Civil rights groups are aiming to rouse the activist side of Governor Paterson this week in the aftermath of a not guilty verdict for three detectives who killed an unarmed black man, Sean Bell.

Doubting that federal prosecutors will bring new civil rights charges against the detectives, the activists are resting their hopes for action on the former state senator from Harlem, who once protested alongside them after the 1999 shooting of another unarmed black man, Amadou Diallo.

Mr. Paterson was arrested for civil disobedience during the Diallo protests on almost the same spot where yesterday a civil rights lawyer, Norman Siegel, a state senator, Eric Adams, and leaders of a civil rights group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, called on him to use his new power as governor to make changes to a system they say is ineffective in punishing police brutality.

Some of the changes proposed by the activists are ones Mr. Paterson himself has called for in the past, including the creation of a permanent post for an independent state prosecutor to investigate and prosecute police corruption and brutality — a post the governor has the power to create.

“I can’t think of anyone better,” Mr. Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said of Mr. Paterson. “If we don’t get it in the next year-and-a-half or two years, we will probably never get it.”

In a separate news conference yesterday at the headquarters of the National Action Network in Harlem, the Rev. Al Sharpton seemed to have greater hopes that federal prosecutors would file charges against the detectives. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, also promised to lead the protests Rev. Sharpton has promised would shut down the city in the next few weeks.

“The justice system let me down,” Ms. Bell said.

Rev. Sharpton said he is meeting today with the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, to discuss the case.

The pressure on Mr. Paterson to take up his old cause following the Bell verdict poses a difficult test that juxtaposes the governor’s longtime roots as a civil rights activist and the political considerations of his new office.

Activists are convinced that Mr. Paterson will line up on their side, however, citing his activism in the past.

The governor was among a group of lawmakers and activists who, in the wake of the Diallo shooting, presented a list of 10 demands that are the inspiration for the five proposals activists presented yesterday. They include the appointment of the special prosecutor, an overhaul of the review board that investigates complaints against police, regular town hall meetings to discuss police misconduct cases, a raise in starting pay for police officers, and the institution of regular police psychological testing.

Mr. Paterson has spoken in the past at the National Action Network and is also reported to have donated as much as $16,000 to Rev. Sharpton’s organization in the past few years, according to a 2007 report by the Daily News.

The Diallo shooting in some ways has served as a touchstone for the Bell case. Diallo was killed in a hail of 41 bullets as he was reaching for his wallet. Fifty bullets were fired at Bell as he was leaving his bachelor party at a Queens strip club with a group of friends on the morning of his wedding in late 2006. In both cases, the police officers were acquitted.

When Mr. Paterson was arrested during the Diallo protests — one of three reported arrests in his life on civil disobedience charges for civil rights causes — he was quoted in the Amsterdam News as saying: “99% of African-Americans feel that police brutality is a problem in New York City and 70% of white New Yorkers do not. While we respect that their opinions are shaped by their personal experiences, we feel that for anyone to treat the concerns expressed by 3 million New Yorkers as merely politically motivated … shows a blatant disregard for the people of our community.”

Still, while running for lieutenant governor alongside Eliot Spitzer, Mr. Paterson abandoned a bill he introduced in the aftermath of the Diallo shooting that would have required police to use minimum force — meaning shooting to wound, not kill. Police and other officials had roundly criticized the bill, saying it would make the job more dangerous for police officers, and the bill seemed to contradict his running mate’s past efforts to help police.

Yesterday, responding to the activists’ calls for him to take action, a spokeswoman for the governor, Erin Duggan, said Mr. Paterson had not yet received a copy of the proposals but that “he will of course review them carefully and consider the complex issues they address.”

“The Governor takes the police wrongdoing very seriously, but he also believes that the overwhelming majority of police officers perform their duties honorably and conscientiously each and every day,” she said in a statement.