Three undercover police detectives on trial in the death of an unarmed man killed in a hail of gunfire on his wedding day were reckless and trigger happy, prosecutors argued Monday. They also said police were careless and desperate to make an arrest because their vice unit was about to be disbanded, a prosecutor said on Monday.

Sean Bell, 23, who had been at a bachelor party on the night before his wedding, was killed outside a Queens strip club in the early hours of Nov. 25. Two of his friends were wounded.

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton sat next to the fiance, Nicole Paultre, in a gallery packed with Bell's friends and relatives and police sympathetic to the defendants. Protesters outside, many of whom wanted the officers to face murder charges, held up signs numbered 1 to 50, chanting each number.

Demonstrators have called the case an example of police brutality toward blacks. One of the defendants is a black, one is black Hispanic and the third is white.

The case will be decided by a State Supreme Court judge because the officers waived their right to a jury trial, saying any jury in the borough of Queens would be biased against police due to intense media coverage.

Prosecutor Charles Testagrossa told the judge in opening arguments that once the evidence is heard, "It will be clear that what happened cannot be explained away as a mere accident or mistake. It can only be characterized as criminal."