’71 cop slayer gets out

PBA still fights

He murdered two Harlem cops in a cold-blooded ambush in 1971 — and Friday, he walked out of prison a free man, outraging police and his victims’ kin.

Former Black Liberation Army member Herman Bell (right) — who spent more than 40 years behind bars before the state parole board voted in March to release him — dodged the media with the help of New York prison officials as he was whisked from the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate Wallkill in a white Chevy corrections van just after 5 p.m.

Bell, now 70, was then dropped off at a secret location in New Paltz — because prison officials fear for his safety, according to law-enforcement sources. From there, he was headed to Brooklyn, they said.

The cop-killing ex-con, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees behind bars, was convicted of shooting Officer Joseph Piagentini dozens of times as he screamed and begged for his life. Piagentini’s partner, Officer Waverly Jones, was fatally shot four times.

Bell refused to show remorse during the first roughly 30 years of his 25-to-life prison sentence. He insisted that he was innocent and nothing more than a “political prisoner” — even though witnesses and friends testified that he had openly bragged about the killings.

Bell was first eligible for parole in 2004 but was con- sistently rejected for his lack of remorse.

Finally, in 2012, he admitted to the parole board that he was guilty and claimed to now be a “peaceful” man.

The board granted his release six years later.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which is appealing Bell’s release, on Friday called on the state Legislature and Gov. Cuomo to “fix the broken NYS parole board system.”

“The current parole process contains gigantic loopholes that allow murderous monsters like Herman Bell to game the system by concocting a phony story tailor-made for the new parole guidelines,” PBA President Patrick Lynch raged in a statement.

Widow Diane Piagentini added that Bell “is a planner and a manipulator, and he will persuade young people to his way of thinking — just like he manipulated the parole board to release him.”

A full panel of appellate judges on May 4 will hear the PBA’s motion to put Bell back behind bars.