006, his wedding day. On the blocks in Jamaica, Queens, near where Mr. Bell died, there was no shortage of opinions about Mr. Kelly’s decision.
“It’s long overdue,” said Reina Alvarez, 30, a teacher from Rosedale. “It took too long for those guys to lose their jobs.”
Rodney Travis, 31, who lives two blocks from where the shooting occurred, asked: “Why now? I don’t get it. It takes so long to get justice?”
Mr. Travis, a nurse’s aide, said that he did not think the police had changed their tactics since the Bell shooting, and that officers stop and frisk a lot of local residents.
“I lived in this neighborhood a long time and there’s a lot of harassment,” Mr. Travis said. “It’s a regular thing over here. It’s not easy living in a neighborhood like this.”
Marion Spady, 45, a carpenter sitting outside a deli on Sutphin Boulevard, said that in light of the killing of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch member in Sanford, Fla., Mr. Kelly’s announcement was timed to “soothe people’s minds.”
“A lot of people out here feel the New York City police force is overstepping their boundary with a lot of us; Sean Bell; frisking,” Mr. Spady said. “They did this to try and get the media off them.”
Philip E. Karasyk, a lawyer for Detective Isnora, said, “The real issue is, why did Commissioner Kelly come to his decision right at this moment, now?” Mr. Karasyk also noted how slowly Mr. Kelly had moved compared with the administrative judge, who read hundreds of pages of testimony and made a speedy decision. The case went to the judge after his client, Detective Cooper and Detective Michael Oliver were acquitted by a Queens Supreme Court justice.
Mr. Kelly and the Police Department have faced strong criticism recently over its stop-and-frisk tactics in minority neighborhoods, its surveillance practices and the fatal police shooting in February of Ramarley Graham, an unarmed teenager, who died in the bathroom of his Bronx home after narcotics officers had trailed him there and kicked down his door.
Mr. Kelly has vigorously defended his policies as the most effective strategy to fight crime, most recently at a combative City Council hearing on March 15.
One officer said Detective Isnora was guilty of an unforgivable error — and harmed the careers of his colleagues — when he opened fire, mistakenly thinking one of the men in Mr. Bell’s car had a gun. But others said the department also bore some blame; the detective was trying to do his job and was part of a unit pursuing the managerial objective of detecting illegal behavior in rowdy nightclubs.
Mr. Kelly and his police force had at least one defender in Jamaica, a 27-year-old grocery store owner who would identify himself only as Bob.
“Fifty shots may not be justified, but you don’t know the full story,” said Bob, who, unlike most of those interviewed in the area, is white.
“You have a vehicle coming at you and you don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
He also doubted that Mr. Kelly was motivated by the swelling outrage over the Martin case. “It’s apples and oranges,” Bob said. “The cops were looking for criminals in the bar. I don’t think it’s the same.”
The enduring truth is that “at the end of the day, race will be an issue,” he said, adding, “People will still stereotype.”
Joseph Goldstein, Ivan Pereira and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2012, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: After Detective’s Firing, Tensions Linger in Bell Case.
