Detective first to shoot at Sean Bell fired

An undercover police detective who fired the first bullets in a 50-shot barrage that killed an unarmed New York City man as he left his bachelor party has been fired and three other officers involved in the slaying will resign, ending a disciplinary process that dragged on for nearly 5 1/2 years.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly made the decision to push the four officers out last week, four months after a department administrative trial judge concluded that Det. Gescard Isnora acted improperly in the 2006 killing of the would-be groom, Sean Bell.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Friday, "There was nothing in the record to warrant overturning the decision."

Isnora and detectives Marc Cooper and Michael Oliver and Lt. Gary Napoli were criminally charged after the shooting outside a Queens nightclub, but were acquitted on all counts following a trial in 2008.

The detectives, who had been monitoring the club for drug activity, decided to stop Bell and his friends after they left the nightspot and got into their car following a verbal altercation with another group of men.

Isnora said he believed they were in the vehicle to retrieve a gun. In fact, the men were unarmed, but Isnora began shooting when the driver hit the gas and rammed a police van.

Isnora fired 11 shots into the car. Bell, 23, was killed and two friends seriously wounded.

Cooper and Oliver also fired shots. Another detective who fired his gun, Paul Headley, has already resigned. The administrative judge ruled a fifth shooter not to have acted improperly.

The firing means that Isnora will lose his pension and health care benefits.

Mike Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, said the union was reviewing the decision to see if Isnora has any legal recourse.

"The [decision's] message is that you could be in a life-or-death situation, act within the law, be justified by the courts and still lose everything -- your livelihood as well as your retirement," Palladino said.