Metro

NYPD scapegoat never had a shot

Ray Kelly

Ray Kelly (Paul Martinka)

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It makes no sense.

Thirteen years after he fatally shot Amadou Diallo in a dark Bronx doorway, mistaking the African immigrant’s wallet for a gun, Officer Kenneth Boss got his gun back.

Detective Gescard “Jesse’’ Isnora (above; his gun, center) did not.

Boss, one of four cops who shot Diallo, was treated like a long-suffering martyr by Commissioner Raymond Kelly (inset), who deemed him fit to carry a 9mm pistol. Years after being cleared of wrongdoing at a criminal trial, Boss is, finally, a whole cop again.

Isnora, his brother in blue, is a broken man.

Earlier this year, Isnora was cast out of the NYPD like a hoodlum and stripped of his pension and health insurance. In a case that echoes Diallo’s, Isnora was one of five cops who shot dead unarmed Sean Bell outside a seedy Queens strip joint one dark and wretched night in 2006.

“I put my life on the line doing the job they asked, plus more,’’ Isnora, 33, told me. “I felt [the NYPD] turned their backs. They didn’t defend me.’’

Like Boss, Isnora and two others were found innocent of all charges, including manslaughter, at a criminal trial. The trial’s racial tenor was blunted by a pesky fact: Isnora, like Bell, is African-American. Boss is not.

Last year, Isnora was put on a departmental trial, clearly aimed at appeasing Bell’s vocal supporters, including the Rev. Al Sharpton. And when kangaroo court was over, Isnora was treated worse than a leper.

“I was used and abused and kicked to the curb,’’ he said.

Isnora, a cop of 10 years, chose to work in shady areas that sane humans avoid like ebola as a way to “give back to the community.’’

“Of course it bothers me that someone perished. I’m a human being,’’ he said. “I did the job. I did it right. I had no intentions of hurting anyone.’’

Now he’s living with his grandparents in Brooklyn and suing to get his job back, but holds out little hope. He’s unemployed.

Officer Michael Carey, who fired three shots at Bell but wasn’t criminally charged, also recently got his gun back after being cleared in a departmental trial. The other officers who shot Bell were forced to retire with pensions. The NYPD wanted a scapegoat.

“I was an easy target,’’ Isnora said.

Isnora testified at the departmental trial that he was certain he was about to get plugged in a drive-by shooting on the night Bell died. Isnora was terrified not only for himself, but for innocent patrons of Club Kalua, the skeevy, hooker-choked Jamaica establishment where Bell held a boozy bachelor party.

As Bell’s gang spilled onto the street at closing time, Isnora heard Bell’s pal Joseph Guzman yell, “Get my gun!’’ Then, as Bell drove his car toward the parking lot’s exit with Guzman in tow, Isnora ordered him to stop the car. Bell plowed the vehicle into Isnora’s leg instead.

The cop thought he saw Guzman reaching for a weapon.

Isnora fired, followed by a barrage of bullets from the other cops. Four hit Bell. Detective Michael Oliver shot, reloaded and emptied his magazine a second time.

No gun was found near Bell’s body.

Isnora was found guilty of violating police protocol by blowing his cover and taking shots. He doesn’t regret a thing.

“It’s because of my awareness . . . and my quick thinking that I’m still here,’’ he said. “God gave me a second chance.’’

The NYPD is now embroiled in another fatal shooting of an unarmed man. on the Grand Central Parkway. Detective Hassan Hamdy says he believed Noel Polanco was reaching for a gun when he shot. (A friend says Polanco’s death resulted from cop “road rage.’’)

Isnora has never been accused of being a cowboy.

“Jesse’s a low-key guy,’’ said his lawyer, Philip Karasyk.

The sad part is that no one in his right mind will ever want to work as a cop.

Two officers in Diallo’s shooting have joined the Fire Department. Running into burning buildings, a cop friend told me, is less painful than dealing with police politics.

Jesse Isnora was a good man caught in a horrific situation. Give him back his badge and gun. The city will be safer.

Liberal dose of woe over O debacle

The editors of The New York Times are crying in their aged Scotch.

The paper habitually trashes the presidential candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney — once ridiculing his habit of eating only muffin tops. But the Times led coverage of last week’s debate against President Obama with surprised admiration: “Mitt Romney on Wednesday accused President Obama of failing to lead the country out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.”

Turncoat Republican columnist David Brooks rejoined with a piece headlined, “Moderate Mitt Returns!’’

Celebs were slitting their wrists. Lefty filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted, “If Romney keeps this up . . . Obama is going to vote for him!” Comedian Bill Maher, who donated $1 million to Obama’s super PAC, wrote, “Obama looks like he DOES need a TelePrompTer.’’ Climate guru Al Gore blamed Obama’s listless performance on Denver’s mile-high altitude!

Obama lost the showdown. Romney won. Live with it.

MTA, hear this

Subway announcements are easy to understand — if you ride the 4 train. But if your commute requires you to take the awful R line, 44 percent of messages on the public address system sound like they’re being read by Daffy Duck, the Straphangers Campaign advocacy group found.

Give us a break. With rising fares, rats and seats impossible to find, the MTA can at least make sure we understand why trains aren’t moving.

Big Bird no endangered species

Big Bird is a welfare queen.

Mitt Romney sent shock waves through the nursery in his triumphant debate with President Obama. Once elected president, Romney said, he’d wipe out government funding to PBS, which employs the 8-foot-2 denizen of “Sesame Street.’’

“I like Big Bird,’’ Romney said, adding that he’s not willing “to borrow money from China’’ to fund PBS.

Well, PBS gets tons of corporate and private donations. So don’t worry, children. The large avian is in no danger of being laid off.

DOE rubber room bouncing back

Your tax dollars are hard at work in a rubber room. That’s right. Two years after the city’s Department of Education claimed it had shut rooms in which scores of allegedly deviant teachers sat around all day doing nothing, the rubber is sneaking back.

Staten Island teacher Francesco Portelos has streamed video on the Internet of himself sitting, alone, in a Queens office with a laptop, collecting his $75,000 salary. He says he’s being punished for complaining about financial shenanigans by a school administrator. The DOE will say only that the charges against him are more serious.

If so, Portelos must be fired immediately. If not, put him back into the classroom. The rubber-room lunacy must end.