New York is set to release a convicted cop killer on parole and it's got the NYPD shaking with rage.
If all goes according to plan, on or around April 17, Herman Bell will walk out of Shawangunk prison and possibly back into the community where he caused so much sorrow and anger in 1971.
For Diane Piagentini, the widow of the police officer Bell gunned down, it's been five decades of heartbreak.
"My daughters never got to know their father. He wasn't there when they went to high school, father/daughter dances," she told local media. "They never got to know him."
She was promised the killer of her late husband, NYPD officer Joseph Piagentini, would never see the light of day.
Bell, now 70, is considered a domestic terrorist after he and two other members of the Black Liberation Army lured Piagentini and Officer Waverly Jones to a Harlem housing project with a bogus 911 call. The police officers were then ambushed, killing Jones instantly.
Piagentini, wounded in the ambush, was killed after pleading for his life, The New York Postrecalled.
The parole surprised New York police officers such as Patrick Lynch, who heads the NYC Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. He said officers young and old were "sickened" by the announcement.
"Young police officers say there's a bond with the public that says if a mope kills me, you'll take care of my family and they'll stay behind bars forever," Lynch said. "And their eyes were opened yesterday when word came down that this vermin will walk our streets. It's disgraceful."
Both Lynch and Piagentini, the widow, are calling for the resignation of the entire parole board.