Undercover detective Hispolito Sanchez testified for a second day, with prosecutors playing the 911 call he made on November 25, 2006, the night police fatally fired at Sean Bell 50 times.
Sanchez's colleagues detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard face manslaughter charges while detective Marc Cooper faces reckless endangerment charges in the bench trial at the Queens courthouse. Sanchez, who did not fire any of the 50 shots at Sean Bell or his friends, heard but did not see any of the police fire.
Outside topless bar Kalua Lounge, where he and other cops were conducting an undercover operation, he shouted into his phone, "There were shots fired!" and told the operator that he was a black male undercover cop, and that he thought "two perps" were down. The Daily News has a partial transcript.
Because Sanchez had apparently heard Bell's friend Joseph Guzman say, "Yo, go to get my gun" after Bell said he wanted to "f---...up" another bar patron, he called a lieutenant to warn the others the men were possibly armed. Sanchez also said he didn't hear the cops identify themselves and he didn't hear police "commands" (like "put your hands down!") but a defense lawyer pointed out Sanchez told a grand jury he did.
Lieutenant Michael Wheeler, who was a sergeant in the Queens precinct in 2006, testified that after the shooting Isnora nor Cooper could not remember how many times they fired (Isnora fired 11 times, Cooper 4 times) and Oliver, who fired 31 times, couldn't even remember if he fired at all.
The News' Denis Hamill thinks the witnesses need their Gingko because they all had "senior moments" and suggests, "If the defense witnesses are half as good for the accused cops as the prosecution witnesses have been, these guys should be walking."
