Herman Bell
The Truth About Herman Bell
April 20, 2018
When a recent New York Times editorial praised the announced release of Herman Bell, a serial killer of police officers, it reasoned that "To lock him up forever even though deemed a changed man is to make a mockery of his sentence: ‘25 years to life' is not supposed to be cynical code for ‘life.'" Bell has expressed "regret and remorse," it asserts, and so any objections to his liberty must be regarded as political pandering. Assuming that any apology is sufficient for the vicious campaign of domestic terrorism Bell undertook, some cynicism is warranted in judging the sincerity of his repentance. For nearly four decades after his murders of Police Officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini, on May 26, 1971, Bell continued to insist that he had been framed, and that the government had no right to hold him in custody. He claimed to be both an innocent man and a prisoner of war. In recent years, he has said that he's sorry for killing the men. There is no reason to believe him, then or now.
Bell was convicted after two trials, along with two codefendants, Albert Washington and Anthony Bottom. Officers Piagentini and Jones were ambushed in Harlem when they were on patrol. Bottom shot Jones in the back of the head with a .45, and then in the neck, and then in the back, and then in the buttocks; Jones was dead before he hit the ground. In contrast, Bell's killing of Piagentini was cruelly prolonged. In the account of the prosecutor, Robert Tanenbaum, "Piagentini died the way a bull dies in the ring, his body scored and torn with a dozen wounds that left him alive long enough to feel the impact of each bullet." A witness said that Piagentini's last words were of his daughters, one and three years old. Bell kept on shooting until he ran out of ammunition. He then took Piagentini's gun and continued to fire at him. After Bottom robbed Jones of his gun, he finished off Piagentini.
Bell, Bottom, and Washington were part of a San Francisco-based cell of the Black Liberation Army, the underground "direct action" wing of the Black Panther Party. They had come to New York after the BLA had coordinated a series of bank robberies, bombings, and attempted assassinations of police officers in the Bay Area, in 1970 and early 1971. Among their other violent acts, the group detonated a bomb at a church during a police officer's funeral. After the murders of the NYPD officers, they returned to San Francisco, where Washington and Bottom drove up to a police sergeant and tried to open fire with a machine gun. The gun jammed, and the men were arrested. A day later, Bell led a raid on the Ingleside police station, fatally shooting Sgt. John Young in the chest with a shotgun. A civilian clerk was shot in the arm. A bomb the militants brought that might have levelled the building failed to explode.
Bell was arrested later in New Orleans, where another crew of BLA members had committed a string of bank robberies. Two handguns, a rifle, and two shotguns were recovered from his apartment, including the shotgun used to kill Sgt. Young. The robberies were committed to subsidize the ongoing program of police assassinations.