A Shameful Parole

It’s hard to put into words just how appalling it is that the New York Board of Parole has ordered a onetime domestic terrorist and serial cop-killer turned loose.

It’s a decision so indefensible that a former parole board chairman — now an advocate for inmates — says he was shocked.

The board approved parole for self-styled “political prisoner” Herman Bell, one of three black nationalists who in 1971 assassinated two New York City cops in cold blood for no other reason than that they were police officers.

Officer Waverly Jones was killed instantly. Officer Joseph Piagentini was shot 12 times, then finished off with his own gun even as he pleaded for his life.

Bell and two other members of the Black Liberation Army lured the cops to a Harlem housing project with a bogus 911 call. Then they opened fire.

Had capital punishment been legal then, they almost certainly would have been sentenced to death. Nor was there any legal provision for life without parole — the sen- tence Bell would have received today.

Instead, he got a 25-to-life term and will now walk free.

Yet until 2012 Bell didn’t even admit his guilt, claiming he was framed.

But now — after repeated rejections for parole — he has admitted his “terrible mistake.” And that, declared the board’s threemember panel, shows his “maturation.” And hey, he’s earned two college degrees in prison and learned to play the flute.

Ultimately, though, the 70-year-old Bell was deemed a low future risk to break the law. So his release is “not incompatible with the welfare of society.”

Nonsense: Last April, the board rejected parole for another domestic terrorist, Judith Clark, who took part in the 1981 Brink’s heist, declaring her a “symbol of a violent and terroristic crime,” even after Gov. Cuomo commuted her 75-year sentence.

Bell, who was part of a politically charged war of murder against police officers, is no less a symbol. Society would be better off if he spent the rest of his days in prison.