Now, barring action by federal prosecutors, the next person to sit in judgment on what was done to Sean Bell and his two passengers will be the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. He must resolve questions that are politically charged for himself, his department and the public at large: whether the individual officers should be allowed to return to duty, and more broadly, if the case exposed shoddy practices in some undercover operations that put members of the public at risk.  The Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said that Friday’s verdict should not be taken as an acquittal of serious management weaknesses that he believes led to the Bell shooting.  “To the contrary,” Mr. Brown said, the trial “revealed significant deficiencies in, among other things, supervision, tactical planning, communications and management accountability — insufficiencies that need to be addressed.”  He noted that a special panel set up by the Police Department after the shooting of Mr. Bell recommended 19 changes in undercover operations. “Virtually all of them had Sean Bell written all over them,” Mr. Brown said. He said he had called Mr. Kelly to volunteer his office’s help.  A spokesman for Mr. Kelly said that 16 of the 19 recommendations had already been put into practice, and that a major study on improving police firearms training would be finished within a month. Compared to most other big cities, New York police officers rarely fatally shoot anyone.  Whether Sean Bell’s death resulted from failures of individuals or of broad policies, the story of his last night is inescapably personal. He had been at a bachelor party at a Queens club on the eve of his wedding. On his way to the party, he had been pulled over by plainclothes police officers in a marked police van, provided his license, and everything was found to be in order.  Several hours and many drinks later, though, as he was about to drive home with two friends, he was approached by an undercover detective, Gescard F. Isnora, who said he had heard talk of a gun outside the club and thought it might be in Mr. Bell’s car. There was no gun. Mr. Bell made a frenzied attempt to pull out of a parking spot. Detective Isnora, a veteran undercover officer who had never before used his gun, said he opened fire because he thought one of Mr. Bell’s passengers was reaching for a weapon as Mr. Bell slammed his car backward and forward.  Detective Isnora, who began the shooting, said his badge was pinned to his collar as he approached the car, shouting police commands. Other members of the team did not know he had his gun — undercovers often don’t carry them — until he began firing. None of the police vehicles were marked. None used their lights and sirens. None of the officers wore raid jackets, which clearly identify a police officer.  The supervising lieutenant, Gary Napoli, was asked at the trial if he had checked on these items at the start of the night. “I didn’t conduct an inspection for every piece of equipment every night we went out, no,” testified Lieutenant Napoli, who did not fire his weapon and was not charged with wrongdoing.  Now, the Police Department says it requires that undercover supervisors have megaphones and portable light kits in their cars, and that they inspect the members of their team to make sure they have their equipment. Soon, the department will issue new raid jackets.  At the trial, the chief prosecutor, Charles A. Testagrossa, mentioned all of those as shortcomings on Nov. 25, 2006, when Sean Bell died. “There’s no way of sugarcoating it,” he said. “This was a slipshod operation.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Acquits Detectives in 50-Shot Killing of Bell. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Neither carelessness by three officers nor the mindset of the man they killed were factors in a judge’s not-guilty verdict in the shooting of Sean Bell.