We are deeply saddened by the acquittal on all charges of the officers charged with pumping 19 fatal shots into the body of an unarmed young man, Amadou Diallo, as he stood in the vestibule of his building.
These police were part of the New York City Police Department's street crimes unit. Their arrogance is evidenced by the very slogan they choose to identify their mission: "We Rule The Night." Nowhere, even a nod to what ordinary citizens believe to be the chief task of law enforcement: To enforce the law and protect individuals and communities from those who break it.
The shame of the New York City Police Department over this barrage of 41 bullets aimed by four officers at an unarmed young man guilty of no crime, should begin at the highest level of the city administration, the mayor's office. This administration must accept the blame for creating a climate of institutional racism that presumes the guilt of minorities like the young African, Amadou Diallo, unless they can prove themselves innocent; a climate in which officers of the law and the administration that protects them from accountability to the people they are sworn to protect shoot first and justify it later; and a climate in which the amount of protection you can assume from these same officers decreases in direct proportion to the darkness of your skin.
Jurors, who are only human, come to a trial with a sensibility formed by their own life experiences. The Amadou Diallo trial was moved out of the Bronx to Albany, over the loud protests of those interested in seeing justice restored in the same community where it was so tragically blasted away. That maneuver, designed to protect the police from judgement by inner-city minorities who know all too well what it is to be the innocent prey of poorly trained, insensitive police sent out into the night to ‘protect' them, was rooted in racism, all protests to the contrary.
The jury declared that race was never a factor in their deliberations; that they decided based on the evidence presented in court and the charge of the presiding judge. If so, then they either were insulated from or simply failed to consider the historical fact of minority victimization at the hands of the police. The most recent atrocities read like a law enforcement roll of shame: Amadou Diallo, gunned down by four police officers as he reached for his wallet.....Abner Louima, violated by an officer who repeatedly shoved a broom handle up his rectum......Anthony Baez, strangled in a choke hold by arresting officers.
There is a remedy for this official violence against the citizens of New York City. It requires a change of heart, starting in the mayor's office, and a determination to vow to create a police department of protectors, not predators:
Police occupy positions of extraordinary trust and power in our society. The killing of Amadou Diallo was gross abuse of that power. There are serious issues of police brutality, unchecked use of deadly force, institutional racism, and indifference to the sanctity of human life in the New York City Police Department. Those issues must be addressed and corrected, and the corrections must begin immediately.
Our sympathies are with the family of Amadou Diallo, who must live with the pain of their son being killed and the pain of justice denied. That they may now pursue a federal remedy for the violation of their son's civil rights is small comfort to them or to future victims. This situation, in which police officers turned from protectors to predators is all the more tragic because Mr. Diallo was unarmed and in the vestibule of his building, a place in which his safety should have been at its highest level.
We offer our heartfelt prayers for the grieving Diallo family.
But we also offer prayers for the police who live as occupiers, invaders, and abusers of power. We pray that their hearts might be transformed and peace truly become their mission.
NOTE: See also A Prayer For Souls in Pain.