NOT GUILTY!!!

NEW YORK - They waited for hours, singing spirituals, praying and chanting for justice. In a flash, the crowd gathered outside a Queens courthouse Friday erupted in anger and grief.

Men cursed and shouted. Women wailed and covered their faces. "Oh, no! No!" they yelled as word spread that three police officers had been cleared of all charges in the 50-bullet shooting that took Sean Bell's life on his wedding day in 2006.

Trent Benefield, a friend of Bell's who was wounded in the hail of gunfire, staggered down the courthouse steps with a look of angry disbelief on his face, a friend's arms tightly wrapped around his shoulders.

"Not guilty. Not guilty. It's real," Benefield said, while dozens of people wearing Bell's face on hats, T-shirts and buttons burst into sobs.

Angry supporters of the Bell family shouted at police officers and journalists outside the courthouse, but within an hour the crowd of about 200 people had settled down and dispersed. Despite some pushing and shoving in the crowd, no arrests were made.

The protests were muted compared with past verdicts where officers were cleared in police shootings of black men, perhaps a result of improved race relations and the complicated nature of the Bell case. Bell was black, but so were two of the three officers charged in the shooting, including the one who fired the first shot.

Civil rights leaders demanded a federal investigation, but supporters of the officers said justice had been served.

"How do I spell relief? N-O-T G-U-I-L-T-Y," said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, a police union.