50 Shots: New York braces for verdict in Sean Bell trial - Unarmed Black Man Shot to Death by NYPD

NEW YORK (AP) -- When police killed an unarmed African immigrant in a hail of 41 bullets in 1999, outrage filled the streets of New York.

About 1,200 people were arrested, including elected officials and celebrities, during a month of daily protests. Thousands more marched after four white officers were acquitted in Amadou Diallo's death.

Nine years later, three officers will learn their fate Friday in a case over another heavy police barrage: 50 shots aimed at an unarmed black man outside a nightclub on the morning of his wedding. The city is bracing for more protests if the officers are acquitted.

This time, however, the mood is muted. The New York Police Department has downplayed reports that 1,000 officers will be deployed outside the courthouse in Queens and near the spot where Sean Bell was killed in 2006.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne declined to specify any plans. The department, though "always ready for any eventuality," doesn't expect serious trouble, he said.

The mood has been tempered by several factors. Racial tensions in the city are low compared with the Diallo era, when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani had poor relations with the black community. And in the Bell case, two of the officers are black, making it less racially lopsided.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he believes that calm will prevail after the verdict.

"My expectation is that no matter what the decision is, everybody will act in a dignified manner no matter what they think," the mayor said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to be on the steps of City Hall on Wednesday with two friends of Bell's who were seriously injured in the shooting, "to call on the community to give the criminal justice system a chance to work."

Bell, 23, and the two companions were shot November 25, 2006, after a bachelor party at a seedy strip club in Queens that police had targeted for an undercover vice operation.

The defense claims that undercover officer Gescard Isnora, who was posing as a club patron, thought a gunfight involving Bell and his friends was brewing when he confronted them as they entered Bell's car and identified himself as an officer. He and the other officers opened fire after Bell violently pulled away and crashed into an unmarked police van.

The prosecution has portrayed the defendants as trigger-happy cowboys who shot first and made up a reason for it when they realized that no gun was in the car. The surviving victims testified that they were shocked when a stranger in street clothes -- Isnora -- confronted them and began shooting without warning.

The three detectives are charged with manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment. They opted to have a judge decide their case instead of a jury; state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman plans to deliver the verdict Friday.

If convicted, Isnora and Michael Oliver could get 25 years in prison; Marc Cooper faces up to one year on the lesser endangerment count. If acquitted, the officers still could be hit with departmental charges and dismissal from the force, and the city still must contend with multimillion-dollar lawsuits.

The slaying of Bell has drawn comparisons to that of Diallo, who was on his doorstep reaching for his wallet when he was shot. Both were young black men shot by officers who claimed that their targets were acting suspiciously and that deadly force was necessary.

The onslaught of pretrial publicity in the Diallo case persuaded an appeals court to move that trial to Albany, where a jury acquitted them in 2000. The news prompted protesters to take to the streets in Manhattan and elsewhere in New York, resulting in about 100 arrests.

After Bell's killing, there was a peaceful march involving several thousand people as Sharpton rallied support for the victim's grieving fiancee and parents. Demonstrations after that were small, sporadic and uneventful.