Sean Bell. (James Messerschmidt)
Trent Bennefielt (NEW YORK POST)
Joseph Guzman (Tim Wiencis)
The city will shell out more than $7 million to settle the civil suit arising from the fatal police shooting of Sean Bell.
A Brooklyn federal judge signed off on the deal yesterday, closing the final chapter in the racially tinged case that stunned and divided the city.
Under its terms, the city will pay $3.25 million to the estate of Bell, who was having a bachelor party at a strip club in Queens when he was shot hours before his scheduled marriage on Nov. 25, 2006. His only heirs are his kids, Jada, 7 and Jordyn, 4, according to Sanford Rubenstein, who represented his fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell.
Bell’s friend Joseph Guzman, who was wounded, will get $3 million. Another pal who was shot, Trent Benefield, collects $900,000.
The city made the announcement with a press release that appears to beg for forgiveness.
“The city regrets the loss of life in this tragic case and we share our deepest condolences with the Bell family,” Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo said in the release.
“The Sean Bell shooting highlighted the complexities our dedicated officers must face each day” and expressed the “hope that all the parties can find some measure of closure by this settlement.”
Paultre Bell, who legally took Sean’s last name after the slaying, called the settlement “fair.”
But she added, “No amount of money will provide closure.”
Guzman, 34, who still has four bullets lodged in his back and walks with a cane, said at a press conference yesterday, “I deal with so much pain, I don’t even feel it.”
The NYPD had no comment — but the deal was blasted as “absurd” by the head of the NYPD detectives union.
“The taxpayer is on the hook for $7 million and the lawyers walk away with $2 million and the one with the most culpability here is Sean Bell,” said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.
“There’s something wrong with that picture.”
Bell and his two friends were celebrating his impending nuptials when they were shot by plainclothes and uniformed cops in a hail of more than 50 bullets outside a club.
Cops said they fired when Bell, who had been drinking, accelerated his car and hit one of the officers trying to keep him from leaving the scene.
After an extensive investigation, three detectives were indicted in March 2007. Two were charged with manslaughter, and the third with reckless endangerment.
In April 2008, all three cops were acquitted, triggering demands for a federal civil-rights investigation.
The Justice Department dismissed the civil-rights claim in February, but the lawsuit, brought by his fiancée continued until yesterday.
The three officers still face administrative charges. They are believed to be on modified NYPD assignment.
The $7 million deal is one of the largest payouts in the city’s history.
Last month, Barry Gibbs received $9.9 million after serving 19 years in prison. He’d been framed for murder by one of the corrupt “Mafia cops,” Louis Eppolito.
Abner Louima, who was sodomized by cops with a broomstick while in police custody at a Brooklyn station house in 1997, received $8.7 million in 2001.