Prosecutors Meet With Officer Who Fired First at Bell

The undercover detective who first opened fire on Sean Bell met with prosecutors for the first time yesterday at the Queens District Attorney's office, a detectives' union official said.

The meeting with Detective Gescard Isnora leaves just one of the five officers involved in the shooting, Detective Michael Oliver, to be interviewed by the district attorney's office, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association, Michael Palladino, said. Detective Oliver fired 31 of the 50 bullets shot at Bell, Trent Benefield, and Joseph Guzman in the early hours of November 25 outside a strip club in Jamaica, Queens, according to the police account of the shooting.

Detective Isnora is a 28-year-old of Haitian descent who has been at the department for six years, sources said.

Mr. Palladino said the four officers felt compelled to speak, even though they are not legally bound to do so. "They are doing that because they want their side of the story to be told," he said. "They don't have anything to hide."

Mr. Palladino said he did not know whether Detective Oliver would meet with the Queens District Attorney's office. Detective Oliver's lawyer, James Culleton, did not return calls yesterday.

A spokesman for the Queens District Attorney's office, Kevin Ryan, declined to comment about the ongoing investigation. Mr. Palladino said he was told that a grand jury would soon begin hearing testimony and seeing evidence in the case.

The newly elected state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, met yesterday with the Reverend Al Sharpton, Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre-Bell, and a cadre of lawyers and Ms. Paultre-Bell's relatives for about half an hour.

Mr. Sharpton said it was Mr. Cuomo's first meeting since he was sworn in earlier this week, an indication of the importance of the issues raised by the shooting.

"What we talked about was police procedures," Rev. Sharpton said, with Ms. Paultre-Bell standing beside him. "He made it clear to us that he understands the concerns and gravity in police-community relations. It is not an anti-police position to agree that something must be done."

In the months following the police shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, the then state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, took a hard line on the police department about stop-and-frisk searches, which department critics said were based on racial profiling. At one point, Mr. Spitzer threatened to subpoena the NYPD for its records.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Javier Gomez, said the new attorney general made it clear in the meeting that "justice must be done and we must learn from this tragedy."

Mr. Cuomo also contacted Bell's mother, Valerie Bell, this week to schedule a meeting, an attorney representing the Bell family, Neville Mitchell, said.

Mrs. Bell and other family members and friends started a 50-day vigil in front of the 103rd Precinct in Queens in Sean Bell's honor on January 1.